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CASSELL'S ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND




    CASSELL'S
    HISTORY OF ENGLAND

    FROM THE PENINSULAR WAR TO THE
    DEATH OF SIR ROBERT PEEL

    WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS,
    INCLUDING COLOURED
    AND REMBRANDT PLATES

    VOL. V

    _THE KING'S EDITION_


    CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
    LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

    MCMIX


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




CONTENTS.


    CHAPTER I.

    REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

                             PAGE

    Napoleon's Desire for an Heir--The Archduchess Maria Louisa--The
    Divorce determined upon--The Marriage--Napoleon quarrels
    with his Family--Abdication of Louis Buonaparte--Napoleon's
    bloated Empire--Affairs of Sweden--Choice of Bernadotte as
    King--He forms an Alliance with Russia and Britain--His
    Breach with Napoleon--Insanity of George III.--Preparations
    for a Regency--Restrictions on the Power of the
    Regent--Futile Negotiations of the Prince of Wales with
    Grey and Grenville--Perceval continued in Power--The King's
    Speech--Reinstatement of the Duke of York--The Currency
    Question--Its Effect on the Continent--Wellington's
    Difficulties--Massena's Retreat--His Defeat at Sabugal--Surrender
    of Badajoz to the French--Battle of Barrosa--Wellington and
    Massena--Battles of Fuentes d'Onoro and Albuera--Soult's
    Retreat--End of the Campaign--Our Naval Supremacy continues--Birth
    of an Heir to Napoleon--Elements of Resistance to his
    Despotism--Session of 1812--Discussions on the Civil List--Bankes's
    Bill--Assassination of Perceval--Renewed Overtures to Grey and
    Grenville--Riots in the Manufacturing Districts--Wellington's
    Preparations--Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz--Wellington
    and Marmont--Battle of Salamanca--Wellington enters
    Madrid--Victor's Retreat--Incapacity of the Spaniards--The Sicilian
    Expedition--Wellington's Retreat--Its Difficulties--Wellington's
    Defence of his Tactics--A Pause in the War                       1


    CHAPTER II.

    THE REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Rancour of the Americans towards England--Their Admiration of
    Napoleon--The Right of Search and consequent Disputes--Madison's
    warlike Declaration--Opposition in Congress--Condition of
    Canada--Capture of Michilimachimac--An Armistice--Repulse of the
    Invasion of Canada--Naval Engagements--Napoleon and the Czar
    determine on War--Attempts to dissuade Napoleon--Unpreparedness
    of Russia--Bernadotte's Advice to Alexander--Rashness of
    Napoleon--Policy of Prussia, Austria and Turkey--Overtures to
    England and Russia--Napoleon goes to the Front--His extravagant
    Language--The War begins--Disillusion of the Poles--Difficulties
    of the Advance--Bagration and Barclay de Tolly--Napoleon pushes
    on--Capture of Smolensk--Battle of Borodino--The Russians evacuate
    Moscow--Buonaparte occupies the City--Conflagrations burst
    out--Desperate Position of Affairs--Murat and Kutusoff--Defeat
    of Murat--The Retreat begins--Its Horrors--Caution of
    Kutusoff--Passage of the Beresina--Napoleon leaves the Army--His
    Arrival in Paris--Results of the Campaign--England's Support
    of Russia--Close of 1812--Wellington's improved Prospects--He
    advances against Joseph Buonaparte--Battle of Vittoria--Retreat
    of the French--Soult is sent against Wellington--The Battles
    of the Pyrenees--The Storming of San Sebastian--Wellington
    forbids Plundering--He goes into Winter-quarters--Campaign
    in the south-east of Spain--Napoleon's Efforts to renew the
    Campaign--Desertion of Murat and Bernadotte--Alliance between
    Prussia and Russia--Austrian Mediation fails--Early Successes
    of the Allies--Battle of Lützen--Napoleon's false Account
    of the Battle--Occupation of Hamburg by Davoust--Battle of
    Bautzen--Armistice of Pleisswitz--Failure of the Negotiations--The
    Fortification of Dresden--Successive Defeats of the French by the
    Allies--The Aid of England--Battle of Leipsic--Retreat of the
    French across the Rhine--The French Yoke is thrown off--Castlereagh
    summons England to fresh Exertions--Liberation of the Pope--Failure
    of Buonaparte's Attempt to restore Ferdinand--Wellington's
    Remonstrance with the British Ministry--Battles of Orthez and
    Toulouse--Termination of the Campaign--Exhaustion of France--The
    Allies on the Frontier--Napoleon's final Efforts--The Congress
    of Châtillon--The Allies advance on Paris--Surrender of the
    Capital--A Provisional Government appointed--Napoleon abdicates
    in favour of his Son--His unconditional Abdication--Return of the
    Bourbons--Insecurity of their Power--Treaty of Paris--Bad Terms to
    England--Visit of the Monarchs to London                        32


    CHAPTER III.

    REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_concluded_).

    The Congress at Vienna--Napoleon's Escape from Elba--Military
    Preparations--England supplies the Money--Wellington organises
    his Army--Napoleon's Journey through France--His Entry into
    Paris--The Enemy gathers round him--Napoleon's Preparations--The
    New Constitution--Positions of Wellington and Blucher--The Duchess
    of Richmond's Ball--Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras--Blucher's
    Retreat--The Field of Waterloo--The Battle--Charge of the Old
    Guard--Arrival of the Prussians--The Retreat--French Assertions
    about the Battle refuted--Napoleon's Abdication--The Allies
    march on Paris--End of the Hundred Days--The Emperor is sent
    to St. Helena--The War in America--Events on the Canadian
    Frontier--Repeated Incapacity of Sir George Prevost--His
    Recall--Failure of American Designs on Canada--Capture of
    Washington by the British--Other Expeditions--Failure of the
    Expedition to New Orleans--Anxiety of the United States for
    Peace--Mediation of the Czar--Treaty of Ghent--Execution of Ney
    and Labédoyère--Inability of Wellington to interfere--Murat's
    Attempt on Naples--His Execution--The Second Treaty of Paris--Final
    Conditions between France and the Allies--Remainder of the Third
    George's Reign--Corn Law of 1815--General Distress--Riots and
    Political Meetings--The Storming of Algiers--Repressive Measures in
    Parliament--Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act--Secret Meetings in
    Lancashire--The Spy Oliver--The Derbyshire Insurrection--Refusal
    of Juries to convict--Suppression of seditious Writings--Circular
    to Lord-Lieutenant--The Flight of Cobbett--First Trial of
    Hone--The Trials before Lord Ellenborough--Bill for the Abolition
    of Sinecures--Death of the Princess Charlotte--Opening of
    the Session of 1818--Repeal of the Suspension Act--Operation
    of the Corn Law--The Indemnity Bill--Its Passage through
    Parliament--Attempts at Reform--Marriages of the Dukes of Clarence,
    Cambridge, and Kent--Renewal of the Alien Act--Dissolution of
    Parliament and General Election--Strike in Manchester--Congress
    of Aix-la Chapelle--Raids of the Pindarrees--Lord Hastings
    determines to suppress them--Malcolm's Campaign--Outbreak of
    Cholera--Campaign against the Peishwa--Pacification of the Mahratta
    district--Apparent Prosperity of Great Britain in 1819--Opening of
    Parliament--Debates on the Royal Expenditure--Resumption of Cash
    Payments--The Budget--Social Reforms--The Scottish Burghs--Roman
    Catholic Emancipation rejected--Weakness of the Government--Meeting
    at Manchester--The Peterloo Massacre--The Six Acts--The Cato Street
    Conspiracy--Attempted Insurrection in Scotland--Trials of Hunt and
    his Associates--Death of George III.                              87


    CHAPTER IV.

    PROGRESS OF THE NATION DURING THE REIGN OF GEORGE III.

    Growth of Material Wealth--Condition of the Working Classes--The
    Charity Schools--Lethargy of the Church--Proposal to abolish
    Subscription to the Articles--A Bill for the further Relief of
    Dissenters--The Test and Corporation Acts--The Efforts of Beaufoy
    and Lord Stanhope--Attempts to relieve the Quakers--Further Effort
    of Lord Stanhope--The Claims of the Roman Catholics--Failure
    of the Efforts to obtain Catholic Emancipation--Lay Patronage
    in Scotland--The Scottish Episcopalians--Illustrious
    Dissenters--Religion in Wales and Ireland--Literature--The
    Novelists: Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne--Minor
    and later Novelists--Scott--Historians: Hume, Robertson, and
    Gibbon--Minor Historians--Miscellaneous Literature--Criticism,
    Theology, Biography, and Science--Periodical Literature--The Drama
    and the Dramatists--Poetry: Collins, Shenstone, and Gray--Goldsmith
    and Churchill--Minor Poets--Percy's "Reliques," and Scott's "Border
    Minstrelsy"--Chatterton and Ossian--Johnson and Darwin--Crabbe and
    Cowper--Poetasters and Gifford--The Shakespeare Forgeries--Minor
    Satires--Burns--The Lake School: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and
    Southey--Scott, Campbell, Byron, Shelley, and Keats--Poets
    at the close of the Period--Improvement of Agricultural
    Science--Arthur Young--Drainage and Roots--Improvements in
    Road-making: Telford and Macadam--Brindley's and Telford's
    Canals--Bridges and Harbours--Iron Railways--Application
    of the Steam-Engine to Railways and Boats--Improvements in
    Machinery--Wedgwood--Manufacture of Glass--Collieries--Use of Coal
    in Iron-works--Improvements in various Manufactures--Scientific
    Discoveries--Music--Architecture--Painting--Sculpture--Engraving--Coins
    and Coinage--Manners and Customs                                  157


    CHAPTER V.

    THE REIGN OF GEORGE IV.

    Accession of George IV.--Meeting of Parliament--General
    Election--Opening of the New Session--Dulness of Affairs--Brougham
    on Education--Queen Caroline--Omission of her Name from the
    Liturgy--She rejects the King's Proposals, and arrives in
    England--Attempts at a Compromise--The King orders an Inquiry--The
    Secret Committee--The Bill of Pains and Penalties--Arrival of
    the Queen in the House of Lords--Discussions on the Form of
    Procedure--Speeches of Denman and the Attorney-General--Evidence
    for the Prosecution--Brougham's Speech--Abandonment of the
    Bill--General Rejoicings--Violence of Party Feeling--Popularity
    of the Queen--Her Claim to be crowned refused--The Queen's
    Attempt to enter the Abbey--Indiscretion of the Act--The
    Coronation and the Banquet--The subsequent Scramble--Death
    of the Queen--Departure of her Body--The King's Visit to
    Ireland--A Royal Oration and its enthusiastic Reception--The
    King and Lady Conyngham--Changes in the Government--Discontent
    of Eldon--Wellesley in Ireland--Alarming State of the
    Country--Canning's Speech on Catholic Emancipation--Parliamentary
    Reform--Agricultural Distress and Finance--Eldon's Outbreak on
    the Marriage Bill--Suicide of Lord Londonderry--Scene at his
    Funeral--Visit of George IV. to Scotland--Loyalty of Sir Walter
    Scott--Account of the Festivities--Peel's Letter to Scott--Return
    of the King--Canning takes the Foreign Office and Leadership of
    the House of Commons--Huskisson joins the Cabinet--The Duke of
    Wellington sent to Verona--His Instructions--Principles of the Holy
    Alliance--The Spanish Colonies--French Intervention in Spain--The
    Duke's Remonstrances with the French King--His Interview with the
    Czar--The Congress of Verona--Failure of Wellington to prevent
    Intervention in Spain--Vindication of Canning's Policy in the
    Commons--He calls the New World into Existence                    204


    CHAPTER VI.

    REIGN OF GEORGE IV. (_continued_).

    Prosperity of the Manufacturers--Depression of
    Agriculture--Resumption of Cash Payments--A restricted
    Currency--The Budget of 1823--Mr. Huskisson--Change of the
    Navigation Acts--Budget of 1824--Removal of the Duties on Wool
    and Silk--Repeal of the Spitalfields Act and the Combination
    Laws--Speculative Mania--The Crash--Remedial Measures of the
    Government--Riots and Machine-breaking--Temporary Change in
    the Corn Laws--Emigration--State of Ireland--Efforts of Lord
    Wellesley--Condition of the Peasantry--Unlawful Societies--The
    Bottle Riot--Failure to obtain the Conviction of the
    Rioters--The Tithe Commutation Act--Revival of the Catholic
    Question--Peel's Views--The Catholic Association and its
    Objects--Bill for its Suppression--Plunket's Speech--A new
    Association formed--Rejection of Burdett's Resolution--Fears of the
    Moderates--General Election--Its Features--Inquiry into the Bubble
    Companies--Death of the Duke of York--Canning's vigorous Policy in
    Portugal--Weakness of the Ministry and Illness of Liverpool--Who
    was to be his Successor?--Canning's Difficulties--Peel and the
    Old Tories resign--State of Canning's Health--His Arrangements
    completed--Opposition to Him--His Illness and Death--Collapse of
    the Goderich Ministry--Wellington forms an Administration--Eldon is
    omitted--The Battle of Navarino--"The Untoward Event"--Resignation
    of the Canningites--Grievances of the Dissenters--Lord John
    Russell's Motion for the Repeal of the Test and Corporation
    Acts--Peel's Reply--Progress of the Measure--Lord Eldon's
    Opposition--Public Rejoicings                                     237


    CHAPTER VII.

    THE REIGN OF GEORGE IV. (_concluded_).

    Opinions of the Irish Government on the Catholic Question--Renewal
    of the Catholic Claims by Burdett--Vesey Fitzgerald accepts
    the Board of Trade--O'Connell opposes him for Clare--His
    Reputation--His Backers--Father Murphy's Speech--O'Connell
    to the Front--The Nomination--O'Connell's Speech--The
    Election--Return of O'Connell--Anglesey's Precautions--Peel's
    Reflections on the Clare Election--Anglesey describes the State
    of Ireland--Peel wishes to resign--The Duke wavers--Anglesey
    urges Concession--Insurrection probable--Wellington determines
    on Retreat--Why he and Peel did not resign--The Viceroy's
    Opinion--Military Organisation of the Peasantry--The Brunswick
    Clubs--Perplexity of the Government--O'Connells "Moral Force"--The
    Liberator Clubs--Dawson's Speech--"No Popery" in England--The
    Morpeth Banquet--The Leinster Declaration--Wellington's Letter
    to Dr. Curtis--Anglesey's Correspondence with O'Connell--The
    Premier censures the Viceroy--Anglesey dismissed--He is succeeded
    by Northumberland--Difficulties with the King and the English
    Bishops--Peel determines to remain--His Views communicated
    to the King--The King yields--Opening of the Session--Peel
    defeated at Oxford University--Suppression of the Catholic
    Association--The Announcement in the King's Speech--Peel
    introduces the Relief Bill--Arguments of the Opposition--The
    Bill passes the Commons--The Duke's Speech--It passes the Lords
    by large Majorities--The King withdraws his Consent--He again
    yields--His Communication to Eldon--Numbers of the Catholics
    in Britain--The Duke's Duel with Winchilsea--Bill for the
    disfranchisement of "the Forties"--O'Connell presents himself
    to be sworn--He refuses to take the Oaths--He is heard at the
    Bar--Fresh Election for Clare--O'Connell's new Agitation--The Roman
    Catholic Hierarchy--Riots in the Manufacturing Districts--Attempt
    to mitigate the Game Laws--Affairs of Portugal--Negotiations
    with the Canningites--Pitched Battles in Ireland--Meeting
    of Parliament--Debate on the Address--Burdett's Attack on
    Wellington--The Opposition proposes Retrenchments--The Duke's
    Economies--Prosecution of Mr. Alexander--Illness and Death of
    George IV.                                                        268


    CHAPTER VIII.

    REIGN OF WILLIAM IV.

    Character of the new King--Position of the Ministry--Discussion in
    the Lords on a Regency--Brougham's Speech in the Commons--The King
    in London--Brougham's Slavery Speech--The Dissolution--Sketch of
    the July Revolution--Its Effects in England--The Elections--Their
    Results in England and Ireland--Death of Huskisson--Disturbances in
    England--The King's Speech--Declarations of Grey and Wellington on
    Reform--Broughams Notice--Effect of the Duke's Speech--Agitation in
    Ireland--And against the Police--Postponement of the King's Visit
    to the Mansion House--Resignation of Wellington's Ministry--Grey
    forms a Ministry--Brougham's Position--The Ministry--Grey's
    Statement--Agricultural England--Cobbett and Carlile--Affairs in
    Ireland--Lord Anglesey--His Struggle with O'Connell--O'Connell's
    Prosecution dropped--The Birmingham Political Union--Preparation
    of the Reform Bill--It is entrusted to Lord John Russell--The
    Budget--The Bill introduced--The First Reading carried--Feeling in
    the Country--The Second Reading carried--Gascoigne's Amendment--A
    Dissolution agreed upon--Scene in the Lords--The Press--The
    Illuminations and Riots--The New Parliament--Discussions on the
    Dissolution and O'Connell--The Second Reform Bill--The Second
    Reading--The Bill in Committee--It is carried to the Lords--Debate
    on the Second Reading--The Bill rejected--Popular Excitement--Lord
    Ebrington's Resolution--Prorogation of Parliament--Lord John
    Russell's Declaration--The Bristol Riots--Colonel Brereton        312


    CHAPTER IX.

    REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. (_continued_).

    The Coronation--Fears of Eminent Men--The Cholera--The
    Waverers--Lord John Russell introduces the third Reform Bill--Its
    Progress through the Commons--The Second Reading carried in the
    Lords--Behind the Scenes--Feeling in the Country--Disfranchisement
    Clauses postponed--Grey resigns--Ebrington's Resolution--Wellington
    attempts to form a Ministry--Popular fury--The Run on the
    Bank--Wellington abandons his post--Grey exacts the King's
    Consent to the creation of Peers--The Opposition withdrawn--The
    Bill becomes Law--The Irish Reform Bill--The Bill in the
    Lords--The Scottish Reform Bill--Becomes Law--Result of the
    Reform Bills--Mr. Stanley in Ireland--The Tithe-proctor--The
    Church Cess--Tithe Legislation of 1831--Irish Education--Wyse's
    Report--Stanley's Bill--Its Provisions for Religious
    Instruction--General Election--New Parliament--The Coercion
    Bill--The Church Temporalities Bill--The Poor Law Commission--Its
    Report--Sketch of the Poor Law System--Provisions of the Poor
    Law Amendment Act--History of the Emancipation Movement--Mr.
    Stanley's Resolutions--Provisions of the Act of Emancipation--The
    Dorsetshire Labourers--The Copenhagen Fields Meeting--Other
    Meetings and Strikes--Sheil and Lord Althorp--O'Connell's Motion
    on the Union--Baron Smith--Littleton's Tithe Bill--Mr. Ward's
    Motion--Resignation of Mr. Stanley and his Friends--An Indiscreet
    Speech of the King's--The Debate on Mr. Ward's Motion--Final
    Collapse of the Cabinet--Retrospect of Lord Grey's Ministry       343


    CHAPTER X.

    REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. (_continued_).

    The Remainder of the Session--The Coercion Bill carried--Rejection
    of the Tithes Bill--University Tests--Prorogation of
    Parliament--Brougham's Tour in Scotland--Burning of the Houses
    of Parliament--Fall of Melbourne's Ministry--Wellington
    sole Minister--Peel forms a Ministry--The Tamworth
    Manifesto--Dissolution and General Election--Mr. Abercromby
    elected Speaker--The Lichfield House Compact--Peel defeated
    on the Address--Lord John Russell announces a Resolution on
    Appropriation--Lord Chandos's Motion--Lord Londonderry's
    Appointment--The Dissenters and London University--Hardinge's
    Tithe Bill--The Appropriation Resolution--The Debate--Peel
    resigns--Melbourne's second Ministry--Conservative Successes--Lord
    Alvanley and O'Connell--The Duel between Alvanley and
    Morgan O'Connell--O'Connell and Disraeli--Character of Lord
    Melbourne--Municipal Reform--Report of the Commission--The
    Municipal Corporations Act introduced--Its Progress in the
    Commons--Lyndhurst's Amendments--It becomes Law--Irish
    Corporations--Report of the Commission--The Bill is mutilated in
    the Upper House, and abandoned--It becomes Law in 1840--Municipal
    Reform in Scotland                                                375


    CHAPTER XI.

    REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. (_concluded_).

    Prorogation of Parliament--Agitation against the House of
    Lords--O'Connell's Crusade--Inquiry into the Orange Lodges--Report
    of the Committee--Mr. Hume's Motion--Renewed Attack in 1836--The
    Lodges dissolved--Lord Mulgrave in Ireland--His Progresses--Wrath
    of the Orangemen--Prosperity of the Country--Condition of Canada--A
    Commission appointed--Violence of the King--Lord Gosford in
    Canada--His Failure to pacify the Canadians--Upper Canada--Pepys
    becomes Lord Chancellor--Opening of Parliament--The King's
    Speech--O'Connell and Mr. Raphael--The Newspaper Duty--The Irish
    Poor--Appointment of a Commission--Its numerous Reports--The Third
    Report--Private Bills on the Subject--Mr. Nicholls' Report--Lord
    John Russell's Bill--Abandonment of the Measure--Debate on
    Agriculture--Finance--The Ecclesiastical Commission--Its first
    Report--The Commission made permanent--The Tithe Commutation
    Act--The Marriage Act--The Registration Act--Commercial
    Panics--Foreign Affairs--Russian Aggression--Occupation of
    Cracow--Disorder in Spain--Revolution in Portugal--Position of the
    Ministry--A Speech of Sheil's--The Church Rates Bill--Death of the
    King--His Treatment of the Ministry                               392


    CHAPTER XII.

    THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION DURING THE REIGNS OF GEORGE IV.
    AND WILLIAM IV.

    Increase of Population--Nature of its Employment--Wealth
    of the Nation--The Cotton Trade--Hosiery--The Silk and
    Woollen Trades--Linen Goods--Minerals and Coal--Hardware and
    Cutlery--Roads--Railways--Steamboats--The Coasting Trade--Traffic
    between England and Ireland--Imports and Exports--Coffee and
    Tea--The Revenue--Houses and Carriages--Real Property and
    Savings-banks--Popular Education--Amelioration of Criminal
    Legislation--Effect of Education on Crime--The Religious
    Bodies--The Irvingites--Religious Leaders in England, Scotland,
    and Ireland--Progress of Science--Mathematicians--Astronomers:
    Herschel and Lord Rosse--Discoveries in Light by Brewster and
    others--Irish Men of Science--Mrs. Somerville, Wheatstone,
    Daguerre, and Fox Talbot--Cavendish and Dalton--Mechanicians:
    Sir Marc Brunel--Babbage--The Fine Arts: Turner--Lawrence and
    Wilkie--Haydon--Sculpture--Architects: Soane, Barry, and the
    Pugins--Historians: Mackintosh, Lingard, and Hallam--Napier
    and Gurwood--Biographers: Moore and Lockhart--Miscellaneous
    Writers--Cheap Literature--Sir Walter Scott--Lady Blessington
    and Lady Morgan--Mrs. Hemans--L. E. L.--Pollok--Professor Wilson
    ("Christopher North")--Sheridan Knowles and Bulwer Lytton--Manners
    and Morals--Almack's--Other Amusements--English Cookery--Hyde
    Park--Male and Female Costume                                     416


    CHAPTER XIII.

    THE REIGN OF VICTORIA.

    The Queen's Accession--Separation of Hanover from England--The
    Civil List--The General Election--Rebellion in Lower Canada--Its
    prompt Suppression--Sir Francis Head in Upper Canada--The Affair
    of the _Caroline_--Lord Durham's Mission--His Ordinance--It is
    disallowed--Lord Durham resigns--Renewal and Suppression of the
    Rebellion--Union of the Canadas--The Irish Poor Law Bill--Work of
    the Commissioners--Attack on Lord Glenelg--Compromise on Irish
    Questions--Acland's Resolution--The Tithe Bill becomes Law--The
    Municipal Bill abandoned--The Coronation--Scene in the Abbey--The
    Fair in Hyde Park--Rejoicings in the Provinces--Dissolution of
    the Spanish Legion--Debate on the Intervention in Spain--Lord
    Ashley's Factory Bills--Prorogation of Parliament--The Glasgow
    Strike--Reference to Combinations in the Queen's Speech--Remarks
    of Sir Robert Peel--Rise of Chartism--The Six Points--Mr.
    Attwood's Petition--Lord John Russell's Proclamation--The
    Birmingham Riots--Dissolution of the National Convention--The
    Newport Riots--Murder of Lord Norbury--Meeting of the
    Magistrates--The Precursor Association--Debates in Parliament--Lord
    Normanby's Defence of his Administration--The Lords censure
    the Government--The Vote reversed in the Commons--The Jamaica
    Bill--Virtual Defeat of the Ministry--They resign                 443


    CHAPTER XIV.

    THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    The Bedchamber Crisis--Peel's Explanation--The Whigs return to
    Office--Mr. Shaw Lefevre is elected Speaker--Education Scheme--It
    is carried in a modified form--Post Office Reform--Rowland Hill's
    Pamphlet--The Proposal scouted by the Authorities--Select Committee
    appointed--The Scheme becomes Law--Cabinet Changes--Political
    Demonstrations--Announcement of the Queen's Marriage--Lady
    Flora Hastings--The Queen's Speech--Insertion of the word
    "Protestant"--Debate on the Prince's Precedence--His Income fixed
    by the Commons--Stockdale _v._ Hansard--Stockdale's second and
    third Actions--Stockdale and the Sheriffs committed--His fourth
    and fifth Actions--Russell's Bill settles the Question--Other
    Events of the Session--The Queen's Marriage--Oxford's Attempt
    on her Life--His Trial for High Treason--Foreign Affairs--the
    Opium Traffic--Commissioner Lin confiscates the Opium--Debates
    in Parliament--Elliot's Convention--It is disapproved and
    he is recalled--Renewal of the War--Capture of the Defences
    of Canton--Sir Henry Pottinger assumes Command--Conclusion
    of the War--The Syrian Crisis; Imminent Dissolution of the
    Turkish Empire--The Quadrilateral Treaty--Lord Palmerston's
    Difficulties--The Wrath of M. Thiers--Lord Palmerston's
    Success--Fall of Acre--Termination of the Crisis--Weakness
    of the Ministry--The Registration Bills--Lord Howick's
    Amendment--The Budget--Peel's Vote of Censure is carried--The
    Dissolution--Ministers are defeated in both Houses--Resignation of
    the Melbourne Ministry                                            461


    CHAPTER XV.

    THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    Peel's Second Cabinet--Prorogation of Parliament--Growing
    Demand for Free Trade--Mr. Villiers--His First Motion for the
    Repeal of the Corn Laws--The Manchester Association--Bright
    and Cobden--Opposition of the Chartists--Growth of the
    Association--The Movement spreads to London--Renewal of Mr.
    Villiers' Motion--Formation of the Anti-Corn Law League--Its
    Pamphlets and Lectures--Ebenezer Elliott--The Pavilion at
    Manchester--Mr. Villiers' Third Motion--Want in Ireland--The
    Walsall Election--Depression of Trade--Peel determines on a
    Sliding Scale--His Corn Law--Its Cold Reception--Progress of
    the Measure--The Budget--The Income Tax--Reduction of Custom
    Duties--Peel's Speech on the New Tariff--Discussions on the
    Bill--Employment of Children in the Coal Mines--Evidence of the
    Commission--Lord Ashley's Bill--Further Attempts on the Life of
    the Queen--Sir Robert Peel's Bill on the subject--Differences with
    the United States--The Right of Search--The Canadian Boundary--The
    Macleod Affair--Lord Ashburton's Mission--The First Afghan War:
    Sketch of its Course--Russian Intrigue in the East--Auckland
    determines to restore Shah Sujah--Triumphant Advance of the
    Army of the Indus--Surrender of Dost Mohammed--Sale and the
    Ghilzais--The Rising in Cabul--Murder of Burnes--Treaty of 11th of
    December--Murder of Macnaghten--Treaty of January 1st--Annihilation
    of the Retreating Force--Irresolution of Auckland--His
    Recall--Disasters in the Khyber Pass--Pollock at Peshawur--Position
    of Affairs at Jelalabad--Resistance determined upon--Approach
    of Akbar Khan--The Earthquake--Pollock in the Khyber--Sale's
    Victory--Ellenborough's Proclamation--Votes of Thanks--Ellenborough
    orders Retirement--The Prisoners--They are saved--Reoccupation of
    Cabul--Ellenborough's Proclamation--The Gate of Somnauth          479


    CHAPTER XVI.

    THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    Opening of 1843--Assassination of Drummond--The _Quarterly_ on
    the League--Scene between Peel and Cobden--Mr. Villiers's Annual
    Motion--Peel's Free Trade Admissions--Progress of the League
    Agitation--Activity of its Press--Important Accessions--Invasion of
    the County Constituencies--The Free Traders in Parliament--Disraeli
    attacks Peel--Lord John Russell's Attitude--Debate on Mr.
    Villiers's Motion--Mr. Goulburn's Budget--The Sugar Duties--Defeat
    of the Government--Peel obtains a Reconsideration of the
    Vote--Disraeli's Sarcasms--The Anti-League League--Supposed Decline
    of Cobdenism--The Session of 1845--The Budget--Breach between Peel
    and his Party--The Potato Disease--The Cabinet Council--Memorandum
    of November 6--Dissent of Peel's Colleagues--Peel's Explanation
    of his Motives--Lord Stanley's Expostulation--Announcement in the
    _Times_--The Edinburgh Letter--Resignation of the Ministry--Russell
    fails to form a Government--Return of Peel--Parliament
    meets--Debates on the Queens Speech--Peel's general Statement--Mr.
    Bright's Eulogium--The Corn Bill passes the Commons and the
    Lords--Defeat of Sir Robert Peel--Some scattered Facts of his
    Administration                                                    505


    CHAPTER XVII.

    THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    The Repeal Agitation--Debate in the Dublin Corporation--The
    Monster Meetings--O'Connell's Speech at Tara--The Arms
    Bill--Dismissal of the Repeal Magistrates--Speeches of the Duke
    of Wellington--The Arms Bill becomes Law--Proclamation of the
    Clontarf Meeting--O'Connell's Counter-Proclamation--Arrest and
    Trial of O'Connell--The Sentence--It is reversed by the House
    of Lords--Rejoicings on O'Connell's Liberation--The Excitement
    at Cork--Decline of O'Connell--His Breach with the Young
    Ireland Party--Irish Debates in Parliament--Approach of the
    Irish Famine--The Devon Commission--Its Report--Arrival of the
    Potato Disease--The Famine--The Relief Committee of the Society
    of Friends--The Famine in Ulster--A Description of Cork and
    Skibbereen--Demoralisation of the Population--Policy of the Whig
    Cabinet--Lord George Bentinck's Railway Plan--Failure of the new
    Poor Law and of the Public Works--The Temporary Relief Act--Father
    Mathew--Private Benevolence--Munificence of the United States     525


    CHAPTER XVIII.

    THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    Insecurity of the Orleanist Monarchy--The Spanish Marriages--Lord
    Palmerston's Foreign Policy--Meeting of the French
    Chambers--Prohibition of the Reform Banquet--The Multitude in
    Arms--Vacillation of Louis Philippe--He abdicates in favour
    of his Grandson--Flight of the Royal Family--Proclamation of
    the Provisional Government--Lamartine quells the Populace--The
    Unemployed--Invasion of the Assembly--Prince Louis Napoleon--The
    _Ateliers Nationaux_--Paris in a State of Siege--The Rebellion
    quelled by Cavaignac--A New Constitution--Louis Napoleon
    elected President of the French Republic--Effect of the French
    Revolution in England--The Chartists--Outbreak at Glasgow--The
    Monster Petition--Notice by the Police Commissioners--The 10th
    of April--The Special Constables--The Duke of Wellington's
    Preparations--The Convention on Kennington Common--Feargus O'Connor
    and Commissioner Mayne--Collapse of the Demonstration--Incendiary
    Placards at Glasgow--History of the Chartist Petition--Renewed
    Gatherings of Chartists--Arrests--Trial of the Chartist
    Leaders--Evidence of Spies--The Sentences                         548


    CHAPTER XIX.

    THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    The General Election--Crime in Ireland--Increased Powers granted
    to the Executive--Ireland on the Verge of Rebellion--Death of
    O'Connell--Viceroyalty of Lord Clarendon--Special Commission in
    Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary--The Commission at Clonmel--Rise
    of the Young Ireland Party--The _Nation_--Meagher and Smith
    O'Brien--They try to dispense with the Church--The Irish
    Confederation--The _United Irishman_--News of the French
    Revolution--Panic in Dublin--Lord Clarendon and Mr. Birch--The
    Deputation to Paris--Smith O'Brien in Parliament--Preparations
    for Civil War--Young and Old Ireland at blows--Arrest and
    Trial of Mitchel, Smith O'Brien, and Meagher--Transportation
    of Mitchel--Lord Clarendon's Extraordinary Powers--Smith
    O'Brien in the South--Commencement of the Insurrection--Battle
    of Ballingarry--Arrest of Smith O'Brien--Collapse of the
    Rebellion--Trial of the Conspirators--Trials and Sentences--The
    Rate in Aid--The Encumbered Estates Act--The Queen's Visit to
    Ireland--Cove becomes Queenstown--A Visit to Cork--Kingstown and
    Dublin--Departure from Dublin--An Affecting Incident--Belfast     560


    CHAPTER XX.

    THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    The Year of Revolutions--Lord Palmerston's Advice to Spain--It
    is rejected by the Duke of Sotomayor--Dismissal of Sir H.
    Bulwer--The Revolution in Germany--Condition of Prussia--The King's
    Ordinance--He disclaims a Desire to become German Emperor--The
    National Assembly dispersed by Force--A New Constitution--The
    King declines the German Crown--The Revolution in Vienna--Flight
    of Metternich and of the Emperor--Affairs in Bohemia--Croats and
    Hungarians--Jellacic secretly encouraged--Revolt of Hungary--Murder
    of Lamberg--Despotic Decrees from Vienna--The second Revolution
    in Vienna--Bombardment of Vienna--Accession of Francis
    Joseph--Commencement of the War--Defeats of the Austrians--Quarrel
    between Kossuth and Görgei--Russian Intervention--Collapse
    of the Insurrection--The Vengeance of Austria--Death of
    Count Batthyány--Lord Palmerston's Protest--Schwarzenberg's
    Reply--The Hungarian Refugees--The Revolution in Italy--Revolt
    of Venice--Milan in Arms--Retreat of Radetzky--Enthusiasm of
    the Italians--Revolution and counter-Revolution in Sicily and
    Naples--Difficulties of the Pope--Republic at Rome--The War
    in Lombardy--Austrian Overtures--Radetzky's Successes--French
    and British Mediation--Armistice arranged--Resumption
    of Hostilities--Battle of Novara--Abdication of Charles
    Albert--Terms of Peace--Surrender of Venice, Bologna, and
    other Italian Cities--Foreign Intervention in Rome--The French
    Expedition--Temporary Successes of the Romans--Siege and Fall of
    Rome--Restoration of the Pope--Parliamentary Debates on Italian
    Affairs--Lord Palmerston's Defence of his Policy                  574


    CHAPTER XXI.

    THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    Our Relations with Scinde--Occupation of the Country--Napier in
    Scinde--Ellenborough's Instructions--A New Treaty--Capture of
    Emaum-Ghur--The Treaty signed--Attack on the Residency--Battle of
    Meeanee--Defeat of Shere Mahommed--Subjugation of Scinde--Napier's
    Government of the Province--Position of the Sikhs--Disorders in
    Gwalior--Battle of Maharajpore--Settlement of Gwalior--Recall
    of Lord Ellenborough--Sir Henry Hardinge--Power of the
    Sikhs--Disorders on the Death of Runjeet Singh--The Sikhs
    cross the Sutlej--Battle of Moodkee--Battle of Ferozeshah--The
    Victory won--Battle of Aliwal--Battle of Sobraon--Terms of
    Peace--Administration of the Lawrences--Murder of Vans Agnew and
    Anderson--Renewal of the War--Battles of Chillianwallah and of
    Goojerat--Capture of Mooltan--Annexation of the Punjab            589


    CHAPTER XXII.

    THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    Events in England--The Budgets of 1848--Repeal of the Navigation
    Act--The Jewish Disabilities Bill--Election of Baron Rothschild by
    the City of London--He is refused the Oath--Election of Alderman
    Salomons--He takes his Seat in Spite of the Speaker--Action in
    the Court of the Exchequer--The Bill finally passed--Colonial
    Self-Government--Lord Palmerston's Foreign Policy censured by
    the House of Lords--The Don Pacifico Debate--Testimonial to Lord
    Palmerston--Peel's Last Speech--His Death--Testimony as to his
    Worth--Honours to his Memory                                      602




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


                                                                 PAGE

    The Garden at Hougomont                                        1

    Napoleon I.                                                    5

    The Agents of Britain and Sweden signing the Treaty
      against Napoleon                                             8

    Carlton House, London (1812)                                   9

    Marshal Beresford                                             13

    The Fusiliers at Albuera                                      17

    The Conscription in France: recruiting for Napoleon's Wars    21

    Assassination of Spencer Perceval                             24

    Marshal Soult                                                 29

    View of Washington from Arlington Heights                     33

    Invasion of Canada: Red Men on the War Path                   36

    Duel between the "Guerrière" and the "Constitution"           37

    The Cossack's Challenge                                       41

    The Retreat from Moscow                                       45

    Retreat of the French from Russia                             49

    Napoleon abandoning his Army                                  53

    Marshal Ney                                                   56

    Flight of King Joseph Buonaparte from Vittoria                57

    Pampeluna                                                     61

    Bernadotte (King of Sweden)                                   65

    Napoleon's Interview with Metternich                          68

    View in Dresden                                               69

    The Palace of Fontainebleau                                   73

    Attempt of the Cossacks to capture Napoleon at Brienne        77

    Alexander I.                                                  80

    Napoleon signing his Abdication                               81

    Elba                                                          85

    The Congress of Vienna                                        88

    Sir Thomas Picton                                             93

    Waterloo Views                                                96

    Marshal Blucher                                               97

    The Battle of Waterloo                                       101

    James Town, St. Helena                                       105

    Napoleon on Board the "Bellerophon"                          109

    New Orleans                                                  113

    Capture of Murat                                             116

    Lord Castlereagh                                             117

    The Mob of Spenceans summoning the Tower of London           121

    The "Nottingham Captain" and the Agitators at the
      "White Horse"                                              125

    William Cobbett                                              129

    Old Bailey, London, 1814                                     132

    Beaus and Belles of the Regency Period                       133

    Gibraltar                                                    137

    Surrender of the Peishwa                                     140

    The Mint, London                                             144

    Sir Samuel Romilly                                           145

    The Peterloo Massacre: Hussars charging the People           149

    View of Cato Street, London, showing the Stable in
      which the Conspirators were captured                       153

    Surprise of the Cato Street Conspirators                     156

    Charles, Third Earl Stanhope                                 161

    Costumes at the Beginning of George III.'s Reign             164

    St. John's Episcopal Church, Princes Street, Edinburgh       168

    Rowland Hill preaching to the Colliers of Kingswood          169

    Jane Austen                                                  173

    Laurence Sterne                                              173

    Samuel Richardson                                            173

    Oliver Goldsmith                                             173

    Tobias Smollet                                               173

    Dr. Johnson reading the Manuscript of the "Vicar of
      Wakefield"                                                 176

    Dr. Johnson                                                  177

    David Garrick as Richard III.                                181

    Exterior of the Cottage at Alloway in which Burns was born   185

    Interior of Burns's Cottage at Alloway (two views)           186

    William Wordsworth                                           189

    John Keats                                                   189

    Robert Burns                                                 189

    Percy Bysshe Shelley                                         189

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge                                      189

    Waterloo Bridge, London                                      192

    Menai Suspension and Tubular Bridges                         193

    James Watt                                                   197

    Costumes at the end of George III.'s Reign                   200

    Sir Joshua Reynolds                                          201

    Great Seal of George IV.                                     205

    Queen Caroline entering the House of Lords                   209

    The Pavilion, Brighton                                       213

    George IV.                                                   217

    Landing of George IV. at Howth                               220

    Lower Castle-Yard, Dublin                                    221

    Sir Walter Scott                                             225

    Dalkeith Palace                                              228

    George IV. holding a Levee in Holyrood Palace                229

    Verona                                                       233

    The Admiralty, London                                        240

    George III.'s Library, British Museum                        241

    Scene in Dublin: Painting King William black                 245

    Mr. Huskisson                                                249

    Election Meeting in Ireland                                  253

    Lisbon                                                       257

    Lord Liverpool                                               260

    Devonshire Villa, Chiswick                                   261

    Battle of Navarino: the "Asia" engaging the Ship of the
      Capitan Bey and Mohurrem Bey                               265

    Lord Byron                                                   269

    The Clare Contest: Father Murphy leading his Tenants
      to the Poll                                                273

    Daniel O'Connell                                             277

    The Four Courts, Dublin                                      281

    The Flight of Lawless                                        285

    Scene at the "Surrender" Banquet in Derry                    288

    The Marquis of Anglesey                                      289

    Lord Anglesey leaving Ireland: Scene at Kingstown            293

    Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner, London                       297

    The Duke of Wellington's Duel with Lord Winchilsea           300

    Lord Eldon                                                   301

    Captain Walpole Intercepting the Duke of Saldanha's Ships    305

    Mr. Alexander's Levee in King's Bench Prison                 309

    Virginia Water                                               313

    Revolution in Paris: Capture of the Hôtel de Ville           317

    Lord Grey                                                    321

    Mob burning a Farm in Kent                                   325

    O'Connell's House in Merrion Square, Dublin                  328

    Arrest of O'Connell                                          329

    William IV.                                                  333

    Jedburgh Abbey                                               336

    Great Seal of William IV.                                    337

    Attack on Sir Charles Wetherell at Bristol                   341

    Clerkenwell Green, London                                    342

    Earl Grey Street, Newcastle-on-Tyne                          344

    Lord Brougham                                                345

    Coronation of William IV.: The Royal Procession              349

    Scene in Ireland: Visit of the Tithe-Proctor                 353

    Mr. Stanley (afterwards 14th Earl of Derby)                  357

    The Cathedral, Tuam                                          360

    Agricultural Labourers at the Period of the First Reform
      Parliament                                                 361

    Mr. (afterwards Lord) Macaulay                               365

    Slavery Emancipation Festival in Barbadoes                   369

    Kennington Common, London, about 1840                        373

    Burning of the Houses of Parliament                          377

    Lord Althorp (3rd Earl Spencer)                              381

    Lichfield House, St. James's Square, London                  384

    Sir Robert Peel                                              385

    The Mansion House, London                                    389

    Conference between the Houses of Parliament, 1835            393

    Irish Prisoners liberated during Lord Mulgrave's Progress    397

    Joseph Hume                                                  401

    Irish Tramps                                                 405

    British Line-of-Battle Ships (1836)                          408

    Ripon Cathedral                                              409

    Deputation of Constitutionalists before the Queen of
      Portugal                                                   413

    Arrival of the Mail Coach                                    417

    Bell's "Comet"                                               420

    Sir James Mackintosh                                         421

    The Overland Route: Scene at Boulak                          425

    Dr. Chalmers                                                 429

    Joseph Mallord William Turner                                432

    Abbotsford and the Eildon Hills                              433

    St. George's Cathedral, Southwark                            436

    Thomas Moore                                                 437

    The Duke of Wellington at Almack's                           440

    Rotten Row in 1830                                           441

    Niagara Falls                                                445

    The Capture of the _Caroline_                                449

    The Coronation of Queen Victoria                             453

    Chartists at Church                                          457

    Buckingham Palace, from the Garden                           461

    Sir Rowland Hill, 1847                                       465

    Marriage of Queen Victoria                                   473

    Attack on the Chinese Junks                                  477

    Queen Victoria                                               480

    Dunford, near Midhurst, where Cobden was born                481

    The Mob boarding the Grain Ship at Garry Kennedy             485

    Richard Cobden                                               489

    Seizure of Sir William Macnaghten                            493

    Arrival of Dr. Brydon at Jelalabad                           497

    Rescue of the British Prisoners from Akbar Khan              501

    Whitehall Gardens, London                                    505

    Capt. Thomas Drummond, Under-Secretary for Ireland           509

    Free Trade Hall, Manchester                                  513

    Charles Pelham Villiers                                      517

    Maynooth College                                             521

    The Great Seal of Victoria                                   525

    O'Connell at the Meeting at Trim                             528

    Sir James Graham                                             529

    O'Connell returning Home from Prison                         533

    Father Mathew and the Famine-stricken Poor                   537

    Father Mathew                                                540

    On board an Emigrant Ship at the time of the Irish Famine    541

    Fighting at the Barricades in Paris                          545

    Louis Philippe hears of the Revolution                       549

    Louis Blanc                                                  553

    Somerset House, London (River Front)                         557

    Trinity College, Dublin                                      561

    Muster of the Irish at Mullinahone                           565

    Smith O'Brien                                                569

    The Queen at Kilmainham Hospital                             573

    Frankfort                                                    576

    Louis Kossuth                                                577

    Assassination of Count Lamberg                               581

    Giuseppe Garibaldi                                           584

    Pius IX. quitting the Vatican in Disguise                    585

    The Chandni Chowk, Delhi                                     589

    The Charge of the Cavalry at Meeanee                         593

    Thackwell at Sobraon                                         596

    Arrival of the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh at the British Camp   601

    Benjamin Disraeli                                            604

    Arrest of British Sailors by Greek Soldiers                  605




COLOURED PLATES.


    THE FORLORN HOPE AT BADAJOS. (_By
    Vereker M. Hamilton_)                               _Frontispiece_

    PRISONERS OF WAR. (_By W. F. Yeames, R.A._)        _To face p._ 18

    MEN OF WAR OFF PORTSMOUTH. (_By Clarkson
      Stanfield, R.A._)                                         "   34

    THE FLIGHT OF THE FRENCH THROUGH VITTORIA,
      JUNE 21ST, 1813. (_By Robert Hillingford_)                "   58

    MAP OF THE STATES OF EUROPE IN 1815.                        "   87

    QUATRE BRAS. (_By Vereker M. Hamilton_)                     "   97

    THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO: FRENCH CUIRASSIERS CHARGING A
      BRITISH SQUARE. (_By P. Jazet_)                           "   98

    ON THE ROAD FROM WATERLOO TO PARIS.
      (_By Marcus Stone, A.R.A._)                               "   102

    ON THE EVENING OF THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.
      (_By Ernest Crofts, R.A._)                                "   113

    A VILLAGE HOLIDAY OF THE OLDEN TIME.
      (_By F. Goodall, R.A._)                                   "   157

    A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. (_By George Wright_)                   "   194

    A VILLAGE MERRYMAKING. (_By W. P. Frith, R.A._)    _To face p._ 200

    THE CORONATION OF GEORGE IV. (_By Pugin and Stephanoff_)    "   214

    SOLICITING A VOTE. (_By R. W. Buss_)                        "   250

    THE FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.
     (_By D. O. Hill, R.S.A._)                                  "   429

    THE "FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE" TUGGED TO HER LAST BERTH TO BE
      BROKEN UP. (_By J. M. W. Turner, R.A._)                   "   441

    THE QUEEN'S FIRST COUNCIL. (_By Sir David Wilkie, R.A._)    "   444

    QUEEN VICTORIA IN THE CORONATION ROBES, 1838.
      (_By C. R. Leslie, R.A._)                                 "   449

    H.R.H. PRINCE ALBERT. (_By F. X. Winterhalter_)             "   466

    RECEPTION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE BY QUEEN VICTORIA.
      (_By F. X. Winterhalter_)                                 "   524

    AN IRISH EVICTION. (_By F. Goodall, R.A._)                  "   569

[Illustration:

    _Reproduced by André & Sleigh, Ld., Bushey, Herts._

THE FORLORN HOPE AT BADAJOS.

FROM THE PAINTING BY VEREKER M. HAMILTON]




[Illustration: THE GARDEN AT HOUGOMONT.]

CASSELL'S

ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND.




CHAPTER I.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Napoleon's Desire for an Heir--The Archduchess Maria Louisa--The
    Divorce determined upon--The Marriage--Napoleon quarrels
    with his Family--Abdication of Louis Buonaparte--Napoleon's
    bloated Empire--Affairs of Sweden--Choice of Bernadotte as
    King--He forms an Alliance with Russia and Britain--His
    Breach with Napoleon--Insanity of George III.--Preparations
    for a Regency--Restrictions on the Power of the
    Regent--Futile Negotiations of the Prince of Wales with
    Grey and Grenville--Perceval continued in Power--The King's
    Speech--Reinstatement of the Duke of York--The Currency
    Question--Its Effect on the Continent--Wellington's
    Difficulties--Massena's Retreat--His Defeat at Sabugal--Surrender
    of Badajoz to the French--Battle of Barrosa--Wellington and
    Massena--Battles of Fuentes d'Onoro and Albuera--Soult's
    Retreat--End of the Campaign--Our Naval Supremacy continues--Birth
    of an Heir to Napoleon--Elements of Resistance to his
    Despotism--Session of 1812--Discussions on the Civil List--Bankes's
    Bill--Assassination of Perceval--Renewed Overtures to Grey and
    Grenville--Riots in the Manufacturing Districts--Wellington's
    Preparations--Capture of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz--Wellington
    and Marmont--Battle of Salamanca--Wellington enters
    Madrid--Victor's Retreat--Incapacity of the Spaniards--The Sicilian
    Expedition--Wellington's Retreat--Its Difficulties--Wellington's
    Defence of his Tactics--A Pause in the War.


The spring of 1810 witnessed one of the most important events of the
reign of Napoleon, and one which, no doubt had a decided influence
on his fate--his divorce from Josephine and his marriage with Maria
Louisa, the archduchess of Austria. It had long been evident to those
about Napoleon that a change of this kind would take place. Josephine
had brought the Emperor no child, and, ambitious in every way, he
was as much so of leaving lineal successors to the throne and empire
which he had created, as he was of making that empire co-extensive
with Europe. Josephine, strongly attached to him, as well as to the
splendour of his position, had long feared such a catastrophe, and
had done all in her power to divert his mind from it. She proposed to
him that he should adopt an heir, and she recommended to him her own
son, Eugene Beauharnais. But this did not satisfy Buonaparte. She then
turned his attention to a child of her daughter, Hortense Beauharnais,
by his brother Louis, the King of Holland. This would have united her
own family to his, and to this scheme Buonaparte appeared to consent.
He showed much affection for the child, and especially as the boy
displayed great pleasure in looking at arms and military manœuvres;
and on one occasion of this kind Buonaparte exclaimed, "There is a
child fit to succeed, perhaps to surpass me!" But neither was this
scheme destined to succeed. The child sickened and died, and with it
almost the last hope of Josephine. Whilst at Erfurt with the Emperor
Alexander, in 1808, Buonaparte had actually proposed for a Russian
archduchess; nay, in 1807 he had made such overtures at the Treaty of
Tilsit. Thus the idea had been settled in his mind three years, at
least, before it was realised. The Russian match had on both occasions
been evaded, on the plea of the difference of religion; but the truth
was that the notion of such an alliance was by no means acceptable
to the Imperial family of Russia. The Empress and the Empress-mother
decidedly opposed it; and though the plea of difference of religion
was put forward, Buonaparte could not but feel that the real reasons
were very different--that he was looked on as a successful adventurer,
whose greatness might some day dissolve as speedily as it had grown,
and that, be this as it might, the Russian family were not disposed to
receive him, a _parvenu_ monarch, into their old regal status.

The Austrian campaign, and Buonaparte's sojourn at Schönbrunn, gave him
a sight of the Archduchess Maria Louisa, and determined his conduct.
The house of Hapsburg, however ancient and however proud, was under
the foot of the conqueror, and the sacrifice of an archduchess might
be considered a cheap one for more favourable terms than Austria
was otherwise likely to receive. It had the fate of Prussia before
its eyes, and the bargain was concluded. It might have seemed to
require no little courage in an Austrian princess to venture on
becoming Empress of France after the awful experience of her aunt
Marie Antoinette. But Maria Louisa was scarcely eighteen. She had
seen Buonaparte, who had endeavoured to make himself agreeable to
her; and so young a girl, of a military nation, might be as much
dazzled with the conqueror's glory as older, if not wiser, heads. She
made no objection to the match. In appearance she was of light, fair
complexion, with light-brown hair, of a somewhat tall figure, blue
eyes, and with a remarkably beautiful hand and foot. Altogether, she
was an animated and agreeable young lady.

Buonaparte apparently lost no time, after his return to Paris from
Schönbrunn, in communicating to Josephine the fact that the business
of the divorce and the new marriage was settled. On the 30th of
November, 1809, he opened the unpleasant reality to her in a private
interview, and she fell into such violent agitation, and finally into
so deep a swoon, as to alarm Napoleon. He blamed Hortense for not
having broken the matter to her three days before, as he had desired.
But however much Napoleon might be affected at this rude disruption
of an old and endeared tie, his feelings never stood in the way of
his ambitious plans. The preparations for the divorce went on, and on
the 15th of December a grand council was held in the Tuileries on the
subject. At this important council all the family of Napoleon, his
brothers and sisters, now all kings and queens, were summoned from
their kingdoms to attend, and did attend, except Joseph from Spain,
Madame Bacciochi--that is, Elise--and Lucien, who had refused to be
made a king. Cambacérès, now Duke of Parma and arch-chancellor of the
Empire, and St. Jean d'Angély, the Minister of State, attended to take
the depositions. Napoleon then said a few words expressive of his
grief at this sad but necessary act, of affection for and admiration
of the wife he was about to put away, and of his hope of a posterity
to fill his throne, saying he was yet but forty, and might reasonably
expect to live to train up children who should prove a blessing to the
empire. Josephine, with a voice choked with tears, arose, and, in a
short speech, made the act a voluntary one on her part. After this the
arch-chancellor presented the written instrument of divorce, which they
signed, and to which all the family appended their signatures. This act
was presented to the Senate the very next day by St. Jean d'Angély,
and, strangely enough, Eugene Beauharnais, Josephine's son, was chosen
to second it, which he did in a speech of some length. The Senate
passed the necessary _Senatus Consultum_, certifying the divorce, and
conferring on Josephine the title of empress-queen, with the estate of
Navarre and two millions of francs per annum. They also voted addresses
to both Napoleon and Josephine of the most complimentary character.
This being done, Napoleon went off to St. Cloud, and Josephine retired
to the beautiful abode of Malmaison, near St. Germains, where she
continued to reside for the remainder of her life, and made herself
beloved for her acts of kindness and benevolence, of which the
English _détenus_, of whom there were several at St. Germains, were
participants.

Another council was immediately summoned to determine on the choice
of a new Empress. All had been arranged before between the House of
Austria and Napoleon, and the cue was given to the council to suggest
accordingly. Eugene Beauharnais was again strangely appointed to
propose to Prince Schwarzenberg for the hand of the archduchess, and,
having his instructions, his proposal was accepted, and the whole of
this formality was concluded in four-and-twenty hours. Josephine set
out for her new estate in Navarre, and Marshal Berthier was appointed
to act as proxy for his master in the espousals of the bride at Vienna.
There were difficulties in the case which, strictly Catholic as the
Hapsburg family is, it is surprising that they could be so easily
got over, and which show how much that Imperial family was under
the control of "the Upstart," as they familiarly styled him amongst
themselves. The Pope had been too grievously insulted and persecuted
by Buonaparte for it to be possible for him to pronounce the former
marriage invalid; had it not been also contrary to the canons of the
Church to abrogate marriage, which it regards as an entirely sacred
and indissoluble ceremony. To remove this difficulty, it was stated to
the Austrian family that Buonaparte's marriage with Josephine had been
merely a revolutionary marriage before a magistrate, and therefore no
marriage at all--the fact being originally true, but it had ceased to
be so some days previous to Buonaparte's coronation, when, to remove
the Pope's objection, they had been privately married by Buonaparte's
uncle, Cardinal Fesch. The wedding took place at Vienna, on the 11th
of March, 1810, and a few days afterwards the young Empress set out
for France, accompanied by the Queen of Naples. Buonaparte, who
maintained the strictest etiquette at his Court, had had all the
ceremonies which were to attend his marriage in Paris arranged with the
most minute exactness. He then set out himself to meet his Austrian
bride, very much in the manner that he had gone to meet the Pope. Near
Soissons--riding alone, and in an ordinary dress--Buonaparte met the
carriage of his new wife, got in, and went on with her to Soissons and
thence to the old château of Compiègne.

Soon after his marriage Buonaparte made a tour with his Imperial bride.
It was very much the same that he had made with Josephine shortly
before their coronation--namely, through the northern provinces of
France, through Belgium and Holland. He decided, during this journey,
on the occasion of his uniting the part of the Low Countries called
Zealand with the Department of the Mouths of the Scheldt, on annexing
the whole country to France for ever. But whilst conversing with Louis
Buonaparte, his Holland king-brother at Antwerp, he suddenly stumbled
on a discovery of some daring proceedings of Fouché, his Minister of
Police, which sent him back to Paris in haste, and ruined that subtle
diplomatist with him. The arbitrary disposition displayed in this
arrangement very soon produced consequences between Napoleon and his
brothers which made more than ever manifest to the world that no law or
consideration could any longer influence Napoleon; that his self-will
was, and must be, his only guide. His brother Lucien, who had from
the first refused to become one of his puppets, and who was leading a
private life in Italy, received an intimation from Fouché that Napoleon
meant to arrest and shut him up. In consequence of this friendly hint,
Lucien fled from the Continent, and ultimately took refuge in England,
where he purchased an estate near Ludlow, and there resided till 1814,
when the fall of his brother permitted him to return to France. Lucien
Buonaparte (the ablest of the family next to Napoleon), now styled the
Prince of Canino, from an estate which he purchased in Italy, and which
the Pope raised to a principality, spent the three years in England in
writing a poem entitled "Charlemagne; or, the Church Delivered."

But if Lucien, who had rendered Napoleon such essential services in
enabling him to put down the French Revolution, could not escape this
meddling domination as a private man, much less could his puppet-kings,
whether brothers or brothers-in-law. He was beginning to have violent
quarrels with Murat and his sister Caroline, king and queen of Naples;
nor could the mild and amiable temper of Louis, king of Holland,
protect him from the insults and the pressure of this spoiled child of
fortune.

Louis was a conscientious man, who was sincerely desirous of studying
the comfort and prosperity of the people over whom he was placed. But
the system of Buonaparte went to extinguish the welfare of Holland
altogether. To insist upon the Dutch shutting out the manufactures of
Great Britain, upon which the large trade of Holland subsisted, was
to dry up the very means by which Holland had made itself a country
from low-lying sea-marshes and sand-banks. Louis knew this, and
winked, as much as possible, at the means by which the trade of his
subjects was maintained with England. This produced extreme anger on
the part of Napoleon, who used terms towards his brother of rudeness
and even brutality. Relations between Louis, and his queen, Hortense,
the daughter of Josephine, had grown unbearable. In fact, they had
made a mutual, though not a legal separation; and in 1809 they each
demanded that a legal separation should take place. There was such an
intimate connection between Buonaparte and Queen Hortense that Louis
deemed it a matter that concerned his honour as well as his quiet.
But Napoleon bluntly refused to allow such a legal dissolution of the
marriage, and insulted his brother by calling him an ideologist--a man
who had spoiled himself by reading Rousseau. He did not even return a
written answer to Louis's demand, but satisfied himself with a verbal
one. Champagny, the Duke of Cadore, who had succeeded Talleyrand as
Minister, stated in a report that the situation of Louis was become
critical from the conflicting sentiments in his heart of duties towards
France and duties towards his own subjects; and Buonaparte intimated
his intention to recall Louis to France, and to unite Holland, as a
province, to the empire. Louis, on his part, intimated that unless the
Dutch were allowed to avoid universal ruin by the prosecution of their
commerce, he would abdicate. Buonaparte had already annexed Zealand to
France, and Louis displayed a remarkable indifference to retaining the
remainder. On this, Buonaparte seemed to pause in his menaces; but for
all that he did not suspend his resolution to compel an utter exclusion
of British goods. The Dutch, who esteemed Louis for his honest regard
for their rights, were alarmed at the idea of losing him; for it could
only be for Holland to be united to France, and put under the most
compulsory system. For some time they and Louis contemplated laying
the whole country under water, and openly repudiating the influence of
Napoleon. But cool reflection convinced them that such resistance was
useless; and in March of this year Louis submitted to a treaty by which
the Continental system was to be strictly enforced. Not only Zealand,
but Dutch Brabant and the whole course of the Rhine on both its banks
were made over to France. Louis signed the treaty on the 1st of July,
but significantly added, "as far as possible."

But no such easy rendering of the contract was contemplated by
Buonaparte. He did not even adhere to the letter of it. French officers
were to be placed in all the Dutch garrisons, and eighteen thousand
troops were to be maintained, of whom six thousand were to be French.
Instead of six thousand soldiers, General Oudinot appeared at the
head of twenty thousand at Utrecht. These, Buonaparte informed Louis,
were to occupy all the strong posts of the country, and to have their
headquarters at Amsterdam, his capital. Louis determined to be no party
to this utter subjugation of the country, nor any longer to play the
part of a puppet sovereign. On the 1st of July he executed a deed of
abdication in favour of his son, Napoleon Louis, expressing a hope
that, though he had been so unfortunate as to offend the Emperor, he
trusted he would not visit his displeasure on his innocent family.
He then drew up a vindication of his conduct, saying that he was
placed in an impossible situation, and that he had long foreseen this
termination of it. He sent this to be published in England, the only
place in which it could appear; and he then gave an entertainment to a
number of his friends at his palace at Haarlem, and at midnight entered
a private carriage and drove away. He proceeded to Graz, in Styria,
where he devoted his leisure to the instruction of his children, and
to literature, and wrote "_Documens Hìstoriques et Réflexions sur le
Gouvernement de la Holland_"--being an account of his administration
of the government of that country--and also a novel, called "_Marie,
ou les Hollandaises_." His wife, Hortense, went to Paris, where she
became a great leader in the world of fashion. On the 9th of July,
only eight days after the abdication of Louis, Buonaparte issued a
decree declaring Holland "re-united to France!" Oudinot marched into
Amsterdam, and took possession of it in the name of his master. It was
declared the third city of the French empire. The French Ministers
issued reports to vindicate this annexation, which was a disgraceful
breach of Napoleon's pledge to the Senate--that the Rhine should
be the boundary of France--and also of his repeated assurances that
Holland should remain an independent kingdom.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON I. (_From the Portrait by Paul Delaroche._)]

This conviction of all Europe that the ambition of Buonaparte would
swell till it burst in ruin, quickly received fresh confirmation. The
trans-Rhenish provinces of Holland did not form a proper frontier for
him. He immediately gave orders to form Oldenburg, Bremen, and all the
line of coast between Hamburg and Lübeck, into additional Departments
of France, which was completed by a _Senatus Consultum_ of the 13th
of December of this year. Thus the French empire now extended from
Denmark to Sicily; for Naples, though it was the kingdom of Joachim
Murat, was only nominally so; for the fate of the kingdom of Holland
had dissipated the last delusion regarding the reality of any separate
kingdom of Napoleon's erection. Italy, Jerome's kingdom of Westphalia,
the Grand Duchy of Berg--now given to the infant son of Louis--all
the territories of the Confederation of the Rhine, and Austria itself
were really subject to Buonaparte, and any day he could assert that
dominion. More than eighty millions of people in Europe owned this
quondam lieutenant of artillery as their lord and master, whose will
disdained all control. No such empire had existed under one autocrat,
or under one single sceptre, since the palmiest days of the Roman
supremacy. Denmark retained its nominal independence only by humbly
following the intimations of the great man's will. And now Sweden
appeared to add another realm to his vast dominions; but, in reality,
the surprising change which took place there created a final barrier
to his progress in the North, and became an immediate cause of his
utter overthrow. The story is one of the most singular and romantic in
all the wonderful events of the Napoleonic career.

Gustavus Adolphus IV. of Sweden--with all the military ardour of
Charles XII., but without his military talent; with all the chivalry
of an ancient knight, but at the head of a kingdom diminished and
impoverished--had resisted Buonaparte as proudly as if he were monarch
of a nation of the first magnitude. He refused to fawn on Napoleon; he
did not hesitate to denounce him as the curse of all Europe. He was
the only king in Europe, except that of Great Britain, who withstood
the marauder. He was at peace with Great Britain, but Alexander of
Russia, who had for his own purposes made an alliance with Napoleon,
called on him to shut out the British vessels from the Baltic. Gustavus
indignantly refused, though he was at the same time threatened with
invasion by France, whose troops, under Bernadotte, already occupied
Denmark. At once he found Finland invaded by sixty thousand Russians,
without any previous declaration of war. Finland was lost, and
Alexander saw his treachery rewarded with the possession of a country
larger than Great Britain, and with the whole eastern coast of the
Baltic, from Tornea to Memel; the Åland Isles were also conquered and
appropriated at this time. The unfortunate Gustavus, whose high honour
and integrity of principle stood in noble contrast to those of most of
the crowned heads of Europe, was not only deposed for his misfortunes,
but his line deprived of the crown for ever. This took place in March,
1809. The unfortunate monarch was long confined in the castle of
Gripsholm, where he was said to have been visited by the apparition of
King Eric XIV. He was then permitted to retire into Germany, where,
disdainfully refusing a pension, he divorced his wife, the sister of
the Empress of Russia, assumed the name of Colonel Gustavson, and went,
in proud poverty, to live in Switzerland. These events led to the last
of Sweden's great transactions on the field of Europe, and by far the
most extraordinary of all.

Alexander of Russia, having obtained all that he hoped for from
the peace of Tilsit and the alliance with Napoleon by the conquest
of Finland, was looking about for a new ally to aid him in freeing
himself from the insolent domination of Buonaparte, who was ruining
Russia as well as the rest of Europe by his Continental system, when
these unexpected events in Sweden opened up to him a sudden and most
marvellous ally. The Swedes had chosen the Duke of Sudermania, the
uncle of the deposed king. Charles XIII., the brother of Gustavus III.
(assassinated by Count Anckarström in 1792), was old, imbecile, and
childless. A successor was named for him in the Duke of Augustenburg,
who was extremely popular in Norway, and who had no very distant
expectations of the succession in Denmark. This prince--a member of an
unlucky house--had scarcely arrived in Sweden when he died suddenly,
not without suspicion of having been poisoned; in fact, various
rumours of such a fate awaiting him preceded his arrival. Russia, as
well as a powerful party in Sweden, was bent on restoring the line of
Vasa. Alexander was uncle to the young prince, who, by no fault of
his own, was excluded from the throne. Whatever was the real cause,
Augustenburg died, as had been predicted; and while the public mind
in Sweden was agitated about the succession, the aged king, Charles
XIII., applied to Napoleon for his advice. But Napoleon had bound
himself at Tilsit to leave the affairs of the North in the hands of
Alexander, and especially not to interfere in those of Sweden. He
therefore haughtily replied:--"Address yourself to Alexander; he is
great and generous"--ominous words, which were, ere long, applied, to
his astonishment and destruction.

Yet, on the first view of the case, the selection of the Swedes augured
anything but a Russian alliance; and showed on the surface everything
in favour of Napoleon and France, for it fell on a French general and
field-marshal, Bernadotte. The prince royal elect made his public
entry into Stockholm on the 2nd of November. The failing health of the
king, the confidence which the talents of Bernadotte had inspired,
the prospect of a strong alliance with France through him--all these
causes united to place the national power in his hands, and to cast
upon him, at the same time, a terrible responsibility. The very crowds
and cries which surrounded him expressed the thousand expectations
which his presence raised. The peasantry, who had heard so much of his
humble origin and popular sentiments, looked to him to curb the pride
and oppression of the nobles; the nobles flattered themselves that he
would support their cause, in the hope that they would support him;
the mass of the people believed that a Republican was the most likely
to maintain the principles of the Revolution of 1809; the merchants
trusted that he would be able to obtain from Napoleon freedom for trade
with Great Britain, so indispensable to Sweden; and the army felt
sure that, with such a general, they should be able to seize Norway
and re-conquer Finland. Nor was this all. Bernadotte knew that there
existed a legitimist party in the country, which might long remain
a formidable organ in the hands of internal factions or external
enemies. How was he to lay the foundation of a new dynasty amid all
these conflicting interests? How satisfy at once the demands of France,
Britain, and Russia? Nothing but firmness, prudence, and sagacity
could avail to surmount the difficulties of his situation; but these
Bernadotte possessed.

Napoleon, seeing that Bernadotte was become King of Sweden contrary
to his secret will and to his expectations, determined, however,
that he should still serve him. He gave him no respite. He demanded
incessantly, and with his usual impetuosity, that Bernadotte should
declare war against Great Britain and shut out of the Baltic both
British and American merchandise. Alexander regarded him first with
suspicion but his spies soon dissipated his fears. They soon perceived
that Bernadotte was not disposed to be at once master of a powerful
kingdom and the vassal of France. Alexander made offers of friendship;
they were accepted by Bernadotte with real or affected pleasure, and
his course became clearer. For the next two years there was a great
strife to secure the alliance of the Crown Prince; and the proud,
disdainful, imperious temper of Napoleon, who could not brook that one
who had been created by him out of nothing but a sergeant of marines
should presume to exercise an independent will, threw the prize into
the hands of the more astute Russian, and decided the fate of Europe
and of himself.

Great Britain, which had made some show of restoring the legitimate
prince, soon became satisfied that Bernadotte would lean to its
alliance. Meanwhile Alexander of Russia displayed more and more decided
symptoms of an intention to break with France. He hastened to make
peace with the Turks, and to pour his sentimental assurances into
the ear of Count Stadingk, the Swedish ambassador. As he called God
to witness, in 1807, that he had no wish to touch a single Swedish
village, so now he professed to be greatly troubled that he had been
obliged to seize all Finland. "Let us forget the past," said the Czar.
"I find myself in terrible circumstances, and I swear, upon my honour,
that I never wished evil to Sweden. But now that unhappy affair of
Finland is over, and I wish to show my respect to your king, and my
regard for the Crown Prince. Great misfortunes are frequently succeeded
by great prosperities. A Gustavus Adolphus issued from Sweden for the
salvation of Germany, and who knows what may happen again?" And he
began to unveil his disgust at the encroachments of Buonaparte. "What
does he mean," he said, "by his attempt to add the north of Germany to
his empire, and all its mercantile towns? He might grasp a dozen cities
of Germany, but Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen--'our Holy Trinity,' as
Romanoff says--I am weary of his perpetual vexations!" The result was
the offer of Norway to Sweden as the price of Bernadotte's adhesion
to the proposed alliance. Great Britain also offered to Sweden as a
colony, Surinam, Demerara, or Porto Rico.

But all this could not have prevailed with Bernadotte--who leaned
fondly and tenaciously towards France from old associations--had not
the unbearable pride, insolence, and domineering spirit of Napoleon
repelled him, and finally decided his course. So late as March, 1811,
Bernadotte used this language to M. Alquier, the French ambassador,
when pressed by him to decide for France:--"I must have Norway--Norway
which Sweden desires, and which desires to belong to Sweden, and I can
obtain it through another power than France." "From England, perhaps?"
interposed the ambassador. "Well, yes, from England; but I protest
that I only desire to adhere to the Emperor. Let his majesty give me
Norway; let the Swedish people believe that I owe to him that mark of
protection, and I will guarantee all the changes that he desires in
the system and government of Sweden. I promise him fifty thousand men,
ready equipped by the end of May, and ten thousand more by July. I will
lead them wherever he wishes. I will execute any enterprise that he
may direct. Behold that western point of Norway. It is separated from
England only by a sail of twenty-four hours, with a wind which scarcely
ever varies. _I will go there if he wishes!_"

But Napoleon would not listen to the transfer of Norway; that was
the territory of his firm ally, Denmark: Finland he might have, but
not Norway. In October of the same year an English agent landed at
Gothenburg, eluded the French spies, traversed, by night, woods, bogs,
and hills, and, in a small village of the interior of Sweden, met a
Swedish agent, where the terms of a treaty were settled, in which
Russia and Turkey, Britain and Sweden, were the contracting powers;
by which Sweden was to receive Norway, and renounce for ever Finland;
and Alexander and Bernadotte were to unite all their talents, powers,
and experience against France. In the following January the sudden
invasion of Swedish Pomerania by the French showed that the crisis was
come, and that henceforth Napoleon and Bernadotte were irreconcilable
opponents. From that time offers of alliance and aid poured in from all
quarters. Prussia sent secret messages, and concerted common measures
with Russia. The insurgents of Spain and Portugal, where Wellington
was in active operation--even the old Bourbon dynasty--paid court to
him. Moreau returned from America to fight under his banners, and
emigrants flocked from all quarters to combine their efforts against
the universal foe--Napoleon.

[Illustration: THE AGENTS OF BRITAIN AND SWEDEN SIGNING THE TREATY
AGAINST NAPOLEON. (_See p._ 7.)]

In England a remarkable event closed the year 1810--the appointment
of a Regency. For some time the old malady of the king had returned
upon him. He had not attended to open and close the last Session of
Parliament, and there was a general impression as to the cause. But on
the 25th of October, when Parliament had voted the celebration of a
general jubilee, on the king's entrance upon the fiftieth year of his
reign, it was announced publicly that his Majesty was no longer capable
of conducting public business, and the House of Commons adjourned for
a fortnight. This was a melancholy jubilee, so far as the king and his
family were concerned; but the nation celebrated it everywhere with an
affectionate zeal and loyalty. The royal malady had been precipitated
by the death of his favourite daughter Amelia. On the 20th or 21st of
October he visited her on her death-bed, and she put on his finger a
ring, containing her own hair, and with the motto, "Remember me when
I am gone." This simple but sorrowful act completed the mischief in
progress, and George retired from the bedside of his dying daughter a
confirmed lunatic. The princess died on the 2nd of November, but her
father was past consciousness of the event.

At the end of the fortnight Lord Grenville and Lord Grey pointed out
the necessity of proceeding to appoint a regent. Ministers replied
that the physicians were confident of the king's speedy recovery; but
as there were repeated adjournments and the reports of the physicians
still held the same language, the sense of Parliament prevailed. On
the 17th of December Mr. Perceval moved that on the 20th they should
go into committee on the question of the Regency; and on that day the
same resolutions were passed as had been passed in 1788--namely, that
the Prince of Wales should be Regent under certain restrictions; that
the right of creating peerages, and granting salaries, pensions, and
offices in reversion, should be limited specifically, as in 1788. The
royal dukes made a protest against these limitations; but on the 30th
they were confirmed by both Houses, with additional resolutions for the
care of his Majesty's person and the security of his private property,
which were passed on the last day of the year 1810.

[Illustration: CARLTON HOUSE, LONDON (1812).]

The business of the Regency was so important that Parliament--without
adjourning, as usual, for the Christmas holidays--opened the year 1811,
on the very first of January, by proceeding with it. An alteration
in the fifth resolution, somewhat reducing the expense of the royal
household, and also limiting more strictly the authority of the
Queen, was proposed, and carried against Ministers, by two hundred
and twenty-six votes against two hundred and thirteen. Perceval in
the Commons, and Lord Liverpool in the Lords, moved amendments on
this change but without effect. Another alteration was proposed by
Lord Grenville, that the Regent should be allowed to elevate lawyers
and other civilians to the peerage, as well as military men; and this
was readily agreed to. The remaining restrictions were to terminate
in February, 1812, if the House had been sitting then six weeks, or
otherwise, after the sitting of the House for six weeks after its next
assembling. Deputations were appointed by both Houses to announce
these resolutions to the Regent and the Queen. The Regent complained
of the restrictions, but the Queen expressed herself quite satisfied.
The Great Seal was then affixed to a commission for opening Parliament
under the Regent, after some opposition by Lord Grey. The House then
adjourned till the 15th of January.

It was now expected by the Whigs, and by a great part of the public,
that they should come into office. At first the conduct of the Prince
Regent favoured this supposition. He applied to Grey and Grenville to
draw up the answer that he should return to the two Houses on their
addresses on his appointment. But he did not quite like this answer,
and got Sheridan to make some alterations in it. He then returned the
paper to Grey and Grenville, as in the form that he approved. But
these noblemen declared that they would have nothing more to do with
the paper so altered; and Sheridan, on his part, suggested to the
prince that he would find such men as Ministers very domineering and
impracticable. Nor was this all--Lord Grenville and his family held
enormous patronage. Like all the Whigs, the Grenvilles, however they
might study the interests of the country, studied emphatically their
own. Grenville had long held, by a patent for life, the office of
Auditor to the Exchequer; and in accepting office in "All the Talents"
Ministry, he managed to obtain also the office of First Lord of the
Treasury. The Auditorship of the Exchequer was instituted as a check
on the Treasury, but neither Lord Grenville nor his friends saw any
impropriety in destroying this check by putting both offices into the
same hands. They declared this union was very safe and compatible, and
a Bill was brought in for the purpose. But when the King had become
both blind and insane, and no Regent was yet appointed, Lord Grenville,
being no longer First Lord of the Treasury, but Perceval, he suddenly
discovered that he could not obey the order of the Treasury for the
issues of money to the different services. It was strictly necessary
that the Great Seal, or the Privy Seal, or the Sign Manual, should be
attached to the Treasury orders, or, failing these, that they should
be sanctioned by an express Act of Parliament. As neither Great nor
Privy Seal, nor Sign Manual was possible until a regent was appointed,
Lord Grenville's conscience would not let him pass the orders of the
Treasury, and all payments of army, navy, and civil service were
brought to a stand. Perceval, after in vain striving hard to overcome
the scruples, or rather the party obstinacy of Grenville, was compelled
to go to the House of Parliament, and get the obstacle removed by a
resolution of both Houses. The notice of the public being thus turned
by Grenville to his holding of this office, and his readiness to unite
the two offices in his own person, which his pretended scruples of
conscience now invested with so much danger, produced a prejudice
against him and his party, which was hostile to their coming into
power. Besides this, the Opposition were greatly divided in their
notions of foreign policy. Grey and his immediate section of the party
felt bound, by their advocacy of Fox's principles, to oppose the war;
Grenville and his friends were for a merely defensive war, and for
leaving Portugal and Spain, and the other Continental nations, to fight
their own battles; whilst Lord Holland, who had travelled in Spain, and
was deeply interested in its language and literature, was enthusiastic
for the cause of the Peninsula, and the progress which Wellington
was making there. It was utterly impossible that, with such divided
views, they could make an energetic Ministry at this moment, and it was
equally certain that they could not again form an "All the Talents" by
coalition with the Conservatives. And, beyond all this, it does not
appear that the Regent was anxious to try them. Like all heirs-apparent
of the house of Hanover, he had united with the Opposition during his
youth, but his friendship appeared now anything but ardent. Sheridan
still possessed something of his favour, and the Earl of Moira was high
in it; but for the rest, the prince seemed quite as much disposed to
take the Tories into his favour; and he, as well as the royal dukes,
his brothers, was as much bent on the vigorous prosecution of the war
as the Tories themselves. No Ministry which would have carried that on
languidly, still less which would have opposed it, would have suited
him any more than it would have done his father. The King, too, was
not so deeply sunk in his unhappy condition but that he had intervals
lucid enough to leave him alive to these questions, and he showed so
much anxiety respecting the possible change of the Ministry, and fresh
measures regarding the war, that his physicians declared that such a
change would plunge him into hopeless madness and probably end his
life. The Queen wrote to the prince, saying how much satisfaction his
conduct in regard to these matters had given to his father, and he
wrote to Mr. Perceval, declaring that this consideration determined him
not to change the Ministry at all. At the same time he expressed to
the Minister his dissatisfaction with the restrictions which had been
imposed upon him. Perceval, even at the risk of offending the prince,
justified the conduct of Ministers and Parliament. In this he might be
the more bold, as it was clear that there was no longer any danger of
a Whig Government.

On the 12th of February Parliament was opened by a speech, not from
the Prince Regent in person, but by commission, the commissioners
being the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the Duke of
Montrose, and the Earls Camden and Westmoreland. The speech was of
the most belligerent character, recounting the success of our arms
in the Indian seas, in repelling the attack of the Neapolitans on
Sicily, and, above all, in the Peninsula. Lord Grenville opposed the
address, considering the war as hopeless, and as mischievous to our
interests. It was carried in both Houses without a division. Perceval,
on the 21st, announced that the prince was desirous not to add any
fresh burdens to the country in existing circumstances, and therefore
declined any addition to his establishment as Regent.

One of the first things which the Regent did was to re-appoint the
Duke of York to the post of Commander-in-chief of the Forces. Old Sir
David Dundas, as thoroughly aware of his unfitness for the office as
the army itself was, had requested leave to retire, and on the 25th of
May the appointment of the duke was gazetted. There was a considerable
expression of disapproval in the House of Commons of this measure. Lord
Milton moved that it was highly improper and indecorous, and he was
supported by Lord Althorp, Mr. Wynn, Mr. Elliot, Mr. Whitbread, and
others; but the facts which had come to light through Mrs. Clarke's
trials, both regarding her and her champion, Colonel Wardle, had
mitigated the public feeling towards the duke so far, that the motion
was rejected by a majority of two hundred and ninety-six against
forty-seven. It is certain that the change from the duke to Sir David
Dundas, so far as the affairs of the army were concerned, was much
for the worse. The duke was highly popular in that office with the
soldiers, and he rendered himself more so by immediately establishing
regimental schools for their children on Dr. Bell's system.

The unnatural state of things induced by the war had now brought
about a great change in our currency. As we could manage to get in
our goods to the Continent by one opening or another, but could not
get the produce of the Continent in return, it would have appeared
that we must be paid in cash, and that the balance of specie must be
in our favour; but this was not the case. By our enormous payments
to our troops in Spain, Portugal, and Sicily, as well as in the East
and West Indies, and by our heavy subsidies, gold had flowed out of
the country so steadily that there appeared very little left in it,
and bank paper had taken its place. On the Continent, impoverished as
they were, the people tenaciously clung to their gold, and Buonaparte
alone could draw it from them in taxes. He always took a heavy military
chest with him on his expeditions, and his officers also carried the
money necessary for themselves in their belts, or otherwise about their
immediate persons. The gold being enormously diminished in quantity
in England, was carefully hoarded on all hands, thus again increasing
the scarcity, and raising the value of it. The price of bullion had
risen from twenty to thirty per cent., and here was a further strong
temptation to hoard or send guineas to the melting-pot. This state of
things led a certain class of political economists to call for a repeal
of the Act for suspension of cash payments, and Francis Horner obtained
a committee of inquiry into the causes of the decrease of gold and the
increase of paper: and this committee came to the conclusion that the
true cause of the evil lay in the excess of paper, and that the way
to restrain it would be to allow the demand for gold at the Bank. But
the truth was that the cause of the evil was not the excess of paper,
but the enormous diminution of gold; and to have opened a legal demand
for gold which could not be had would only have produced a panic, and
a complete and horrible assassination of all credit and all business.
But there were clearer-sighted men in Parliament, who declared that,
though bullion had risen in price, bank-notes would still procure
twenty shillings' worth of goods in the market, and that they were not,
therefore, really depreciated in value. That was true, but guineas had,
notwithstanding, risen to a value of five- or six-and-twenty shillings,
and might be sold for that. Gold had risen, but paper had not fallen;
and gold could not take the place of paper, because it did not, to any
great extent, exist in the country; if it had, paper must have fallen
ruinously. Mr. Vansittart and his party, therefore, moved resolutions
that the resumption of cash payments being already provided for six
months after the conclusion of peace, was an arrangement which answered
all purposes, and ought not to be disturbed; that this would keep all
real excess of paper in check, and leave gold to resume its circulation
when, by the natural influence of peace, it flowed again into the
country. These were, accordingly, carried.

But the bullionists were still bent on forwarding their scheme, or
on throwing the country into convulsions. Lord King announced to his
tenants in a circular letter that he would receive his rents in specie
or in bank-notes to an amount equalling the advanced value of gold.
This raised a loud outcry against the injustice of the act, which
would have raised the rents of his farms twenty or more per cent.;
and Lord Stanhope brought in a Bill to prevent the passing of guineas
at a higher value than twenty-one shillings, and one-pound banknotes
at a less value than twenty shillings. There was a strenuous debate
on the subject in both Houses. In the Lords, Lord Chancellor Eldon
demonstrated the enormity of people demanding their rents in gold
when it did not exist, and when, if the person who could pay in notes
carried these notes to the Bank of England, he could not procure gold
for them. He denominated such a demand from landlords as an attempt
at robbery. Yet the Bill was strongly opposed in both Houses--in the
Commons by Sir Francis Burdett, Sir Samuel Romilly, Brougham, and
others. It underwent many modifications, but it passed, maintaining
its fundamental principles, and landlords were obliged to go on taking
their rents in paper.

But the agitation of this question produced a strong sensation on
the Continent. Buonaparte, who watched every movement of the British
Parliament and Government with the deepest anxiety, immediately seized
on the discussion as a proof that Great Britain was fast sinking under
his Continental system. That system, indeed, was rapidly prostrating
the Continent. From all sides complaints had long been pouring in upon
him that the suppression of commerce was ruining the great mercantile
cities--Hamburg, Bremen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Naples, Genoa,
and the other parts of Italy; and that it was diffusing universal
poverty and distress. The breach which the Emperor Alexander had made
in it, and the determined resistance which the Swedes made to it, had
caused him to feel the necessity of relaxing the rigour of his system.
But now he took fresh courage. He believed that Great Britain was at
her last gasp; that there would speedily be universal rebellion within
her from starving citizens; and he held on in his plan, and this proved
his ultimate destruction; for it made him all the more determined to
coerce Russia, and thus precipitated his fatal campaign against that
country.

After violent debates on the subject of Catholic emancipation, but
with the usual negative result, Parliament was prorogued on the 24th
of July. Ministers proceeded to prosecute the war in the Peninsula
with increased vigour. Lord Wellington needed all the support they
could give him. Notwithstanding his success and the millions of money
that Great Britain was sending to Portugal, the Portuguese Government
continued to annoy him, and showed itself as ignorant, as meddling
and as unthankful as the Spaniards had done. Though he and his army
were the sole defence of the country, which would at once have been
overrun by the French were he not there, and though he was fighting
their battles and defending their persons at the expense of England,
they appeared to have not the slightest sense of these obligations, but
continued to pester him on every possible occasion. They endeavoured
to compel him to maintain the Portuguese army, too, by themselves
neglecting to furnish it with pay and provisions. They demanded to have
the expenditure of the very money remitted for the needs of the British
forces. They raised a vast clamour because the soldiers cut down timber
for firewood. To all these disgraceful annoyances Lord Wellington
replied with a wonderful command of temper, but with firmness and
plain-spokenness. His dispatches abound with complaints of the scurvy
treatment of the Portuguese authorities. The aspect of things in Spain
was worse. There the Spaniards continued to lose every force that they
raised, but nevertheless to criticise all the movements of Wellington
as if they knew, or had shown, that they understood the management
of campaigns better than he did. In fact, if the interests of Spain
and Portugal alone had been concerned, the best thing would have been
to have quietly withdrawn, and have left the French to trample on
them, as a proper punishment for their stupid and ignorant pride. But
the attention which Wellington compelled Buonaparte to give to the
Peninsula, and the constant drain which this war was to him of men and
money, were enabling Russia, and Sweden, and the north of Germany to
prepare for another and decisive struggle with the oppressor.

[Illustration: MARSHAL BERESFORD. (_From the Portrait by Sir W.
Beechey, R.A._)]

We left Wellington occupying his impregnable lines at Torres Vedras
during the winter, and Massena occupying Santarem. Buonaparte thought
he could suggest a mode of putting down the provoking English general
which Massena did not seem able to conceive. After studying the
relative situations of the belligerents, he sent word to Soult to make
a junction with Massena by crossing the Tagus, and then, as he would
be much superior in strength, to continually attack Wellington, and
cause him, from time to time, to lose some of his men. He observed
that the British army was small, and that the people at home were
anxious about their army in Portugal, and were not likely to increase
it much. Having thus weakened Wellington, as soon as the weather
became favourable they were to make an attack from the south bank of
the Tagus. But there were two difficulties to overcome of no trivial
character in this plan. Wellington was not the man to be drawn into
the repeated loss of his men, and the Tagus was too well guarded by
our fleet and by batteries for any chance of taking him in the rear.
However, Napoleon sent Massena a reinforcement, under General Drouet,
who carried along with him a great supply of provisions: he assembled
an army in the north of Spain, under Bessières, of seventy thousand
men, and Soult moved from Cadiz, leaving Sebastiani to continue the
blockade, and advanced to make the ordered junction with Massena. But
he deemed it necessary, before crossing into southern Portugal, to take
possession of Badajoz. In his advance, at the head of twenty thousand
men, he defeated several Spanish corps, and sat down before Badajoz
towards the end of February. Could Massena have maintained himself at
Santarem, this junction might have been made; but, notwithstanding
the provisions brought by Drouet, he found that he had no more than
would serve him on a retreat into Spain. He had ten thousand of his
army sick, and therefore, not waiting for Soult, he evacuated Santarem
on the 5th of March, and commenced his march Spain-ward. Wellington
was immediately after him, and the flight and pursuit continued for
a fortnight. To prevent Massena from finding a temporary refuge in
Coimbra, Wellington ordered Sir Robert Wilson and Colonel Trant to
destroy an arch of the bridge over the Mondego, and thus detain him
on the left bank of that river till he came up. But Massena did not
wait; he proceeded along a very bad road on the left bank of the river
to Miranda, on the river Coira. Along this track Massena's army was
sharply and repeatedly attacked by the British van under Picton, and
suffered severely. Ney commanded the rear-division of the enemy, and,
to check the advance of the British, he set fire to the towns and
villages as he proceeded, and, escaping over the bridge on the Coira,
he blew it up. But before this could be effected, Picton was upon him,
accompanied by Pack's brigade and a strong body of horse, and drove
numbers of the French into the river, and took much baggage. Five
hundred French were left on the ground, and to facilitate their flight
from Miranda, which they also burnt, they destroyed a great deal more
of their baggage and ammunition. Lord Wellington was detained at the
Coira, both from want of means of crossing and from want of supplies;
for the French had left the country a black and burning desert. The
atrocities committed by the army of Massena on this retreat were never
exceeded by any host of men or devils. The soldiers seemed inspired
with an infernal spirit of vengeance towards the Portuguese, and
committed every horror and outrage for which language has a name. The
Portuguese, on the other hand, driven to madness, pursued them like so
many demons, cutting off and destroying all stragglers, and shooting
down the flying files as they hurried through the woods and hills. The
whole way was scattered with the carcases of the fugitives.

A quarrel took place between Massena and Ney on the subject of
attacking the British and Portuguese who invested Almeida, where
was a French garrison, and Ney threw up his command, and retired to
Salamanca. Massena was daily expecting the junction of Soult, who had
taken Badajoz; but Wellington did not give time for this junction. He
attacked Massena at Sabugal on the 3rd of April, and defeated him with
heavy loss. Massena then continued his retreat for the frontier of
Spain, and crossed the Agueda into that country on the 6th. Wellington
then placed his army in cantonments between the Coa and the Agueda, and
made more rigorous the blockade of Almeida.

Having, for the third time, expelled the French from Portugal, with
the exception of the single fortress of Almeida, Wellington proceeded
to reconnoitre the situation of affairs in Spain. Whilst on his
march after Massena he had sent word to General Menacho to maintain
possession of Badajoz, promising him early assistance. Unfortunately,
Menacho was killed, and was succeeded in his command by General Imaz,
who appears to have been a regular traitor. Wellington, on the 9th
of March, had managed to convey to him the intelligence that Massena
was in full retreat, and that he should himself very soon be able to
send or bring him ample assistance. Imaz had a force of nine thousand
Spaniards, and the place was strong. He was besieged by about the same
number of French infantry and two thousand cavalry, yet the very next
day he informed Soult of Wellington's news, and offered to capitulate.
Soult must have been astonished at this proceeding, if he had not
himself prepaid it in French money--the surrender of Badajoz, under the
imminent approach of Wellington, being of the very highest importance.
On the 11th the Spaniards were allowed to march out with what were
called the "honours of war," but which, in this case, were the infamies
of treachery, and Soult marched in. He then gave up the command of the
garrison to Mortier, and himself marched towards Seville.

During his absence from the extreme south, General Graham, with about
four thousand British and Portuguese, had quitted Cadiz by sea, and
proceeded to Algeçiras, where he landed, intending to take Victor, who
was blockading Cadiz, in the rear. His artillery, meanwhile, was landed
at Tarifa; and on marching thither by land, over dreadful mountain
roads, he was joined, on the 27th of February, by the Spanish General
Lapeña, with seven thousand men. Graham consented to the Spaniard
taking the chief command--an ominous concession; and the united
force--soon after joined by a fresh body of about one thousand men,
making the whole force about twelve thousand--then marched forward
towards Medina Sidonia, through the most execrable roads. Victor was
fully informed of the movements of this army, and advanced to support
General Cassagne, who held Medina Sidonia. No sooner did he quit his
lines before Cadiz than the Spanish General De Zogas crossed from the
Isle de Leon, and menaced the left of the French army. On this Victor
halted at Chiclana, and ordered Cassagne to join him there. He expected
nothing less than that Lapeña would manage to join De Zogas, and
that fresh forces, marching out of Cadiz and the Isle of Leon, would
co-operate with them, and compel him to raise the siege altogether. But
nothing so vigorous was to be expected from a Spanish general. Lapeña
was so slow and cautious in his movements that Graham could not get
him to make any determined advance; and on arriving at the heights of
Barrosa, which a Spanish force had been sent forward to occupy, this
body of men had quitted their post, and Victor was in possession of
these important positions, which completely stopped the way to Cadiz
and at the same time rendered retreat almost equally impossible. Lapeña
was skirmishing, at about three miles' distance, with an inconsiderable
force, and the cavalry was also occupied in another direction. Seeing,
therefore, no prospect of receiving aid from the Spaniards, General
Graham determined to attack Marshal Victor, and drive him from the
heights, though the latter's force was twice as strong as the former's.
This Graham did after a most desperate struggle. Had Lapeña shown any
vigour or activity, Victor's retreating army might have been prevented
from regaining its old lines; but it was in vain that Graham urged
him to the pursuit. Lord Wellington eulogised the brilliant action of
the heights of Barrosa, in a letter to Graham, in the warmest terms,
declaring that, had the Spanish general done his duty, there would have
been an end of the blockade of Cadiz. As it was, Victor returned to his
lines and steadily resumed the siege. In the meantime, Admiral Keats,
with a body of British sailors and marines, had attacked and destroyed
all the French batteries and redoubts on the bay of Cadiz, except that
of Catina, which was too strong for his few hundred men to take.

Another attempt of the French to draw the attention of Wellington from
Massena was made by Mortier, who marched from Badajoz, of which Soult
had given him the command, entered Portugal, and invested Campo Mayor,
a place of little strength, and with a very weak garrison. Marshal
Beresford hastened to its relief at the head of twenty thousand men,
and the Portuguese commandant did his best to hold out till he arrived;
but he found this was not possible, and he surrendered on condition
of marching out with all the honours of war. Scarcely, however, was
this done when Beresford appeared, and Mortier abruptly quitted the
town, and made all haste back again to Badajoz, pursued by the British
cavalry. Mortier managed to get across the Guadiana, and Beresford
found himself stopped there by a sudden rising of the water and want of
boats. He had to construct a temporary bridge before he could cross, so
that the French escaped into Badajoz. Mortier then resigned his command
to Latour Maubourg, and the British employed themselves in reducing
Olivença, and some other strong places on the Valverde river, in the
month of April. Lord Wellington made a hasty visit to the headquarters
of Marshal Beresford, to direct the operations against Badajoz,
but he was quickly recalled by the news that Massena had received
reinforcements, and was in full march again to relieve the garrison in
Almeida. Wellington, on the other hand, had reduced his army by sending
reinforcements to Beresford, so that while Massena entered Portugal
with forty thousand foot and five thousand cavalry, Wellington had,
of British and Portuguese, only thirty-two thousand foot and about
one thousand two hundred horse. This force, too, he had been obliged
to extend over a line of seven miles in length, so as to guard the
avenues of access to Almeida. The country, too, about Almeida was
particularly well adapted for cavalry, in which the French had greatly
the superiority. Notwithstanding, Wellington determined to dispute his
passage. He had no choice of ground; he must fight on a flat plain, and
with the Coa flowing in his rear. His centre was opposite to Almeida,
his right on the village of Fuentes d'Onoro, and his left on fort
Concepcion.

On the 5th of May, towards evening, Massena attacked the British right,
posted in Fuentes d'Onoro, with great impetuosity, and the whole fury
of the battle, from beginning to end, was concentrated on this quarter.
At first the British were forced back from the lower part of the town,
driven to the top, where they retained only a cluster of houses and
an old chapel. But Wellington pushed fresh bodies of troops up the
hill, and again drove down the French at the point of the bayonet, and
over the river Das Casas. The next day the battle was renewed with the
greatest desperation, and again the British, overwhelmed with heavy
columns of men, and attacked by the powerful body of cavalry, seemed
on the point of giving way. The cannonade of Massena was terrible,
but the British replied with equal vigour, and a Highland regiment,
under Colonel Mackinnon, rushed forward with its wild cries, carrying
all before it. The battle was continued on the low grounds, or on
the borders of the river, till it was dark, when the French withdrew
across the Das Casas. The battle was at an end. Massena had been
supported by Marshal Bessières, but the two marshals had found their
match in a single English general, and an army as inferior to their
own in numbers as it was superior in solid strength. Four hundred
French lay dead in Fuentes d'Onoro itself, and the killed, wounded,
and prisoners amounted, according to their own intercepted letters, to
over three thousand. The British loss was two hundred and thirty-five
killed--amongst whom was Colonel Cameron,--one thousand two hundred
and thirty-four wounded, and three hundred and seventeen missing, or
prisoners. Almeida was at once evacuated; the garrison blowing up
some of the works, then crossing the Agueda, and joining the army of
Massena, but not without heavy loss of men, besides all their baggage,
artillery, and ammunition.

The fame of this battle, thus fought without any advantage of ground,
and with such a preponderance on the side of the French, produced a
deep impression both in Great Britain and France. The major part of the
British side was composed of British troops, most of the Portuguese
having been sent to Marshal Beresford, and this gave a vivid idea
of the relative efficiency of British and French troops. Buonaparte
had already satisfied himself that Massena was not the man to cope
with Wellington, and Marshal Marmont was on the way to supersede him
when this battle was fought, but he could only continue the flight
of Massena, and take up his headquarters at Salamanca. With Massena
returned to France also Ney, Junot, and Loison; King Joseph had gone
there before; and the accounts which these generals were candid enough
to give, in conversation, of the state of things in Spain, spread a
very gloomy feeling through the circles of Paris.

On the return of Wellington to the north, Beresford strictly blockaded
Badajoz, and made all the preparations that he could for taking it
by storm. But he was almost wholly destitute of tools for throwing
up entrenchments, and of men who understood the business of sapping
and mining. He was equally short of artillery, and the breaching-guns
which he had, had no proper balls. The howitzers were too small for his
shells, and he had few, if any, well-skilled officers of artillery.
Besides this, the ground was very rocky, and the enemy, owing to their
slow progress in the works, were able to make repeated sorties, so that
they had killed four or five hundred of our men. In this situation,
on the 12th of May, Beresford received the intelligence that Soult
was advancing against him with nearly thirty thousand infantry and
four thousand horse. Soult had been set at liberty to leave Seville
by the conclusion of Graham's and Lapeña's expedition, and he had
received reinforcements both from Sebastiani and from Madrid. Beresford
immediately raised the siege, but instead of retiring he advanced
against Soult to give him battle. Beresford had about twenty-five
thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, but unfortunately ten
thousand of these were Spaniards, for Castaños had joined him. Castaños
was one of the best and most intelligent generals of Spain, and had a
mind so far free from the absurd pride of his countrymen that he was
willing to serve under Beresford. Blake was also in his army with a
body of Spanish troops; but Blake was not so compliant as Castaños, and
their troops were just as undisciplined as ever.

On the morning of the 16th of May Beresford fell in with the French at
Albuera, a ruined village, standing on ground as favourable for horse
as that at Fuentes d'Onoro. Blake's corps occupied the right wing of
the allied army, the British the centre, opposite to the village and
bridge of Albuera. Soult advanced in great strength towards the centre;
but Beresford soon saw that the attack was not intended to be made
there, but on the division of Blake on the right. He sent to desire
Blake to alter his front so as to face the French, who would else
come down on his right flank; but Blake thought he knew better than
the British general, and would not move, declaring that it was on the
British centre where the blow would fall. But a little time showed the
correctness of Beresford's warning, and Blake, attempting to change
his front when it was too late, was taken at disadvantage and rapidly
routed.

By this dispersion of the Spaniards the British battalions were wholly
exposed, and the whole might of Soult's force was thrown upon them.
A tremendous fire from the hills, where the Spaniards ought to have
stood, was opened on the British ranks, and several regiments were
almost annihilated in a little time. But the 31st regiment, belonging
to Colborne's brigade, supported by Horton's brigade, stood their
ground under a murderous fire of artillery, and the fiery charge of
both horse and foot. They must soon have fallen to a man, but Beresford
quickly sent up a Portuguese brigade, under General Harvey, to round
the hill on the right, and other troops, under Abercrombie, to compass
it on the left; while, at the suggestion of Colonel (afterwards Lord)
Hardinge, he pushed forward General Cole with his brigade of fusiliers
up the face of the hill. These three divisions appeared on the summit
simultaneously. The advance of these troops through the tempest
of death has always been described as something actually sublime.
Moving onward, unshaken, undisturbed, though opposed by the furious
onslaught of Soult's densest centre, they cleared the hill-top with
the most deadly and unerring fire; they swept away a troop of Polish
lancers that were murderously riding about goring our wounded men, as
they lay on the ground, with their long lances.

[Illustration: THE FUSILIERS AT ALBUERA. (_See p._ 18.)]

Napier, in his "History of the Peninsular War," describes the scene
with the enthusiasm of a soldier:--"Such a gallant line issuing from
the smoke, and rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken
multitude, startled the enemy's heavy masses, which were increasing and
pressing onwards as to an assured victory. They wavered, hesitated,
and then, vomiting forth a storm of fire, hastily endeavoured to
enlarge their front, while a fearful discharge of grape from all
their artillery whistled through the British ranks. Sir William
Myers was killed; Cole, and three colonels--Ellis, Blakeney, and
Hawkshawe--fell wounded; and the Fusilier battalions, struck by the
iron tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking ships. Suddenly and
sternly recovering, they closed on their terrible enemies, and then was
seen with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fights. In
vain did Soult, by voice and gesture, animate his Frenchmen; in vain
did the hardiest veterans, extricating themselves from the crowded
columns, sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open out on
such a fair field; in vain did the mass itself bear up, and, fiercely
arising, fire indiscriminately on friends and foes, while the horsemen,
hovering on the flank, threatened to charge the advancing line. Nothing
could stop that astonishing infantry. No sudden burst of undisciplined
valour, no nervous enthusiasm, weakened the stability of their order.
Their flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in their front; their
measured step shook the ground; their dreadful volleys swept away
the head of every formation; their deafening shouts overpowered the
dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd, as
foot by foot, and with a horrid carnage, it was driven by the incessant
vigour of the attack to the farthest edge of the hill. In vain did the
French reserves, joining with the struggling multitudes, endeavour
to sustain the fight; their efforts only increased the irremediable
confusion, and the mighty mass, giving way like a loosened cliff, went
headlong down the ascent. The rain flowed after in streams discoloured
with blood, and one thousand five hundred unwounded men--the remnant
of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers--stood triumphant on
the fatal hill." The loss on both sides was fearful, for no battle had
ever been more furiously contested. The French are said to have lost
nine thousand men; the allies, in killed and wounded, seven thousand,
of whom two-thirds were British. The French had two generals killed and
three wounded. Some persons were inclined to blame Marshal Beresford
for risking a battle in the circumstances; but Wellington gave him
the highest praise, and declared that the frightful loss was owing to
the utter failure of the Spaniards; that their discipline was so bad
that it was found impossible to move them without throwing them into
inextricable confusion; that at both Talavera and Albuera the enemy
would have been destroyed if the Spaniards could have been moved; and
that the same course had prevented Lapeña from supporting Graham at
Barrosa. Beresford maintained his position for two days in expectation
of a fresh attack by Soult; but, no doubt, that general had heard that
Lord Wellington was rapidly advancing to support Beresford; and on
the morning of the 18th Soult commenced his retreat to Seville. With
his small handful of cavalry Beresford pursued him, and cut off a
considerable number of his rear, and, amongst them, some of the cavalry
itself at Usagnè, taking about a hundred and fifty of them prisoners.
Had we had a proper body of horse, the slaughter of the flying army
would have been awful. Soult did but quit the ground in time; for, the
very day after, Wellington arrived at Albuera with two fresh divisions.

The siege of Badajoz was again resumed, but with the same almost
insurmountable obstacle of the deficiency of the requisite material
for siege operations; and on the 10th of June, learning that Marmont,
the successor of Massena, was marching south to join Soult, who was
also to be reinforced by Drouet's corps from Toledo, Wellington fell
back on Campo Mayor, gave up the siege of Badajoz, and gathered all his
forces together, except a considerable body of British and Portuguese,
whom he left at Alemtejo. Marmont, observing Wellington's movement,
again retired to Salamanca. Some slight manœuvring followed between the
hostile commanders, which ended in Wellington resuming his old quarters
on the river Coa. On this, Soult also retired again to Seville.

[Illustration: PRISONERS OF WAR.

FROM THE PICTURE BY W. F. YEAMES, R.A.]

On the 28th of October General Hill surprised a French force, under
General Drouet, near Estremadura, and completely routed it, taking
all the baggage, artillery, ammunition, and stores, with one thousand
five hundred prisoners. By this action the whole of that part of
Estremadura except Badajoz was cleared of the French. This done,
General Hill went into cantonments, and the British army received no
further disturbance during the remainder of the year. Thus Wellington
had completely maintained the defence of Portugal, and driven back the
French from its frontiers. Wherever he had crossed the French in Spain,
he had severely beaten them too.

But the most discouraging feature of this war was the incurable pride
of the Spaniards, which no reverses, and no example of the successes
of their allies could abate sufficiently to show them that, unless
they would condescend to be taught discipline, as the Portuguese had
done, they must still suffer ignominy and annihilation. Blake, who had
been so thoroughly routed on every occasion, was not content, like
the British and Portuguese, to go into quarters, and prepare, by good
drilling, for a more auspicious campaign. On the contrary, he led his
rabble of an army away to the eastern borders of Spain, encountered
Suchet in the open field on the 25th of October, was desperately
beaten, and then took refuge in Valencia, where he was closely
invested, and compelled to surrender in the early part of January next
year, with eighteen thousand men, twenty-three officers, and nearly
four hundred guns. Such, for the time, was the end of the generalship
of this wrong-headed man. Suchet had, before his encounter with Blake,
been making a most successful campaign in the difficult country of
Catalonia, which had foiled so many French generals. He had captured
one fortress after another, and in June he had taken Tarragona, after
a siege of three months, and gave it up to the lust and plunder of his
soldiery.

Whilst our armies were barely holding their own in Spain, our fleets
were the masters of all seas. In the north, though Sweden was nominally
at war with us, in compliance with the arrogant demands of Buonaparte,
Bernadotte, the elected Crown Prince, was too politic to carry out his
embargo literally. The very existence of Sweden depended on its trade,
and it was in the power of the British blockading fleet to prevent a
single Swedish vessel from proceeding to sea. But in spite of the angry
threats of Napoleon, who still thought that Bernadotte, though become
the prince and monarch elect of an independent country, should remain a
Frenchman, and, above all, the servile slave of his will, that able man
soon let it be understood that he was inclined to amicable relations
with Great Britain; and Sir James de Saumarez, admiral of our Baltic
fleet, not only permitted the Swedish merchantmen to pass unmolested,
but on various occasions gave them protection. Thus the embargo system
was really at an end, both in Sweden and in Russia; for Alexander also
refused to ruin Russia for the benefit of Buonaparte, and both of
these princes, as we have seen, were in a secret league to support one
another. Denmark, or, rather, its sovereign, though the nephew of the
King of Great Britain, remained hostile to us, remembering not only
the severe chastisements our fleets had given Copenhagen, but also the
facility with which Napoleon could, from the north of Germany, overrun
Denmark and add it to his now enormous empire. In March of this year
the Danes endeavoured to recover the small island of Anholt, in the
Cattegat, which we held; but they were beaten off with severe loss,
leaving three or four hundred men prisoners of war.

In the East Indies we this year sent over from Madras an army and
reduced Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East India settlements, and
the island of Java, as well as the small island of Madura, so that the
last trace of the Dutch power was extinguished in the East, as it was
at home by the domination of Buonaparte. In the West Indies we had
already made ourselves masters of all the islands of France, Denmark,
and Holland; and our troops there had nothing to do but to watch
and keep down the attempts at insurrection which French emissaries
continued to stir up in the black populations. We had some trouble of
this kind in St. Domingo and in Martinique, where the negroes, both
free and slaves, united to massacre the whites, and set up a black
republic like that of Hayti. But the French settlers united with the
English troops in putting them down, and a body of five hundred blacks,
in an attempt to burn down the town of St. Pierre, were dispersed with
great loss, and many were taken prisoners, and fifteen of them hanged.

There was little for our fleets in various quarters to do but to watch
the coasts of Europe where France had dominions for any fugitive French
vessel, for the ships of France rarely dared to show themselves out of
port. In March, however, Captain William Hoste fell in with five French
frigates, with six smaller vessels, carrying five hundred troops up the
Adriatic, near the coast of Dalmatia, and with only four frigates he
encountered and beat them. Captain Schomberg fell in with three French
frigates and a sloop off Madagascar, seized one of them, and followed
the rest to the seaport of Tamatave, in the island of Madagascar, of
which they had managed to recover possession. Schomberg boldly entered
the port, captured all the vessels there, and again expelled the French
from Tamatave. On the American coast our ships were compelled to watch
for the protection of our merchantmen and our interests, in consequence
of the French mania which was prevailing amongst the North Americans,
and which was very soon to lead to open conflict with us.

Such were the circumstances of France in every quarter of the globe,
except on the Continent of Europe; and there already, notwithstanding
the vast space over which Buonaparte ruled by the terror of his arms,
there were many symptoms of the coming disruption of this empire of
arms, which sprang up like a tempest and dispersed like one. Spain and
Portugal, at one end of the Continent, were draining the very life's
blood from France, and turning all eyes in liveliest interest to the
spectacle of a successful resistance, by a small British army, to this
Power so long deemed invincible. In the North lowered a dark storm, the
force and fate of which were yet unsuspected, but which was gathering
into its mass the elements of a ruin to the Napoleonic ambition as
sublime as it was to be decisive. In France itself never had the
despotic power and glory of Buonaparte appeared more transcendent.
Everything seemed to live but at his beck: a magnificent Court,
Parliament the slave of his will, made up of the sham representatives
of subjected nations, the country literally covered with armies, and
nearly all surrounding nations governed by kings and princes who were
but his satraps. Such was the outward aspect of things; and now came
the long-desired event, which was to cement his throne with the blood
of kindred kings, and link it fast to posterity--the birth of a son.
On the 20th of March it was announced that the Empress Maria Louisa
was delivered of a son, who was named Napoleon Francis Charles Joseph,
Prince of the French Empire, and King of Rome.

But this prosperity lay only on the surface, and scarcely even there
or anywhere but in the pride and lying assertions of Buonaparte. If
we contemplate merely the map of Europe, the mighty expanse of the
French empire seemed to occupy nearly the whole of it, and to offer an
awful spectacle of one man's power. This empire, so rapidly erected,
had absorbed Holland, Belgium, part of Switzerland--for the Valais was
united to France,--a considerable part of Germany, with Austria and
Prussia diminished and trembling at the haughty usurper. Italy was
also made part of the great French realm, and a fierce struggle was
going on for the incorporation of Spain and Portugal. From Travemünde
on the Baltic to the foot of the Pyrenees, from the port of Brest to
Terracina on the confines of Neapolitan territory, north and south,
east and west, extended this gigantic empire. Eight hundred thousand
square miles, containing eighty-five millions of people, were either
the direct subjects or the vassals of France. The survey was enough
to inflate the pride of the conqueror, who had begun his wonderful
career as a lieutenant of artillery. But this vast dominion had been
compacted by too much violence, and in outrage to too many human
interests, to remain united, or to possess real strength, even for the
present. The elements of dissolution were already actively at work in
it. The enormous drafts of men to supply the wars by which the empire
had been created had terribly exhausted France. This drain, still kept
up by the obstinate resistance of Spain and Portugal, necessitated
conscription on conscription, and this on the most enormous scale. The
young men were annually dragged from the towns, villages, and fields,
from amid their weeping and despairing relatives, to recruit the
profuse destruction in the armies, and there scarcely remained, all
over France, any but mere boys to continue the trade and agriculture
of the country, assisted by old men, and women. Beyond the boundaries
of France, the populations of subdued and insulted nations were
watching for the opportunity to rise and resume their rights. In
Germany they were encouraging each other to prepare for the day of
retribution; and in numerous places along the coasts bands of smugglers
kept up a continual warfare with the French officers of the customs,
to introduce British manufactures. The contributions which had been
levied in Holland and the Hanse Towns before they were incorporated
in the Gallic empire were now not readily collected in the shape of
taxes. Beyond the Continent ceased the power of Napoleon; over all seas
and colonies reigned his invincible enemy, Great Britain. There was
scarcely a spot the wide world over where the French flag, or those
of the nations whom he had crushed into an odious alliance, waved on
which Great Britain had not now planted her colours. She cut off all
colonial supplies, except what she secretly sold to his subjects in
defiance of his system. She was now victoriously bearing up his enemies
in Spain, Portugal, and Sicily against him, and encouraging Russia,
Sweden, Prussia, and Austria to expect the day of his final overthrow.
There was scarcely a man of any penetration who expected that this vast
and unwieldy government could continue to exist a single day after him
who had compelled it into union, rather than life; but, perhaps, none
suspected how suddenly it would collapse. Yet the very birth of a son
was rather calculated to undermine than to perpetuate it. His great
generals, who had risen as he had risen, were suspected of looking
forward, like those of Alexander of Macedon, to each seizing a kingdom
for himself when the chief marauder should fall. It was certain that
they had long been at enmity amongst themselves--a cause of weakness to
his military operations, which was especially marked in Spain.

[Illustration: THE CONSCRIPTION IN FRANCE: RECRUITING FOR NAPOLEON'S
WARS. (_See p._ 20.)]

On the other hand, the kings whom he had set up amongst his brothers
and brothers-in-law added nothing to his power. Joseph proved a mere
lay figure of a king in Spain; Louis had rejected his domination in
Holland, and abdicated; Lucien had refused to be kinged at all; Murat
managed to control Naples, but not to conciliate the brave mountaineers
of the country to French rule. The many outrages that Buonaparte had
committed on the brave defenders of their countries and their rights
were still remembered to be avenged. Prussia brooded resentfully over
the injuries of its queen; the Tyrol over the murder of Hofer and his
compatriots. Contemptible as was the royal family of Spain--the head
of which, the old King Charles, with his queen, made a long journey
to offer his felicitations on the birth of the king of Rome,--the
Spaniards did not forget the kidnapping of their royal race, nor the
monstrous treatment of the Queen of Etruria, the daughter of Charles
IX. and the sister of Ferdinand. Buonaparte first conferred on her the
kingdom of Etruria, and then took it away again, to settle Ferdinand in
it instead of in Spain; but as he reduced Ferdinand to a prisoner, he
reserved Etruria to himself, and kept the Queen of Etruria in durance
at Nice. Indignant at her restraint, she endeavoured to fly to England,
as her oppressor's brother, Lucien, had done. But her two agents were
betrayed, and one of them was shot on the plain of Grenelle, and the
other only reprieved when the fear of death had done its work on him,
and he only survived a few days. She herself was then shut up, with her
daughter, in a convent.

But of all the parties which remembered their wrongs and indignities,
the Roman Catholic clergy were the most uncomplying and formidable.
They had seen the Pope seized in his own palace at Rome, and forced
away out of Italy and brought to Fontainebleau. But there the resolute
old man disdained to comply with what he deemed the sacrilegious
demands of the tyrant. Numbers of bishoprics had fallen vacant,
and the Pontiff refused, whilst he was held captive, to institute
successors. None but the most abandoned priests would fill the vacant
sees without the papal institution. At length Buonaparte declared
that he would separate France altogether from the Holy See, and would
set the Protestant up as a rival Church to the Papal one. "Sire,"
said the Count of Narbonne, who had now become one of Buonaparte's
chamberlains, "I fear there is not religion enough in all France to
stand a division." But in the month of June Buonaparte determined
to carry into execution his scheme of instituting bishops by the
sanction of an ecclesiastical council. He summoned together more
than a hundred prelates and dignitaries at Paris, and they went in
procession to Notre Dame, with the Archbishop Maury at their head.
They took an oath of obedience to the Emperor, and then Buonaparte's
Minister of Public Worship proposed to them, in a message from the
Emperor, to pass an ordinance enabling the archbishop to institute
prelates without reference to the Pope. A committee of bishops was
found complying enough to recommend such an ordinance, but the council
at large declared that it could not have the slightest value. Enraged
at this defiance of his authority, Buonaparte immediately ordered the
dismissal of the council and the arrest of the bishops of Tournay,
Troyes, and Ghent, who had been extremely determined in their conduct.
He shut them up in the Castle of Vincennes, and summoned a smaller
assembly of bishops as a commission to determine the same question.
But they were equally uncomplying, in defiance of the violent menaces
of the man who had prostrated so many kings but could not bend a few
bishops to his will. The old Pope encouraged the clergy, from his cell
in Fontainebleau, to maintain the rights of the Church against his and
its oppressor, and thus Buonaparte found himself completely foiled.

The year 1812 opened, in England, by the assembling of Parliament on
the 7th of January. The speech of the Regent was again delivered by
commission. The great topic was the success of the war in Spain under
Lord Wellington, whose military talents were highly praised. There was
a reference also to the disagreements with America, and the difficulty
of coming to any amicable arrangement with the United States. Lords
Grey and Grenville, in the Peers, pronounced sweeping censures on the
continuance of the war with France, and on the policy of Ministers
towards America, from which source they prognosticated many disasters.
In the Commons, the Opposition used similar language; and Sir Francis
Burdett took a very gloomy view of our relations both with France and
North America, and declared that we could anticipate no better policy
until we had reformed our representative system.

Another topic of the speech was the mental derangement of the king,
which was now asserted, on the authority of the physicians, to be
more hopeless; Mr. Perceval argued, therefore, the necessity of
arranging the Royal Household so as to meet the necessarily increased
expenditure. Resolutions were passed granting an addition of seventy
thousand pounds per annum to the queen towards such augmented
expenditure, and to provide further income for the Prince Regent. Two
Courts were to be maintained, and the Regent was to retain his revenue
as Prince of Wales. The Civil List chargeable with the additional
seventy thousand pounds to the queen was vested in the Regent; and no
sooner were these particulars agreed to than he sent letters to both
Houses, recommending separate provision for his sisters; so that the
Civil List was at once to be relieved of their maintenance and yet
increased, simply on account of the charge of a poor blind and insane
old man, who could only require a trusty keeper or two. The separate
income agreed to for the princesses was nine thousand pounds a-year
each, exclusive of the four thousand pounds a-year each already derived
from the Civil List--so that there was needed an annual additional
sum of thirty-six thousand pounds for the four princesses, besides
the sixteen thousand pounds a-year now being received by them. Some
members observed that the grant to the Regent, being retrospective,
removed altogether the merit of his declaration during the last Session
of Parliament that, "considering the unexampled contest in which the
kingdom was now engaged, he would receive no addition to his income."
In fact, little consideration was shown by any part of the royal family
for the country under its enormous demands. It was understood that
there was once more a deficiency in the Civil List, which would have to
be made up.

Mr. Bankes again introduced his Bill--which was about to expire--for
prohibiting the grant of offices in reversion; and he endeavoured again
to make it permanent, but, as before, he was defeated on the second
reading in the Commons. He then brought in a Bill confined to two years
only, and this, as before, was allowed to pass both Houses. Great
discussion arose on the grant of the office of paymaster of widows'
pensions to Colonel MacMahon, the confidential servant of the Prince
Regent. This was a mere sinecure, which had been held by General Fox,
the brother of Charles James Fox; and it had been recommended that,
on the general's death, it should be abolished; but Ministers--more
ready to please the Regent than to reduce expenditure--had, immediately
on the general's decease, granted it to Colonel MacMahon. Ministers
met the just complaints of the Opposition by praising the virtues
and ability of MacMahon--as if it required any ability or any virtue
to hold a good sinecure! But there was virtue enough in the Commons
to refuse to grant the amount of the salary, Mr. Bankes carrying a
resolution against it. But Ministers had their remedy. The prince
immediately appointed MacMahon his private secretary, and a salary of
two thousand pounds was moved for. But Mr. Wynne declared that any such
office was unknown to the country--that no regent or king, down to
George III., and he only when he became blind, had a private secretary;
that the Secretary of State was the royal secretary. Ministers replied
that there was now a great increase of public business, and that a
private secretary for the Regent was not unreasonable; but they thought
it most prudent not to press the salary, but to leave it to be paid out
of the Regent's privy purse.

On the 19th of February Lord Wellesley resigned his office of Secretary
of Foreign affairs, because he did not approve of the employment of
some of his colleagues. The Prince Regent now showed that he had no
intention of dismissing the present administration. He proposed to
Lords Grey and Grenville to join it, but they absolutely declined,
knowing that, with the difference of the views of the two parties on
many essential questions, especially on those of the Catholic claims,
of the prosecution of the war, and of our relations with America, it
was impossible for any coalition Cabinet to go on. Lord Castlereagh
succeeded the Marquis of Wellesley in the Foreign Office, but on the
11th of May a fatal event put an end to the Ministry and the life of
Spencer Perceval.

On the afternoon of this day, Monday, the 11th of May, as the Minister
was entering the House, about five o'clock, a man of gentlemanly
appearance presented a pistol, and shot him dead--at least, he did
not survive two minutes. In the confusion and consternation the man
might have escaped, but he made no such attempt; he walked up to the
fireplace, laid down his pistol on a bench, and said, in answer to
those inquiring after the murderer, that he was the person. He gave
his name as Bellingham, expressed satisfaction at the deed, but said
that he should have been more pleased had it been Lord Leveson Gower.
In fact, his prime intention was to shoot Lord Gower, but he had also
his resentment against Perceval, and therefore took the opportunity
of securing one of his victims. It appeared that he had been a
Liverpool merchant, trading to Russia, and that, during the embassy
of Lord Leveson Gower at St. Petersburg he had suffered severe and,
as he deemed, unjust losses, for assistance in the redress of which
with the Russian Government he had in vain sought the good offices of
the ambassador. On his return to England he had applied to Perceval;
but that Minister did not deem it a case in which Government could
interfere, and hence the exasperation of the unhappy man against both
diplomatists. The trial of the murderer came on at the Old Bailey,
before Chief Justice Mansfield, on the Friday of the same week. A
plea of insanity was put in by Bellingham's counsel, and it was
demanded that the trial should be postponed till inquiries could be
made at Liverpool as to his antecedents. But this plea was overruled.
Bellingham himself indignantly rejected the idea of his being insane.
He declared that the act was the consequence of a cool determination
to punish the Minister for the refusal of justice to him, and he again
repeated, in the presence of Lord Leveson Gower, that his chief object
had been himself for his cruel disregard of his wrongs. Both Lord
Mansfield and the rest of the judges would hear of no delay; a verdict
of "Wilful Murder" was brought in by the jury, and they condemned him
to be hanged, and he was duly hanged on the following Monday at nine
o'clock, exactly the day week of the perpetration of the act.

[Illustration: ASSASSINATION OF SPENCER PERCEVAL. (_See p._ 23.)]

An attempt was again made on the part of Grey and Grenville to form
a Ministry, but without effect. Overtures were then made to Lord
Wellesley and Canning, who declined to join the Cabinet, alleging
differences of opinion on the Catholic claims and on the scale for
carrying on the war in the Peninsula. In the House of Commons, on
the 21st of May, Mr. Stuart Wortley, afterwards Lord Wharncliffe,
moved and carried a resolution for an address to the Regent, praying
him to endeavour to form a Coalition Ministry. During a whole week
such endeavours were made, and various audiences had by Lords Moira,
Wellesley, Eldon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, etc., and Moira was
authorised to make proposals to Wellesley and Canning, to Grey and
Grenville. But all these negotiations fell through. Grey and Grenville
refused to come in unless they could have the rearrangement of the
Royal Household. This demand was yielded by the Regent, but Sheridan,
who hated them, did not deliver the message, and so the attempt failed.
But at the same time, apart altogether from this matter, they could not
have pursued any effectual policy. It was therefore much better that
they should not come in at all.

On the 8th of June the Earl of Liverpool announced to the House of
Lords that a Ministry had been formed; that the Prince Regent had been
pleased to appoint him First Lord of the Treasury, and to authorise him
to complete the Cabinet. Earl Bathurst succeeded Liverpool as Secretary
of the Colonies and Secretary at War; Sidmouth became Secretary of
the Home Department; the Earl of Harrowby President of the Council;
Nicholas Vansittart Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Melville, the
son of the old late Lord, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Earl
of Buckinghamshire President of the Board of Control; Castlereagh
Secretary of Foreign Affairs; Mulgrave Master-General of the Ordnance;
Eldon Lord Chancellor; Mr. F. Robinson became Vice-President of the
Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy; Lord Clancarty President of
the Board of Trade; Sir Thomas Plumer was made Attorney-General, and
Sir William Garrow succeeded him as Solicitor-General. In Ireland, the
Duke of Richmond became Lord-Lieutenant; Lord Manners Lord Chancellor;
and Mr. Robert Peel, who now first emerged into public notice, Chief
Secretary. The Cabinet, thus reconstructed, promised exactly the
policy of the late Premier, and, indeed, with increased vigour. On
the 17th of June the new Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced the
Budget--professedly that of Spencer Perceval--which exceeded the
grants of the former year by upwards of six millions--that having been
fifty-six millions twenty-one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine
pounds, this being sixty-two millions three hundred and seventy-six
thousand three hundred and forty-eight pounds. New taxes were imposed,
and two more loans raised and added to the Debt.

The effects of the monstrous drain of the war on the revenues of the
country were now beginning to show themselves in the manufacturing
districts, and the workpeople had broken out in serious riots in
Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Cheshire. Instead of attributing their
distresses to the vast system of taxation, they attributed them to the
increase of machinery, and broke into the mills in many places and
destroyed it. This was only adding to the misery by destroying capital,
and stopping the very machinery which gave them bread. A committee
of inquiry was instituted, and the result showed that the members
of Parliament were not a whit more enlightened than the artisans
themselves. Instead of attempting to find some means of ameliorating
the condition of the starving population--which, indeed, they could
not do, for nothing but peace and reduction of taxation, and the
restoration of the natural conditions of commerce could do it,--they
recommended coercion, and Lord Castlereagh brought in a severe Bill for
the purpose,--the first of many such Bills of his, which nearly drove
the people eventually to revolution, and, by a more fortunate turn,
precipitated reform of Parliament. This Bill, the operation of which
was limited to the following March, was carried by large majorities,
and Parliament, thinking it had done enough to quiet hungry stomachs
in the north, was prorogued on the 30th of July, and on the 20th of
September dissolved.

The changes in, and uncertainty about, the Ministry gave great
uneasiness to Lord Wellington, whose operations in Spain depended so
much on earnest support at home. During the latter part of the autumn
and the commencement of winter, whilst his army was in cantonments, he
was actively preparing to surprise the French, and make himself master
of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. With much activity, but without bustle,
he made his preparations at Almeida. Pretending to be only repairing
the damages to its fortifications, he got together there ample stores
and a good battering train. He prepared also a portable bridge on
trestles, and regulated the commissariat department of his army; he
also had a great number of light, yet strong waggons constructed for
the conveyance of his provisions and ammunition, to supersede the
clumsy and ponderous carts of the Portuguese.

All being ready, on the 6th of January Wellington suddenly pushed
forward to Gallegos, and on the 8th invested Ciudad Rodrigo. Nothing
could be more unexpected by Marshal Marmont, who had never suspected
any attack in winter, and had placed his army in cantonments, and had,
moreover, sent several divisions to distant points. On the very first
evening Wellington stormed an external redoubt called the Great Teson,
and established his first parallel. On the 13th he also carried the
convent of Santa Cruz, and on the 14th that of San Francisco. He then
established his second parallel, and planted fresh batteries. On the
19th he made two breaches, and, hearing that Marmont was advancing
hastily to the relief of the place, he determined to storm at once,
though it would be at a more serious exposure of life. The assault was
rapid and successful, but the slaughter on both sides was very severe.
A thousand killed and wounded were reckoned on each side, and one
thousand seven hundred prisoners were taken by the British. What made
the British loss the heavier was that General Mackinnon and many of
his brigade were killed by the explosion of a powder magazine on the
walls. General Craufurd of the Light Division, was killed, and General
Vandeleur, Colonel Colborne, and Major Napier were wounded. Much
ammunition and a battering train were found in Ciudad Rodrigo. Marmont
was astounded at the fall of the place. The Spanish Cortes, who had
been so continually hampering and criticising Wellington, now created
him Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo. He was also, in England, advanced to the
dignity of an earl, and an annuity of two thousand pounds was voted him
by Parliament.

But Wellington was not intending to stop here. He immediately made
preparations for the siege of Badajoz. He had artillery sent out to
sea from Lisbon, as for some distant expedition, and then secretly
carried, in small boats, up the Setubal, to Alcacer do Sal, and thence,
by land, across Alemtejo to the Guadiana. On the 16th of March, after
a rapid march, he reached, with a strong body of troops, the Guadiana,
crossed, and at once invested Badajoz. By the 26th he had carried
the Picurina and the advanced work separated from the city by the
little river Rivillas, and made two breaches in the city walls. There
was the same want of besieging tools and battering trains which had
retarded his operations before; but the men worked well, and on the
6th of April, there being three breaches open, orders were given to
storm, for Soult was collecting his forces at Seville to raise the
siege. One of the breaches had been so strongly barricaded by General
Philippon, the governor of Badajoz, by strong planks bristling with
iron spikes, and with _chevaux-de-frise_ of bayonets and broken swords,
that no effect could be produced on the obstruction; whilst the French,
from the ramparts and the houses overlooking them, poured down the
most destructive volleys. But the parties at the other two breaches
were more successful, and on their drawing away the French from this
quarter, the spike-beams and _chevaux-de-frise_ were knocked down,
and the British were soon masters of the place. Philippon endeavoured
to escape with a number of men, but he was obliged to throw himself
into Fort San Christoval, on the other side the Guadiana, where he was
compelled to surrender. The loss of the allies was nearly one thousand
men killed, including seventy-two officers, and three hundred and six
officers and three thousand four hundred and eighty men wounded. The
French, though they fought under cover of batteries and houses, lost
nearly one thousand five hundred men; they also delivered up upwards of
five thousand prisoners of their own nation, and nearly four thousand
Spaniards, British, and Portuguese, who had been kept at Badajoz as a
safe fortress. The British soldiers fought with their usual undaunted
bravery, but they disgraced themselves by getting drunk in the wine
cellars during the night of the storming, and committed many excesses.
Wellington, who was extremely rigorous in suppressing all such conduct,
reduced them to discipline as quickly as possible, and on the 8th
Badajoz was completely in his hands. Soult, who was at Villafranca
when he received the news, immediately retreated again on Seville,
briskly pursued by the British cavalry, who did much execution on his
rear-guard at Villagarcia.

Wellington proceeded to put Badajoz into a strong state of defence,
but he was soon called off by the movements of Marmont, who, in his
absence, had advanced and invested both Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida.
Wellington left General Hill to watch the south, which was the more
necessary as Soult was in strong force at Seville, and Victor before
Cadiz. That general had made a vigorous attack on Tarifa towards
the end of December, but was repulsed with much loss by Colonel
Skerrett. Hill, who had about twelve thousand men, made a successful
attack on some strong forts near Almaraz, on the Tagus, erected by
the French to protect their bridge of boats there--thus closing the
communication between Soult in the south and Marmont in the north. In
these satisfactory circumstances, Wellington broke up his cantonments
between the Coa and the Agueda on the 13th of June, and commenced his
march into Spain with about forty thousand men. Of these, however,
one column consisted of Spaniards, on whom he wisely placed little
reliance, and his cavalry was small and indifferently officered in
comparison with the infantry. Marmont had as many infantry as himself,
and a much more numerous and better disciplined cavalry. As Wellington
advanced, too, he learned that General Bonnet, with a force upwards of
six thousand strong, was hastening to support Marmont. That general
abandoned Salamanca as Wellington approached, and on the 17th the
British army entered the city, to the great joy of the people, who,
during the three years which the French had held it, had suffered
inconceivable miseries and insults; not the least of these was to see
the usurper destroy twenty-two of the twenty-five colleges in this
famous seat of learning, and thirteen out of twenty-five convents.
Troops were left in different forts, both in the city and by the
bridge over the river Tormes, which forts had chiefly been constructed
out of the materials of the schools and monasteries. These were soon
compelled to surrender, but not without heavy loss. Major Bowes and
one hundred and twenty men fell in carrying those by the bridge. After
different manœuvres, Marmont showed himself on the British right,
near San Christoval, where he was met by a division under Sir Thomas
Graham, who had beaten the French at Barrosa. Fresh manœuvres then
took place: Marmont crossing and recrossing the Douro, and marching
along its banks, to cut off Wellington from his forces in Salamanca,
and to enable himself to open the way for King Joseph's troops from
Madrid. This being accomplished, and being joined by General Bonnet,
he faced the army of Wellington on the Guareña. On the 20th of July he
crossed that river, and there was a rapid movement of both armies, each
trying to prevent the other from cutting off the way to Salamanca and
Ciudad Rodrigo. On that day both armies were seen marching parallel
to each other, and now and then exchanging cannon-shots. The military
authorities present there describe the scene of those two rival
armies--making a total of ninety thousand men, and each displaying
all the splendour and discipline of arms, each general intent on
taking the other at some disadvantage--as one of the finest spectacles
ever seen in warfare. The next day both generals crossed the river
Tormes--Wellington by the bridge in his possession, the French by
fords higher up. They were now in front of Salamanca, Marmont still
manœuvring to cut off the road to Ciudad Rodrigo. On the morning of
the 22nd Marmont, favoured by some woods, gained some advantage in
that direction; but Wellington drew up his troops in great strength
behind the village of Arapiles, and Marmont extending his left to turn
the British right flank, Wellington suddenly made a desperate dash at
his line, and cut it in two. Marmont's left was quickly beaten on the
heights that he had occupied, and was driven down them at the point of
the bayonet. Marmont was so severely wounded that he was compelled to
quit the field, and give up the command to Bonnet; but Bonnet was soon
wounded too, and obliged to surrender the command to General Clausel,
who had just arrived with reinforcements from "the army of the north,"
of which Wellington had had information, and which induced him to give
battle before he could bring up all his force. Clausel reformed the
line, and made a terrible attack on the British with his artillery;
but Wellington charged again, though the fight was up hill; drove the
French from their heights with the bayonet once more, and sent them
in full rout through the woods towards the Tormes. They were sharply
pursued by the infantry, under General Anson, and the cavalry, under
Sir Stapleton Cotton, till the night stopped them. But at dawn the same
troops again pursued them, supported by more horse; and overtaking the
enemy's rear at La Serna, they drove it in--the cavalry putting spurs
to their horses, and leaving the foot to their fate. Three battalions
of these were made prisoners. As the French fled, they encountered the
main body of Clausel's army of the north, but these turned and fled
too; and on the night of the 23rd the fugitives had reached Flores de
Avila, thirty miles from the field of battle. The flight and pursuit
were continued all the way from Salamanca to Valladolid.

Lord Wellington did not give the retreating enemy much time for
repose; within the week he was approaching Valladolid and Clausel was
quitting it in all haste. On the 30th of July Wellington entered that
city amid the enthusiastic acclamations of the people. In his haste,
Clausel abandoned seventeen pieces of artillery, considerable stores,
and eight hundred sick and wounded. The priests were preparing to
make grand processions and sing a _Te Deum_ in honour of Wellington's
victories, as they had done at Salamanca; but he was much too intent
on following up his blows to stay. He was on his march the very next
day. He re-crossed the Douro to advance against King Joseph Buonaparte,
who had set out from Madrid to make a junction with Marmont, but on
arriving at Arevalo Joseph had learnt with amazement of the French
defeat, and diverted his march, with twenty thousand men, on Segovia,
in order to reinforce Clausel. Wellington left a division to guard
against Clausel's return from Burgos, whither the latter had fled,
and, collecting provisions with difficulty, he marched forward towards
Madrid. Joseph fell back as the British advanced. Wellington was at San
Ildefonso on the 9th of August, and on the 11th issued from the defiles
of the mountains into the plain on which Madrid stands. On the 12th he
entered the capital amid the most enthusiastic cheers--Joseph having
merely reached his palace to flee out of it again towards Toledo. He
had, however, left a garrison in the palace of Buon Retiro; but this
surrendered almost as soon as invested, and twenty thousand stand of
arms, one hundred and eighty pieces of ordnance, and military stores
of various kinds were found in it. These were particularly acceptable;
for it can scarcely be credited in what circumstances Wellington had
been pursuing his victorious career. We learn this, however, from his
dispatch to Lord Bathurst, dated July 28th--that is, very shortly
before his arrival at Madrid. After declaring that he was in need of
almost everything, he particularises emphatically: "I likewise request
your lordship not to forget horses for the cavalry, _and money_. We
are absolutely bankrupt. The troops are now five months in arrears,
instead of being one month in advance. The staff have not been paid
since February, the muleteers not since July, 1811; and we are in debt
in all parts of the country. I am obliged to take the money sent to me
by my brother for the Spaniards, in order to give a fortnight's pay to
my own troops, who are really suffering from want of money."

The news of Wellington's defeat of Marmont, and his occupation
of the capital, caused Soult to call Victor from the blockade of
Cadiz; and uniting his forces, he retired into Granada. The French,
after destroying their works,--the creation of so much toil and
expenditure,--retreated with such precipitation from before Cadiz that
they left behind a vast quantity of their stores, several hundred
pieces of ordnance--some of which, of extraordinary length, had been
cast for this very siege--and thirty gunboats. They were not allowed to
retire unmolested. The British and Spanish troops pursued them from
Tarifa, harassed them on the march, drove them out of San Lucar, and
carried Seville by storm, notwithstanding eight battalions being still
there to defend it. The peasantry rushed out from woods and mountains
to attack the rear of Soult on his march by Carmona to Granada,
and the sufferings of his soldiers were most severe from excessive
fatigue, heat, want of food, and these perpetual attacks. General Hill
meanwhile advanced from the Guadiana against King Joseph, who fell back
to Toledo, hoping to keep up a communication with Soult and Suchet,
the latter of whom lay on the borders of Valencia and Catalonia. But
General Hill soon compelled him to retreat from Toledo, and the British
general then occupied that city, Ypez, and Aranjuez, thus placing
himself in connection with Lord Wellington, and cutting off the French
in the south from all approach to Madrid.

But Wellington had no expectation whatever of maintaining his
headquarters at that city. His own army was not sufficient to repel
any fresh hordes of French who might be poured down upon him; and as
for the Spaniards, they had no force that could be relied upon for
a moment. The incurable pride of this people rendered them utterly
incapable of learning from their allies, who, with a comparatively
small force, were every day showing them what discipline and good
command could do. They would not condescend to be taught, nor to serve
under a foreigner, though that foreigner was everywhere victorious, and
they were everywhere beaten. They continued, as they had been from the
first, a ragged, disorderly rabble, always on the point of starvation,
and always sure to be dispersed, if not destroyed, whenever they were
attacked. Only in guerilla fight did they show any skill, or do any
good.

When, therefore, Lord Wellington pondered over matters in Madrid, he
looked in vain for anything like a regular Spanish army, after all the
lessons which had been given to them. The army of Galicia, commanded by
Santocildes, considered the best Spanish force, had been defeated by
Clausel, himself in the act of escaping from Wellington. Ballasteros
had a certain force under him, but his pride would not allow him to
co-operate with Lord Wellington, and he was soon afterwards dismissed
by the Cortes from his command. O'Donnel had had an army in Murcia, but
he, imagining that he could cope with the veteran troops of Suchet, had
been most utterly routed, his men flinging away ten thousand muskets
as they fled. Moreover, Wellington had been greatly disappointed in his
hopes of a reinforcement from Sicily. He had urged on Ministers the
great aid which an efficient detachment from the army maintained by us
in Sicily might render by landing on the eastern coast of Spain, and
clearing the French out of Catalonia, Valencia, and Murcia. This could
now be readily complied with, because there was no longer any danger
of invasion of Sicily from Naples, Murat being called away to assist
in Buonaparte's campaign in Russia. But the plan found an unexpected
opponent in our Commander-in-Chief in Sicily, Lord William Bentinck.
Lord William at first appeared to coincide in the scheme, but soon
changed his mind, having conceived an idea of making a descent on
the continent of Italy during Murat's absence. Lord Wellington wrote
earnestly to him, showing him that Suchet and Soult must be expelled
from the south of Spain, which could be easily effected by a strong
force under British command landing in the south-east and co-operating
with him from the north, or he must himself again retire to Portugal,
being exposed to superior forces from both north and south. The
expedition was at length sent, under General Maitland, but such a
force as was utterly useless. It did not exceed six thousand men; and
such men! They were chiefly a rabble of Sicilian and other foreign
vagabonds, who had been induced to enlist, and were, for the most part,
undisciplined.

[Illustration: MARSHAL SOULT. (_From the Portrait by Rouillard._)]

This armament, with which Sir John Falstaff certainly would not have
marched through Coventry, arrived off Tosa, on the coast of Catalonia,
on the 1st of August. The brave Catalans, who had given the French more
trouble than all the Spaniards besides, were rejoiced at the idea of a
British army coming to aid them in rooting out the French; but Maitland
received discouraging information from some Spaniards as to the
forces and capabilities of Suchet, and refused to land there. Admiral
Sir Edward Pellew and Captain Codrington in vain urged him to land,
declaring that the Spaniards with whom he had conferred were traitors.
Maitland called a council of war, and it agreed with him in opinion.
This was precisely what Lord Wellington had complained of to Lord
William Bentinck, who had propagated the most discouraging opinions
amongst the officers regarding the service in Spain. He had assured
him that a discouraged army was as good as no army whatever. The fleet
then, much to the disappointment of the Catalans, conveyed the force to
the bay of Alicante, and there landed it on the 9th of August. Suchet,
who was lying within sight of that port, immediately retired, and
Maitland, so long as he withdrew, marched after him, and occupied the
country; but soon hearing that King Joseph was marching to reinforce
Suchet, and that Soult was likely to join them, he again evacuated
the country, cooped himself up in Alicante, and lay there, of no use
whatever as a diversion in favour of Wellington, who was liable at
Madrid to be gradually surrounded by a hundred thousand men. Wellington
must proceed against one of the French armies, north or south. Had a
proper force, with a bold commander, been sent to the south, he could
soon have dealt with the northern enemies. A more dubious necessity now
lay before him; but it required no long deliberation as to which way he
should move. Clausel was expecting reinforcements from France, and he
proposed to attack him before they could arrive.

On the 1st of September Wellington marched out of Madrid, and directed
his course towards Valladolid, leaving, however, Hill in the city with
two divisions. He then proceeded towards Burgos, and, on the way,
fell in with the Spanish army of Galicia, commanded by Santocildes,
ten thousand in number, but, like all the Spanish troops, destitute
of discipline and everything else which constitutes effective
soldiers--clothes, food, and proper arms. Clausel quitted Burgos on
the approach of Wellington, but left two thousand, under General
Dubreton, in the castle. Wellington entered the place on the 19th, and
immediately invested the castle. The French stood a desperate siege
vigorously, and after various attempts to storm the fort, and only
gaining the outworks, the news of the advance of the army of the
north, and of that of Soult and King Joseph from the south, compelled
the British to abandon the attempt. General Ballasteros had been
commanded by the Cortes, at the request of Lord Wellington, to take
up a position in La Mancha, which would check the progress of Soult;
but that proud and ignorant man neglected to do so, because he was
boiling over with anger at the Cortes having appointed Lord Wellington
Commander-in-Chief of the Spanish armies. General Hill, therefore,
found it prudent to quit Madrid, and fall back on Salamanca; and Lord
Wellington, on the 21st of October, raised the siege of the castle of
Burgos, and moved to Palencia, to be near to General Hill. At Palencia
Lord Dalhousie joined him with a fresh brigade from England; and he
continued his retreat to the Douro, pursued briskly by the French,
under General Souham. At Tudela Souham halted to wait for Soult, who
was approaching.

Wellington did not feel himself secure till he had crossed the Tormes.
On his march General Hill came up, and once more taking up his old
position on the heights of San Christoval, in front of Salamanca,
which he did on the 9th of November, he declared, in his dispatch to
the Secretary at War, that he thought he had escaped from the worst
military situation that he ever was in, for he could not count at
all on the Spanish portion of his army. On the 10th Souham and Soult
united their forces, now amounting to seventy-five thousand foot and
twelve thousand cavalry; Wellington's army mustering only forty-five
thousand foot and five thousand cavalry. He now expected an immediate
attack, and posted his army on the heights of the two Arapiles for the
purpose; but the French generals did not think well to fight him, and
he continued his retreat through Salamanca, and on to Ciudad Rodrigo,
where he established his headquarters, distributing part of his army
in their old cantonments between the Agueda and the Coa. This was
accomplished before the end of November; and General Hill proceeded
into Spanish Estremadura, and entered into cantonments near Coria. The
French took up their quarters at some distance in Old Castile.

This retreat had been made under great difficulties; the weather being
excessively wet, the rivers swollen, and the roads knee-deep in mud.
Provisions were scarce, and the soldiers found great difficulty in
cooking the skinny, tough beef that they got, on account of the wet
making it hard to kindle fires. The Spaniards, as usual, concealed
all the provisions they could, and charged enormously for any that
they were compelled to part with. In fact, no enemies could have been
treated worse than they treated us all the while that we were doing
and suffering so much for them. The soldiers became so enraged that
they set at defiance the strict system which Wellington exacted in this
respect, and cudgelled the peasantry to compel them to bring out food,
and seized it wherever they could find it. In fact, the discipline
of the army was fast deteriorating from these causes, and Wellington
issued very stern orders to the officers on the subject. Till they
reached the Tormes, too, the rear was continually harassed by the
French; and Sir Edward Paget, mounting a hill to make observations, was
surprised and made prisoner.

As usual, a great cry was raised at the retreat of Wellington. The
Spaniards would have had him stand and do battle for them, as foolishly
as their own generals did, who, never calculating the fitting time and
circumstances, were always being beaten. Amongst the first and loudest
to abuse him was Ballasteros, the man who, by his spiteful disregard
of orders, had been the chief cause of the necessity to retreat. But
it was not the Spaniards only, but many people in England, especially
of the Opposition, who raised this ungenerous cry. Wellington alluded
to these censures with his wonted calmness in his dispatches. "I
am much afraid," he said, "from what I see in the newspapers, that
the public will be much disappointed at the result of the campaign,
notwithstanding that it is, in fact, the most successful campaign in
all its circumstances, and has produced for the common cause more
important results than any campaign in which the British army has been
engaged for the last century. We have taken by siege Ciudad Rodrigo,
Badajoz, and Salamanca, and the Retiro has surrendered. In the meantime
the allies have taken Astorga, Consuegra, and Guadalaxara, besides
other places. In the ten months elapsed since January, this army has
sent to England little short of twenty thousand prisoners; and they
have taken and destroyed, or have themselves retained the use of, the
enemy's arsenals in Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Valladolid,
Madrid, Astorga, Seville, the lines before Cadiz, etc.; and, upon
the whole, we have taken and destroyed, or we now possess, little
short of three thousand pieces of cannon. The siege of Cadiz has been
raised, and all the country south of the Tagus has been cleared of
the enemy. We should have retained greater advantages, I think, and
should have remained in possession of Castile and Madrid during the
winter, if I could have taken Burgos, as I ought, early in October, or
if Ballasteros had moved upon Alcaraz, as he was ordered, instead of
intriguing for his own aggrandisement."

The interval of repose now obtained continued through the winter, and
late into the spring of 1813. It was greatly required by the British
army. Lord Wellington stated that the long campaign, commencing in
January, had completely tired down man and horse; that they both
required thorough rest and good food, and that the discipline of the
army, as was always the case after a long campaign, needed restoration;
and he set himself about to insure these ends, not only in the troops
immediately under his own eye, but in those under Maitland and his
successors in the south. He had, even during his own retreat, written
to Maitland, encouraging him to have confidence in his men, assuring
him that they would repay it by corresponding confidence in themselves.
Lord William Bentinck, however, ordered Maitland to return to Sicily
with his army in October; Lord Wellington decidedly forbade it.
Maitland therefore resigned, and was succeeded by General Clinton, who
found himself completely thwarted in his movements by the governor of
Alicante, who treated the allies much more like enemies, and would not
allow the British to have possession of a single gate of the town,
keeping them more like prisoners than free agents. At the beginning
of December a fresh reinforcement of four thousand men, under General
Campbell, arrived from Sicily, and Campbell took the chief command; but
he did not venture to take any decisive movement against the French,
but waited for Lord William Bentinck himself, who now determined to
come over, but did not arrive till July, 1813. Whilst Campbell remained
inactive from this cause, his motley foreign troops continued to
desert, and many of them went and enlisted with Suchet.




CHAPTER II.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).

    Rancour of the Americans towards England--Their Admiration of
    Napoleon--The Right of Search and consequent Disputes--Madison's
    warlike Declaration--Opposition in Congress--Condition of
    Canada--Capture of Michilimachimac--An Armistice--Repulse of the
    Invasion of Canada--Naval Engagements--Napoleon and the Czar
    determine on War--Attempts to dissuade Napoleon--Unpreparedness
    of Russia--Bernadotte's Advice to Alexander--Rashness of
    Napoleon--Policy of Prussia, Austria and Turkey--Overtures to
    England and Russia--Napoleon goes to the Front--His extravagant
    Language--The War begins--Disillusion of the Poles--Difficulties
    of the Advance--Bagration and Barclay de Tolly--Napoleon pushes
    on--Capture of Smolensk--Battle of Borodino--The Russians evacuate
    Moscow--Buonaparte occupies the City--Conflagrations burst
    out--Desperate Position of Affairs--Murat and Kutusoff--Defeat
    of Murat--The Retreat begins--Its Horrors--Caution of
    Kutusoff--Passage of the Beresina--Napoleon leaves the Army--His
    Arrival in Paris--Results of the Campaign--England's Support
    of Russia--Close of 1812--Wellington's improved Prospects--He
    advances against Joseph Buonaparte--Battle of Vittoria--Retreat
    of the French--Soult is sent against Wellington--The Battle
    of the Pyrenees--The Storming of San Sebastian--Wellington
    forbids Plundering--He goes into Winter-quarters--Campaign
    in the south-east of Spain--Napoleon's Efforts to renew the
    Campaign--Desertion of Murat and Bernadotte--Alliance between
    Prussia and Russia--Austrian Mediation fails--Early Successes
    of the Allies--Battle of Lützen--Napoleon's false Account
    of the Battle--Occupation of Hamburg by Davoust--Battle of
    Bautzen--Armistice of Pleisswitz--Failure of the Negotiations--The
    Fortification of Dresden--Successive Defeats of the French by the
    Allies--The Aid of England--Battle of Leipsic--Retreat of the
    French across the Rhine--The French Yoke is thrown off--Castlereagh
    summons England to fresh Exertions--Liberation of the Pope--Failure
    of Buonaparte's Attempt to restore Ferdinand--Wellington's
    Remonstrance with the British Ministry--Battles of Orthez and
    Toulouse--Termination of the Campaign--Exhaustion of France--The
    Allies on the Frontier--Napoleon's final Efforts--The Congress
    of Chàtillon--The Allies advance on Paris--Surrender of the
    Capital--A Provisional Government appointed--Napoleon abdicates
    in favour of his Son--His unconditional Abdication--Return of the
    Bourbons--Insecurity of their Power--Treaty of Paris--Bad Terms to
    England--Visit of the Monarchs to London.


From skirmishing at sea the British had now come to direct war with
the people of North America. From the period of the American colonists
obtaining their independence of Great Britain, they retained a
peculiar animus against the mother country. In the war by which that
independence was achieved by the aid of France, Holland, and Spain,
which all combined to attack Britain on sea and land, the Americans
displayed no traces of the magnanimity that usually accompanies
bravery. They resorted to many dishonourable practices, amongst which
was the breach of contract in retaining prisoners from the army of
General Burgoyne. The same spirit continued to animate them afterwards.
It was natural to suppose that their success would have the usual
effect of making them forget enmity when the cause of it was gone
by; but this was not the case. In all contests of Great Britain with
revolutionary France, they rejoiced over any disasters which befel her,
and were silent in the hour of her victories. Though they were bone of
our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and our population was pouring over
to swell their numbers, they displayed towards us a hostility that no
other nation, France excepted, had ever shown.

But it was not to Great Britain only that this want of generosity was
shown. No people rejoiced more vehemently than they did--none, indeed,
so much--over the fall and execution of Louis XVI. of France, the one
monarch of Europe who had been their chief benefactor, without whose
powerful aid they would have fought and struggled in vain, and who had,
in fact, lost his crown and his head, and his empire to his family,
by sending his soldiers to learn Republicanism amongst them. There
were feasts and public rejoicings in the United States to commemorate
the death of Louis, who was, in fact, the martyr of America. What was
equally extraordinary, whilst they exulted in the French Republic, they
followed with an equal admiration the career of Buonaparte, who crushed
that Republic, and raised up a despotism opposed in its principles to
all the political professions of Americans. But it was the idea that he
was born to humble and, perhaps, blot out Great Britain from the list
of nations, which served to render Napoleon so especially the object
of their unbounded eulogies. His victories were celebrated nowhere so
vociferously as in the United States, through the press, the pulpit,
and in general oratory. With them he was the Man of Destiny, who was
to overthrow all kings but himself, and drive Great Britain from her
dominion of the seas.

[Illustration: VIEW OF WASHINGTON FROM ARLINGTON HEIGHTS.]

During the Republic of France, and in the worst times of Robespierre,
the French had their Minister, M. Genet, in the United States, who
excited the democrats to acts of hostility against Great Britain, and
gave them French authority to seize and make prizes of British vessels
at sea, though they were nominally at peace with England. And though
Washington, then President, protested against these proceedings, the
main body of the people were against him, and were supported in that
spirit by Jefferson, who was Secretary of State. When Jefferson became
President, in 1801, and Madison his Secretary of State, the hatred
to Great Britain was carried to its extreme, and the friendship of
Buonaparte was cultivated with the utmost zeal. When Jefferson was a
second time President, in 1807, he violently resisted our right of
search of neutral vessels, thus playing into the hands of Buonaparte
and his Berlin Decree, in the hope of carrying on a large trade with
the European Continent at our expense. Out of this arose the affair of
the _Leopard_ and the _Chesapeake_ off the capes of Virginia, in which
the _Chesapeake_, refusing to allow a search for British deserters,
was attacked and taken. This put the whole of the democracy of America
into a raging fury, though the boarding of the United States war-sloop,
the _Hornet_, in the French port of L'Orient, for the same purpose,
was passed over without a murmur. To prevent such collisions, Canning,
on the part of the British Government, issued orders that search of
war-ships should be discontinued. This, however, did not prevent
Jefferson from making proclamations prohibiting British men-of-war from
entering or remaining in American ports; and the utmost indignities
were offered to all the officers and crews of our men-of-war who
happened to be lying in American harbours. Moreover, Jefferson issued,
in December, 1807, an embargo against all American vessels quitting
their own ports, because if at sea they did not submit to be searched
to ascertain whether they were carrying goods to French ports, they
were treated as hostile by Great Britain, were attacked and seized.
This was in retaliation of Buonaparte's Berlin Decree, and made
necessary by it. On the other hand, Buonaparte seized any American
or other vessel entering into any port of Europe under the power of
France, which had submitted to search. To prevent this certain seizure
of trading vessels, the embargo was issued, and all merchant vessels
of all nations were prohibited from entering American ports. A more
suicidal act than this could not be conceived, and the people of the
United States soon complained loudly of the consequences. In 1809,
Madison succeeding Jefferson in the Presidency, and Buonaparte having
now rendered matters worse by his Milan Decree, besides his Berlin one,
Madison abolished the general embargo with all nations except France
and Great Britain, and declared this, too, at an end, whenever either
or both of these nations withdrew--the one its Decrees and the other
its Orders in Council. But in 1810 Madison declared that France had
withdrawn its Decrees so far as America was concerned; though this
was notoriously untrue. Numbers of American vessels continued to be
seized in French ports, though the United States Government dared not
complain, nor did they ever recover any compensation from Napoleon; it
was from Louis Philippe that they first obtained such compensation,
and, curiously enough, through the friendly intervention of Great
Britain.

The British Government had done all in its power, except annuling the
Orders in Council, to produce a better tone of feeling in America.
It put up with many insults and violations of neutrality. It sent
Mr. Foster as envoy to the United States to endeavour to adjust all
differences; but in vain. This continued so till 1812, when, on the
20th of May, Mr. Russell, the American _chargé-d'affaires_, presented
Lord Castlereagh with a copy of an instrument by which France had, on
the 28th of April, abrogated its Berlin and Milan Decrees so far as
they related to American vessels. To show an equal liberality, Great
Britain, on the 23rd of June, revoked its Orders in Council so far as
concerned America, on condition that the United States also revoked
its non-Intercourse Act. But this had no effect on the Government of
America, which had already concluded a secret treaty with France,
and was making every preparation for the invasion of our Canadian
colonies. The Americans had the most profound idea of the stability of
Buonaparte, and could not conceive that the expedition that he was now
preparing against Russia would prove his overthrow. But they expected
that Buonaparte would crush Russia altogether, and would rule unopposed
over Europe; that the Government of Great Britain was bankrupt, and
that they might assail her with impunity. Accordingly, all activity was
used in getting ready all kinds of ships to send out as privateers,
calculating on a plentiful spoil of British traders in the waters along
the American coast and amongst the West Indian Isles, before they
could be put upon their guard. At the same time, on the 14th of April
they laid an embargo on all American vessels, so as to keep them at
home; and on the 18th of June the President announced to Congress that
the United States and Great Britain were in an actual state of war.
There was a studied ambiguity in this declaration; it did not candidly
take the initiative, and assert that the United States declared war
against Great Britain, but said that the two countries were, somehow or
other, already in a state of war.

But this declaration did not issue without a violent debate in
Congress, where the moderate party stated that the interests of the
country were sacrificed to a mischievous war-spirit, and in the east
and north of the States there was raised a loud cry for severance, as
there had been in the south when Jefferson laid his embargo on American
vessels. They complained that if, as was now alleged, the French
Emperor had abrogated his Berlin and Milan Decrees in favour of America
as early as the 2nd of March, 1811, why was this not communicated
to England before the 20th of May, 1812? And when England had long
ago declared that she would rescind her Orders in Council when such
a notification could be made to her, accompanied by a repeal of the
American non-Intercourse Act; and when she did immediately rescind her
Orders in Council on this condition, why should there be all this haste
to rush into war with Great Britain? They complained bitterly that
though Buonaparte was professed to have abrogated his Decrees as early
as November, 1810, he had gone on till just lately in seizing American
ships, both in the ports of France and by his cruisers at sea. The
State of Massachusetts addressed a strong remonstrance to the Federal
Government, in which they represented the infamy of the descendants of
the Pilgrim Fathers cooperating with the common enemy of civil liberty
to bind other nations in chains, and this at the very moment that the
European peoples were uniting for their violated liberties.

[Illustration: MEN OF WAR OFF PORTSMOUTH.

FROM THE PAINTING BY CLARKSON STANFIELD, R.A., IN THE CORPORATION ART
GALLERY, GUILDHALL.]

But the condition of Canada was very tempting to the cupidity of
Madison and his colleagues. We had very few troops there, and the
defences had been neglected in the tremendous struggle going on in
Europe. At this moment it appeared especially opportune for invading
the Canadas from the States, as Britain was engaged not only in the
arduous struggle in Spain, but its attention was occupied in watching
and promoting the measures that were being prepared in Russia, in
Sweden, and throughout Germany, against the general oppressor.
At such a moment the Americans--professed zealots for liberty and
independence--thought it a worthy object to filch the colonies of the
country which, above all others, was maintaining the contest against
the universal despot. They thought the French Canadians would rise
and join the allies of France against Great Britain. The American
Government had accordingly, so early as in 1811, and nearly a year
previous to the declaration of war, mustered ten thousand men at
Boston, ready for this expedition; and long before the note of war was
sounded they had called out fifty thousand volunteers. Still, up to
the very moment of declaring war, Madison had continually assured our
envoy that there was nothing that he so much wished as the continuance
of amicable connections between the two countries.

As he made these professions, he was, from the very commencement of
the year 1812, and nearly six months before the avowal of hostilities,
drawing the invading force nearer to the frontiers near Detroit.
General Hull had a body of two thousand five hundred men ready for
the enterprise, well supplied with artillery and stores; and scarcely
was the declaration of war made than he hastened over the frontier
line and seized on the British village of Sandwich. There he issued
a bragging proclamation, calling on the "oppressed" Canadians to
abandon the despotism of kingship and become free citizens of free
America. To meet the invasion, the British had in Canada only about
four thousand regulars, and the militia might number as many more. To
make worse of the matter, the Commander-in-Chief, Sir George Prevost,
was a very inefficient officer. But Major-General Brock sent orders
to the British officers at Fort St. Joseph to attack the American
port of Michilimachimac, which he did on the 17th of July, a month
after the American declaration of war. The place was taken, with sixty
prisoners and seven pieces of artillery. This raised the courage of
the Indians in that quarter, who had long thirsted for revenge of the
continual injuries received from the Americans, and they called on
their different tribes to arm and support the British. At the news of
the capture of Sandwich by Hull, Brock sent Colonel Procter to Fort
Amherstberg to operate against him. He also followed quickly himself,
and found Procter besieging Hull in Fort Detroit, to which he had
retreated across the border. By the 10th of August he compelled Hull
to surrender with his two thousand five hundred men and thirty pieces
of artillery. Not only Fort Detroit and a fine American vessel in the
harbour were taken, but, by the capitulation, the whole of the Michigan
territory, which separated the Indian country from Canada, was ceded to
us, much improving our frontier.

Major-General Brock left Colonel Procter to defend Detroit, and marched
hastily towards Niagara, to surprise the American forts in that
direction. But, in the midst of his preparations, he was thunderstruck
to learn that Sir George Prevost had concluded an armistice with
the American general, Dearborn, and that this armistice stipulated
that neither party should move in any manner till the American
Government had ratified or annulled the engagement. Thus Brock had
the mortification of feeling that his hands were tied up, whilst the
enemy, aroused to the danger of their position, despite the truce, were
marching up troops, and strengthening every fort and port along the
line. As soon as a force of six thousand three hundred men and stores
were ready, Madison refused to ratify the armistice. On his part,
Sir George Prevost had done nothing to support Brock, and this brave
officer found himself with only one thousand two hundred men, partly
regulars and partly militia, to repel the swarming invaders.

On the 18th of October the Americans crossed the frontier opposite to
the village of Queenstown with three thousand men, and found only three
hundred British to oppose them. But Brock was with them, and cheered
them so gallantly that they made a desperate resistance. Unfortunately,
Brock was killed, and then the brave three hundred retreated, and the
American general, Wadsworth, posted himself, with one thousand six
hundred men, on the heights behind Queenstown. But the same afternoon
he was attacked by a fresh body of about one thousand British and
Canadians, and had nearly his whole force killed or taken prisoners.
Himself and nine hundred of his men were captured, and four hundred
remained on the field slain or severely wounded. The rest, a mere
remnant, escaped into the woods, or were drowned in endeavouring to
swim back to their own shore. Thus ended Madison's first attempt to
conquer Canada.

At sea he was somewhat more fortunate. He took care to have his
war-ships, such as they were, in readiness for sea at the very instant
that war was proclaimed. The declaration took place on the 18th of
June, and on the 21st Commodore Rogers was already clear of the harbour
of New York in his flag-ship, the _President_, which was called a
frigate, but was equal to a seventy-four-gun ship, and attended by a
thirty-six-gun frigate, a sloop of war, and a brig-sloop. His hope
was to intercept the sugar fleet from the West Indies, which was only
convoyed by a single frigate and a brig-sloop. Instead of the West
India merchantmen, about one hundred sail in number, he fell in with
the British frigate, the _Belvedere_, commanded by Captain Richard
Byron. Though the two other vessels of war were in sight, Byron did not
flinch. He commenced a vigorous fight with the _President_, and held
on for two hours, pouring three hundred round shot into her from his
two cabin guns alone. By the explosion of a gun, Commodore Rogers and
fifteen of his men were severely wounded. About half-past six in the
evening the _President_ was joined by the _Congress_ frigate, and then
Captain Byron cut away several of his anchors, started fourteen tons
of water, and otherwise lightening his ship, sailed away, and left the
_President_ to repair her damages. By thus detaining Rogers for fifteen
hours the West India fleet was out of all danger. Rogers then continued
a cruising sail towards Madeira and the Azores, and captured a few
small merchantmen, and regained an American one, and he then returned
home without having secured a single British armed vessel, but having
been in great trepidation lest he should fall in with some of our ships
of the line.

[Illustration: INVASION OF CANADA: RED MEN ON THE WAR PATH. (_See p._
35.)]

Captain Dacres, of the _Guerrière_, returning to Halifax to refit
after convoying another fleet of merchantmen, fell in with the large
United States' frigate _Constitution_, commanded by Captain Hull. The
_Guerrière_ was old and rotten, wanting a thorough refit, or, rather,
laying entirely aside. In addition to other defects she was badly
supplied with ammunition. The _Guerrière_ had only two hundred and
forty-four men and nineteen boys; the _Constitution_ had four hundred
and seventy-six men, and a great number of expert riflemen amongst
them, which the American men-of-war always carried to pick off the
enemy, and especially the officers, from the tops. Yet Captain Dacres
stayed and fought the _Constitution_ till his masts and yards were
blown away, and his vessel was in a sinking state. In this condition
Dacres, who was himself severely wounded with a rifle-ball, struck, the
only alternative being going to the bottom. The old ship was then set
on fire, the British crew being first removed to the American ship.
Though the contest had been almost disgracefully unequal, the triumph
over it in the United States was inconceivable. Hull and his men were
thanked in the most extravagant terms, and a grant of fifty thousand
dollars was made them for a feat which would not have elicited a single
comment in England. But when our officers and men were carried on board
the _Constitution_, they discovered that nearly one-half--a number, in
fact, equal to their own--were English or Irish. Some of the principal
officers were English; many of the men were very recent deserters; and
so much was the American captain alarmed lest a fellow-feeling should
spring up between the compatriots of the two crews, that he kept his
prisoners manacled and chained to the deck of his ship during the night
after the battle, and for the greater part of the following day.

[Illustration: DUEL BETWEEN THE "GUERRIÈRE" AND THE "CONSTITUTION."
(_See p._ 36.)]

There were three or four more of these utterly unequal fights, in which
the Americans succeeded in capturing small British vessels when at the
point of sinking. Such was the case with the _Macedon_, which, with
a crew of two hundred and sixty-two men and thirty-four boys, fought
the _United States_, with more and heavier guns, and with a crew of
four hundred and seventy-seven men and one boy. The _Macedon_ was a
complete wreck before she struck. Similar cases were those of the
_Java_ frigate, Captain Lambert, which struck to the _Constitution_,
and the British eighteen-gun brig-sloop the _Frolic_, which struck to
the American brig-sloop _Wasp_, of eighteen guns. Here the arms were
equal, but the crews most unequal, for the _Frolic_ had a small crew,
very sickly from five years' service in the West Indies, and the ship
itself was in bad condition. Within a very few hours the _Frolic_ was
re-captured by the British seventy-four gun-ship, the _Poictiers_,
which carried off the American vessel too. In none of these cases was
there anything like an equal fight, the Americans being too shrewd to
risk that if they could avoid it. In all cases a large proportion of
the crews was made up of British deserters. The accounts, however,
which the Americans published of these affairs were as usual of the
most vaunting character.

This was the fatal year in which Buonaparte, led on by the unsleeping
ambition of being the master of all Europe, and so of all the world,
made his last great attempt--that of subduing Russia to his yoke--and
thus wrecked himself for ever. From the very day of the Treaty of
Tilsit, neither he nor Alexander of Russia had put faith in each other.
Buonaparte felt that the Czar was uneasy under the real dictatorship
of France which existed under the name of alliance. He knew that he
was most restless under the mischief accruing from the stipulated
embargo on British commerce, and which, from the ruin which it must
bring on the Russian merchants, and the consequent distress of the
whole population, might, in fact, cause him to disappear from the
throne and from life as so many of his ancestors had done. Timber,
pitch, potash, hemp, tallow, and other articles were the very staple
of Russia's trade, and the British were the greatest of all customers
for these. The landed proprietors derived a large income from these
commodities, and they asked why they were to perish that Buonaparte
might destroy Great Britain, whence they drew their principal wealth.
He knew that Alexander looked with deep suspicion on his giving the
Duchy of Warsaw to the King of Saxony, a descendant of the royal family
of Poland. To this act was added the stipulations for a free military
road and passage for troops from Saxony to Warsaw; and also that France
should retain Dantzic till after a maritime peace. These things seemed
to point to the re-establishment of the kingdom of Poland, and the
demand, at some future day, for the surrender of the rest of the Polish
territory by Russia. So the Poles seemed to interpret these matters,
for they had, since these arrangements, flocked to his standard, and
were fighting Buonaparte's battles in Spain. To these causes of offence
and alarm, which Alexander did not hesitate to express, and which
Napoleon refused to dissipate, were added the seizure of the Duchy of
Oldenburg, guaranteed to Alexander's near relative, and the marriage
alliance with Austria. Alexander, on this last occasion, said--"Then my
turn comes next;" and in anticipation of it he had been strengthening
himself by a secret league with Sweden.

To the Czar it appeared most politic that the war with Napoleon, as it
must come, should come whilst the British in Spain were harassing him
and draining his resources; and, on his part, Buonaparte, resenting the
hostile attitude of Alexander, and suspecting his secret understanding
with Bernadotte, determined, notwithstanding the ominous character of
the war in Spain, to summon an army utterly overwhelming and crush the
Czar at once. It was in vain that such of his counsellors as dared
urged him to abstain from the Russian invasion. They represented the
vast extent of Russia; its enormous deserts, into which the army could
retreat, and which must exhaust so large a host as he contemplated;
the inhospitable climate; the difficult rivers; the unprofitableness
of the conquest, if it succeeded; and the improbability that success
there would put an end to the war in Spain, whilst any serious disaster
would cause the nations to stand up behind him as one man. These were
all arguments of mere policy; for as to the considerations suggested by
morality or justice, these had long been abandoned by Buonaparte, and
therefore were never even adverted to by his friends.

Regardless of all advice, Buonaparte hastened to precipitate matters
with Russia. He seized and confiscated fifty Swedish merchantmen, and
further to express his determination to punish Bernadotte for his
refusal to be his slave--he boasted before his courtiers that he would
have him seized in Sweden, and brought to the castle of Vincennes,
and he is said to have planned doing it--in January of this year he
ordered Davoust to enter Swedish Pomerania and take possession of
it. Buonaparte followed up this act of war by marching vast bodies
of troops northwards, overrunning Prussia, Pomerania, and the Duchy
of Warsaw with them. They were now on the very frontiers of Russia,
and Alexander was in the utmost terror. He saw already four hundred
thousand men ready to burst into his dominions, and as many more
following. He had only one hundred and forty thousand to oppose them;
he had no generals of mark or experience; confusion reigned everywhere.
In the utmost consternation he demanded an interview with Bernadotte,
now the sole hope of Europe, at Abo; and Bernadotte, who had his
objects to gain, took his time. When the Russian Ambassador, in great
trepidation, said to him that the Emperor waited for him, he rose, laid
his hand on his sword, and said, theatrically, "The Emperor waits!
Good! He who knows how to win battles may regard himself as the equal
of kings!"

Bernadotte took his time, and went. It was in March. At Abo, in
a solitary hut, he and Alexander met, and there the final ruin
of Napoleon was sketched out by a master's hand--that of his old
companion in arms. Bernadotte knew all the strength and weakness of
Napoleon; he had long watched the causes which would ultimately break
up the wonderful career of his victories. He listened to the fears
of Alexander, and bade him dismiss them. He told him that it was the
timidity of his opponents which had given to Napoleon the victories of
Austerlitz and Wagram; that, as regarded the present war, nothing could
equal his infatuated blindness; that, treating the wishes of Poland
with contempt, neglecting the palpably necessary measures of securing
his flanks by the alliance of Turkey and Sweden, east and west, he was
only rushing on suicide in the vast deserts five hundred miles from
his frontiers; that all that was necessary on the part of Russia was
to commence a war of devastation; to destroy all his resources, in the
manner of the ancient Scythians and Parthians; to pursue him everywhere
with a war of fanaticism and desolation; to admit of no peace till
he was driven to the left bank of the Rhine, where the oppressed and
vengeful nationalities would arise and annihilate him; that Napoleon,
so brilliant and bold in attack, would show himself incapable of
conducting a retreat of eight hours--a retreat would be the certain
signal of his ruin. If he approached St. Petersburg, he engaged for
himself to make a descent on France with fifty thousand men, and to
call on both the Republican and constitutional parties to arise and
liberate their country from the tyrant. Meanwhile, they must close the
passage of the Beresina against him, when they would inevitably secure
his person. They must then proclaim everywhere his death, and his whole
dynasty would go to pieces with far greater rapidity than it grew.

Every one knows how well these instructions were carried out; how the
final hope of Napoleon was destroyed by the conflagration of Moscow,
and the terrors of that fearful retreat, in which clouds of Cossacks,
mingling with those of the snow and hail, completed the most horrible
tragedy which the history of wars from the world's foundation contains;
with what consummate ability Bernadotte led his Swedes, through all the
great and eventful campaign of 1813, from Leipsic to Paris, and how he
received his reward--the possession of Norway, and a family compact
between himself and the Czar of Russia; while Denmark, with a fatal
blindness to the signs of the times, adhered to the falling power, and
became, like Saxony, dismembered and debilitated.

To any one viewing the situation of Buonaparte at this moment, it can
appear nothing but an act of madness to invade Russia. The British,
in Spain, were now defeating his best generals, and this would at an
earlier period have caused him to hasten to that country and endeavour
to settle the war in person. It is remarkable that he was not desirous
to cope with Wellington himself, all his ablest generals having failed.
But to leave such an enemy in his rear when he proceeded to the North,
impresses us with the idea that his enormous success had now turned his
head, and that the term of his career had been reached. Besides Spain,
too, there were Prussia and Austria, with whom it was only politic to
enter into some terms of security; for assuredly, if his arms suffered
a reverse in Russia, all these would rise and join his enemies.

The King of Prussia was anxious to unite with Russia, and to furnish
forty thousand men for the common defence. But all his strongest
garrisons were in the hands of France, and Alexander did not advise
him to subject his territories to the certain misery of being overrun
by the French till the contest in Russia was decided; for Alexander
meant to fall back during the early part of the campaign, and could,
therefore, lend no aid to Prussia. It was agreed, therefore, that
Prussia should afford the demanded twenty thousand men and sixty
pieces of artillery to the army of Napoleon, and act according to
circumstances. Prussia was also to furnish the French army with all
that it required during its march across it, the charge to be deducted
from the debt of Prussia to France.

Austria also furnished thirty thousand men, under Prince Schwarzenberg,
but with secret orders to do no more than just keep up appearances, as
Alexander had done during the campaign of Wagram. It was of the utmost
consequence that Turkey should have been conciliated by Napoleon.
Russia had long been ravaging the outlying provinces of that empire,
and nothing could have been more plain than the policy of engaging
Turkey against Russia at this crisis, to divide the latter's attention
by menacing its eastern boundaries. But Buonaparte ever since the
Treaty of Tilsit had been neglecting the Turks, to allow his ally,
Alexander, to make his aggressions on them, and now he altered his
plan too late. When he made overtures, so late as March of this year,
not only to put them in possession of Moldavia and Wallachia, but
to recover the Crimea for the Turks, on condition that they should
invade Russia from the east with a hundred thousand men, his offer
was rejected, the Porte having already been persuaded by the British
to make peace with Russia at Bucharest. Thus France, entering on this
great enterprise, left Spain and Sweden in open hostility, and carried
with her Austria and Prussia as very dubious allies. At the same time
the news arrived of the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo, in Spain, and, with
this, the certainty that Great Britain would do all in her power to
arouse and support the enemies of Napoleon in every quarter.

Under the influence of this persuasion, Buonaparte suddenly made
overtures of peace to Great Britain, though, on the conditions which
he proposed, they were certain to be rejected. The Duke of Bassano
wrote to Lord Castlereagh, offering to secure the independence of Spain
under the present reigning dynasty; that Portugal should continue
under the rule of the House of Braganza, and Naples under Murat. Lord
Castlereagh replied that if by the present reigning dynasty of Spain
was meant King Joseph, there could be no treaty, and there the matter
ended; for even Fouché says that Napoleon's Ministers were ashamed of
so clumsy a proposal of ignorance and bad faith. Failing with Great
Britain, Buonaparte turned to Russia herself, intimating a desire for
peace, but not finding it in his heart to offer any terms likely to be
accepted. In fact, he was now so demented by the ambition which meant
soon to destroy him, that he fancied that a mere mention of peace was
enough to win over any of his enemies in face of his vast armies.
Including the forces of his German and Italian subsidiaries, he had
on foot one million one hundred and eighty-seven thousand men. Of
these, he led four hundred and seventy thousand men into Russia. Italy,
Naples, Austria, Prussia, Würtemberg, Baden, Saxony, Westphalia, and
other Confederates of the Rhine furnished each from twenty thousand to
sixty thousand men. To swell up his French portion, he had called out
two conscriptions, each of a hundred thousand men, in one year, and
had organised a new system of conscription under the name of "National
Guards," which professedly were only to serve in France as a militia
but which were soon drafted off into foreign service. This consisted
of three levies, or bans--"the ban," "the second ban," and "the
arrière ban." They included all who were capable of bearing arms of
all classes. The ban was composed of youths from twenty to twenty-six
years of age; the second ban of men from twenty-six to forty, and the
arrière ban of those from forty to sixty. By such means was the native
population of France being rapidly drawn off into destruction by this
modern Moloch.

On receiving the Emperor Alexander's decisive reply that no terms could
be entered into with Napoleon till he had evacuated both Pomerania
and Prussia, Buonaparte--who professed to be greatly insulted by the
demand--immediately set out from Paris for the northern army, on
the 9th of May, and left his passports for the Russian Ambassador,
which were delivered two days afterwards. Buonaparte, accompanied by
Maria Louisa, proceeded immediately to Dresden, to which place he had
invited, or rather summoned, all his allied and vassal monarchs to meet
him. There, accordingly, were assembled the Emperor and Empress of
Austria--the Empress being the sister of the expelled Duke of Modena,
and mother-in-law of the Empress of the French,--the solitary King of
Prussia (whose queen had perished under the calumnies and insults of
Napoleon), and a crowd of lesser German monarchs. Whilst Napoleon was
playing the host to these crowned heads, and treating them to banquets,
plays, and operas, he was closeted with his cabinet, still planning
fresh humiliations for them when he had utterly extinguished Russia. He
declared to them that he should take Galicia from Austria, and Silesia
from Prussia. He summoned the Abbé de Pradt, now Archbishop of Malines,
and bade him go and promise the Poles the restoration of their kingdom,
so as to induce them to follow him in a mass to Russia. "I will," he
said, "put all Poland on horseback! I am on my way to Moscow. Two
battles there will do the business! I will burn Thoula! The Emperor
Alexander will come on his knees; and then Russia is disarmed. All is
ready, and only waits my presence. Moscow is the heart of their empire.
Besides, I make war at the expense of the blood of the Poles! I will
leave fifty thousand of my Frenchmen in Poland. I will convert Dantzic
into another Gibraltar."

In this wild but confident manner did this now pride-blinded man talk.
And all the time he had no intention whatever of re-establishing the
Poles; he meant only to use them. Once more, however, he sent General
Lauriston and the Count Narbonne to the Emperor Alexander at Wilna.
The pretext was to invite him to Dresden, "where," he said, "all
might be arranged;" the real object was to spy out the forces and
preparations of the Czar. Alexander refused to see Lauriston, and gave
to Narbonne a very curt and warlike answer. The French emissaries found
the Russians neither depressed nor elated, but quietly cheerful and
determined.

[Illustration: THE COSSACK'S CHALLENGE. (_See p._ 42.)]

Buonaparte put his enormous masses in motion. His object was to push
rapidly forward, and beat the Russians by one of those sudden and
decisive blows by which he had won all his victories. He expected
that he should not be able to supply his vast army with provisions
in Russia, and therefore he had had thousands of waggons and carts
prepared to draw his stores. He meant to seize one of the capitals of
the country--St. Petersburg or Moscow; and that, he quite imagined,
would finish the campaign, the Russians being then glad to capitulate;
and he resolved to concede no terms but such as should shut out the
Muscovites from Europe, and replace them with Poles. "Let us march!" he
said to his soldiers. "Let us cross the Niemen; let us carry war into
Russia. The war will be glorious; and the peace will terminate that
haughty influence which she has exercised for more than fifty years on
Europe." But his old general, Bernadotte, had foreseen and defeated his
plans. Alexander had commanded his generalissimo, Barclay de Tolly,
to show only so much opposition as should draw the French on into the
heart of Russia, and then--when they were exhausted by famine along a
line of desolation, and by their march--to harass them on all sides.
Should the French succeed in pressing so far, a Russian Torres Vedras
was prepared for them on the river Düna, at Drissa, so as to protect
St. Petersburg.

Of Napoleon's monster army, Marshal Macdonald commanded the left wing;
the Austrians were on the right under Schwarzenberg; and the main body
consisted of a succession of vast columns commanded by the most famous
French generals, including Bessières, Lefebvre, Mortier, Davoust,
Oudinot, Ney, Grouchy, King Jerome of Westphalia, Junot, Poniatowski,
Regnier, Eugene Viceroy of Italy, etc.; and Murat commanding all the
cavalry. Buonaparte led this centre of two hundred and fifty thousand
men with his Imperial Guard. To oppose this huge army, composed
of numbers and of officers such as the world had not seen before,
Alexander had about two hundred and sixty thousand men. He lay at
Wilna, with Barclay de Tolly and one hundred and twenty thousand men.
In different positions, more northwards, lay Count Essen, Prince
Bagration, the Hetman Platoff, with twelve thousand Cossacks; and,
watching the Austrian right in Volhynia, lay General Tormasoff, with
twenty thousand men. Advancing on them in three vast masses, the French
army approached the Niemen--the King of Westphalia directing his march
on Grodno, the Viceroy of Italy on Pilony, and Buonaparte himself on
Nagaraiski, three leagues beyond Kovno. On the 23rd of June the head of
Napoleon's column came upon the Niemen, and saw the other bank covered
with vast and gloomy forests. As the Emperor rode up to reconnoitre
this scene, his horse stumbled and threw him; and a voice, from the
crowd behind him, was heard saying, "A bad omen! A Roman would return!"
When the head of the column the next morning crossed the river, a
single Cossack issued from the solemn woods, and demanded their reason
for violating the Russian soil. The soldiers replied, "To beat you, and
take Wilna!" The Cossack disappeared, and left all solitary as before.
Three days were required to get the army across, and before they
could pitch their tents they were assailed by a violent thunderstorm,
accompanied by torrents of rain.

The Russians were seen to be falling back as they advanced, and
Buonaparte--impatient to overtake and rout them--pushed forward
his troops rapidly. On reaching the river Wilna it was found to be
swollen by the rain, and the bridges over it were demolished; but
Buonaparte ordered a body of Polish lancers to cross it by swimming.
They dashed into the torrent, and were swept away by it almost to a
man, and drowned before the eyes of the whole army. On the 28th of
June, however, Napoleon managed to reach Wilna, which Barclay de Tolly
had evacuated at his approach, and there he remained till the 16th of
July, for he had outmarched his supplies, few of his waggons having
even reached the Niemen, owing to the state of the country through
which they had to be dragged, and the Russians had taken care to carry
off or destroy all provisions for man and horse as they retreated.
His vast host began, therefore, at once to feel all the horrors of
famine, and of those other scourges that were soon to destroy them by
hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile, the mission of the Abbé de Pradt to
Poland had failed. The abbé, believing in the reality of the promises
of Buonaparte, had faithfully executed his mission. The Poles met in
diet at Warsaw, and expressed their gratitude to the Emperor for his
grand design of restoring their nation. The country was all enthusiasm,
and a host of soldiers would soon have appeared to join his standard,
when Napoleon returned them an evasive answer, saying that he could
not do all that he wished, as he was under engagement to Austria
not to deprive her of Galicia. As to the provinces held by Russia,
he assured them that--provided they showed themselves brave in his
cause--"Providence would crown their good cause with success." This
positive information regarding Austria--this vague statement regarding
Russia, at once showed the hollow hypocrisy of the man, and from that
moment all faith was lost in him in Poland. To have restored Poland
was in the power of Buonaparte, and would have been the act of a great
man; but Buonaparte was not a great man, morally: he could not form
a noble design--he could form only a selfish one. But he immediately
felt the consequences of his base deceit. The Poles remained quiet; nor
did the people of Lithuania respond to his calls on them to rise in
insurrection against Russia. They saw that he had intended to deceive
the Poles, and they felt that, should he make peace with Russia, he
would at once sacrifice them. They were about to form a guard of
honour for him, but they instantly abandoned the design; and thus his
miserable policy destroyed all the effect which he contemplated from
the action of the nations on the Russian frontiers.

During the eighteen days that Buonaparte halted at Wilna he was
actively employed in endeavouring to cut asunder the Russian host.
Whilst Barclay de Tolly, under the Czar, commanded the main force,
which had now fallen back from Wilna to Drissa, Prince Bagration
was lying far to the south-east in Poland, at Volkovisk, with seven
thousand Cossacks under Platoff at Grodno, and another body of men
under Dorokhoff as far as Lida. Buonaparte ordered Murat, with his
cavalry, to drive the rear of the main Russian army in the direction
of Drissa. Murat was followed by a division of infantry, under Oudinot
and Ney, whilst the King of Westphalia was ordered to advance eastward
to cut off Bagration's division from all chance of junction with De
Tolly, and Davoust was to attack him in the rear. He himself proposed
to push forward between these bodies towards Vitebsk, and thus threaten
both St. Petersburg and Moscow. By this arrangement he made himself
sure of destroying Bagration's division, or compelling it to surrender.
But contrary to his wont, Buonaparte was found not to advance with his
usual rapidity; and the fact was that there were sufficient reasons
for the delay. His supplies had failed already. The country, already
impoverished by a bad harvest in the preceding year, was swept by the
Russians of all possible provisions; and the vast horde of French,
Germans, and Italians now advanced treading down the unripe corn of the
present. Owing to the state of the roads, flooded by torrents of rain,
the provision-waggons could not get along. Twenty thousand sick men had
to be left behind wherever they could, for they had no good hospitals;
and, in crossing Lithuania, one hundred thousand men fell from fatigue,
from exhaustion, from surprises by the Cossacks, and from diseases
which they brought with them.

Bagration, prevented by Jerome of Westphalia from pursuing his route
towards Drissa, changed his course towards Minsk; but finding himself
outstripped there too, he made for the Beresina, and effected a
passage at Bobruisk. He then ascended the Dnieper as far as Mohilev;
but, finding himself anticipated by Davoust, he attacked that general
in the hope of cutting his way through. In this he failed, after
a sharply-contested engagement, and once more he retired down the
Dnieper, and crossed at Nevoi-Bikoff, which enabled him to pursue his
course for a union with Barclay de Tolly, who was making for Smolensk.
Thus Bagration, though running imminent hazard of being cut off,
managed to out-manœuvre Napoleon himself--a new event in his campaigns.
On his march, his troops had several encounters with the French and
Polish cavalry; but Platoff showed great gallantry, and often severely
punished the enemy.

On the other hand, Barclay de Tolly, anxious to unite with Bagration
and reach Smolensk, abandoned the strong encampment at Drissa, leaving
Wittgenstein near there to watch the enemy and cover the road to St.
Petersburg. The French pursued him with great rapidity, which, though
it endangered his immediate union with Bagration at Vitebsk, yet served
the Russian policy of drawing the enemy into the interior. Murat
continually rushed forward with his cavalry to attack the rear-guard
of De Tolly; but the Russian infantry maintained steady order, and
continually withdrew before him. Every evening he was close upon them;
every morning he found himself again distanced. The Russians appeared
in full vigour, and well supplied with everything; the French were
sinking with famine and fatigue. At Polotsk the Emperor Alexander left
De Tolly, and hastened on to Moscow to prepare the inhabitants for that
grand catastrophe which he already foresaw, and had resolved upon.

On the 14th of July, when Barclay de Tolly was close pressed by
Napoleon, he learned that though Bagration had been repulsed at
Mohilev, he was now advancing on Smolensk; he therefore himself again
retreated before the French towards Vitebsk. At that town he had a
partial engagement with the French; but he quitted it in good order.
Here Murat and most of the other general officers entreated Napoleon
to close the campaign for this year; but he refused. The soldiers were
dispirited by this continual pursuit without result; Murat himself was
heartily sick of endeavouring to get a dash at the enemy and being
as constantly foiled; King Jerome had been disgraced and sent back
to his Westphalian dominions, on the charge of having let Bagration
escape by want of sufficient energy; and Wittgenstein had, to the great
disgust of Napoleon, on the 2nd of July, crossed the river, surprised
Sebastiani's vanguard of cavalry in Drissa, and completely routed
them. These things had embittered Buonaparte; and if he ever intended
to encamp for the winter at Vitebsk, he now abandoned the idea with
indignation. It was still midsummer; the enemy had so far eluded him;
he had not been able to strike one of his usual great blows and send
terror before him. He was impatient of a pause. "Surrounded," says
Ségur, "by disapproving countenances, and opinions contrary to his own,
he was moody and irritable. All the officers of his household opposed
him, some with arguments, some with entreaties, some--as Berthier--even
with tears; but he exclaimed, 'Did they think he was come so far
only to conquer a parcel of wretched huts? that he had enriched his
generals too much; that all to which they now aspired was to follow
the pleasures of the chase, and to display their splendid equipages in
Paris. We must,' he said, 'advance upon Moscow, and strike a blow, in
order to obtain peace, or winter-quarters and supplies.'"

De Tolly halted at Rudnia, half way between Vitebsk and Smolensk,
and there was considerable manœuvring between the rival generals to
surprise one another, but this resulted in nothing but the loss of
several days. On the 14th of August they arrived at the Dnieper, and
Murat dashed across and attacked the rear-guard of the Russians on
the opposite bank. Newerowskoi, the general in command, stood his
ground well, and then made a good retreat to Smolensk. His retreat was
reckoned an advantage on the part of the French; and as it happened to
be Buonaparte's birthday, and the anniversary of the canonisation of
St. Napoleon--whom Buonaparte had had made a saint,--a hundred guns
were fired in commemoration. On the 15th Buonaparte pressed after the
Russians towards Smolensk. The united Russian army now amounted to
one hundred and eighty thousand men, and Buonaparte had already lost
one-third of his active force. Barclay de Tolly, therefore, appeared
here to make a stand, much to the delight of Buonaparte, who cried out,
exultingly, "Now I have them!"

But De Tolly was only remaining to defend the town whilst the
inhabitants carried off with them their movable property. Whilst on
the side of Smolensk, when Buonaparte arrived, all was silent, and the
fields were empty, on the other side it was one vast crowd of people
moving away with their effects. Buonaparte hoped that the Russians
would deploy before the gates, and give him battle; but they did
nothing of the sort, and he determined to storm the place. Its walls
were old but very thick, and it might hold out some time, and the
assault must cost many lives; but Buonaparte determined to make it. The
French, however, learned that the Russians were already in retreat;
and Murat observed that to waste these lives was worse than useless,
as the city would be theirs without a blow immediately. Buonaparte
replied in an insulting manner to Murat, and ordered the assault the
next morning. On this, Murat, driven to fury, spurred his horse to the
banks of the Dnieper, in the face of the enemy, between batteries, and
stood there as voluntarily courting death. Belliard called out to him
not to sacrifice himself--he only pushed on still nearer to the fire of
the Russian guns, and was forced from the scene by the soldiers. The
storming commenced, and Tolly defended the place vigorously, killing
four or five thousand of the French as they advanced to the attack.

But Tolly did not mean to remain longer than was necessary for the
inhabitants to have made a safe distance; he was afraid of Napoleon
making a flank movement and cutting off his way to Moscow. In the night
fires broke out all over Smolensk: they could not be the effect only of
the French shells; and Buonaparte sat watching them till morning. Soon
bridges, houses, church spires, all of wood, were enveloped in roaring
flames. The next day, the 18th of August, the French entered the place
whilst it was still burning around them. The dead, half consumed, lay
around the smoking ruins; and the French army marched through this
ghostly scene with military music playing, but with hearts struck with
consternation and despair at this proof of the inveterate determination
of the Russians to destroy their whole country rather than suffer it to
be conquered. Here they were left without shelter, without provisions,
without hospitals for the sick, or dressings for the wounded, without
a single bed where a man might lie down to die; and all before them
was the same. The Cossacks beset the flanks of march, and burnt down
all villages, and laid waste all fields ere the French could reach
them. Again the officers entreated that they might form an encampment
and remain; but Buonaparte replied still, "They must make all haste to
Moscow."

From Riga Buonaparte learned that Macdonald maintained the blockade,
thus keeping Courland in awe, and alarming St. Petersburg; that St.
Cyr, more to the south, had compelled Wittgenstein, after a severe
battle at Polotsk, to assume the defensive; and that Regnier had
defeated Tormasoff at Gorodeczna, in Poland. But Tormasoff fell back
on the Moldavian army, commanded by Admiral Tchitchigoff; and General
Steingel was marching with the army of Finland to join Wittgenstein.
These distinct successes, therefore, were but of small moment in
comparison with the lowering prospects before him.

Napoleon dispatched Murat with his cavalry, Junot, Ney, and Davoust,
in pursuit of the Russians, whom they overtook at a place called
Valoutina, where a desperate battle was fought, and many men were
killed on both sides; but the Russians moved off again without the
loss of guns, prisoners, or baggage. Buonaparte, on proceeding to the
spot, blamed Junot, imputing to him want of activity in the action,
and threatening to deprive him of his command. The whole road between
Smolensk and Valoutina was strewn with the dead and wounded; and as
he entered the city on his return, he met whole tumbrils of amputated
limbs going to be thrown away at a distance. The scene is said to have
overcome even his senses, so long hardened to human suffering. On
the 24th of August he marched forward to Gjatsk, where his advanced
guard had halted. There he learned, to his great satisfaction, from
a Frenchman long resident in Russia, that the people and the new
levies, impatient of continual retreat and the ravage of their country,
had demanded that Barclay de Tolly, a German, whom they imagined not
sufficiently careful of Russian property and interests, should be
superseded by the old general, Kutusoff, and that they should stand and
fight. This was precisely what Buonaparte wanted, and the prudent De
Tolly knew to be little better than madness, as it must cause a fearful
loss of life, and would not rid the country of the invader, who was
better left to starvation and the elements. But Alexander, though of
De Tolly's opinion, gave way, and the Russians entrenched themselves
on the heights of Borodino, De Tolly most magnanimously continuing to
serve under Kutusoff. There, after a march of two hundred and eighty
versts in seventeen days, the French came up with them; and, after a
halt of two days, they attacked the Russian lines.

[Illustration: THE RETREAT FROM MOSCOW. (_After the Picture by
Meissonier._)]

This most bloody of battles took place on the 7th of September.
There were about one hundred and twenty thousand men engaged on each
side, and the guns on each side are said to have amounted to one
thousand. Before the battle, the priests passed along the ranks of
the Russians, reminding them of the wrongs they had suffered, and
promising paradise to all that fell. Buonaparte, on his side, issued
this proclamation:--"Soldiers! here is the battle you have longed for!
It is necessary, for it brings us plenty, good winter-quarters, and a
safe return to France. Behave yourselves so that posterity may say of
you--'He was in that great battle under the walls of Moscow.'" It was
rather a damping circumstance that the day before the battle Buonaparte
received the news of Wellington's victory at Salamanca. The battle
commenced at seven o'clock in the morning, and continued the greater
part of the day, the Russians, even to the newest levies, fighting with
the most immovable courage. Buonaparte demanded of Caulaincourt whether
the Russians were determined to conquer or die? He replied that they
had been fanaticised by their leaders, and would be killed rather than
surrender. Buonaparte then ordered up every possible gun, on his plan
of battering an army as he would batter a fortress. Still the Russians
fought on furiously, and Berthier urged him to call up his "young
Guard." But he replied, "And if there is another battle to-morrow,
where is my army?"

At length the firing mutually ceased, but the Russians did not quit
their position; it was the French who drew off, and their outposts,
during the following night, were alarmed by the Russian cavalry. The
Russians had fifteen thousand killed and thirty thousand wounded; the
French ten thousand killed and above twenty thousand wounded, and of
these latter very few recovered, for they were destitute of almost
every hospital necessary, even lint. The Russians made one thousand
prisoners and the French about two thousand. The loss of guns on either
side was nearly equal. Had the battle been resumed the next day it
must have gone hard with the French; but Kutusoff was not willing to
make such another sacrifice of his men, and he resumed the policy of
De Tolly and made his retreat, continuing it to Moscow in so masterly
a manner, that he left neither dead, nor dying, nor wounded, nor any
article of his camp equipage behind him, so that the French were at
a loss to know where he had really gone. On the 12th they learned,
however, that he had retreated to Moscow, and Buonaparte instantly
resumed his march. At Krymskoi Murat and Mortier came upon a strong
body of Russians, and were repulsed, with the loss of two thousand men.
The Russian rear-guard then hastened on again towards Moscow.

There, a council of war was called, and it was debated whether they
should make a stand there or not. The conclusion was that they should
not, but should abandon the sacred city--the Jerusalem of Russia--to
the enemy, and, there can now be little doubt, to the flames.
Rostopchin, the governor of the city, had for some time been preparing
for the grand catastrophe. Under pretence of pouring down liquid fire
on the French from a monster balloon, he had employed great numbers
of women in making such a balloon, and men in preparing fireworks and
combustibles--the accumulation of the latter being his real object.

On the 14th of September the Russian army filed through the streets
of their beloved but doomed city, with sad looks, furled banners, and
silent drums, and went out at the Kolomna gate. The population followed
them. Rostopschin had encouraged vast numbers already to transplant
all their wealth and stores from the place, and, as his last act, he
called up two prisoners--a Russian traitor, and a Frenchman who had
dropped hostile expressions. The Russian he ordered, with the consent
of the culprit's own father, to be put to death; the Frenchman he
set at liberty, telling him to go to Buonaparte and say that but one
traitor had been found in Russia, and him he had seen cut to pieces.
Rostopschin then mounted his horse and rode after his countrymen,
having first ordered all the gaols to be set open, and their wretched
inhabitants to be allowed to make their escape.

On the 14th of September the French army came in sight of Moscow, and
the soldiers, worn down and miserable with their long and severe march,
shouted with joy, "Moscow! Moscow!" They rushed up the hill called
the Mount of Salvation, because there the natives coming in full view
of the city kneel and cross themselves. There the splendid spectacle
of the widely-spread ancient capital lay before their eyes, with its
spires of thirty churches, its palaces of Eastern architecture, and
its copper domes glittering in the sun. Interspersed were beautiful
gardens, and masses of noble trees, and the gigantic palace of the
Kremlin rising above in colossal bulk. All were struck with admiration
of the place which had so long been the goal of their wishes. Napoleon
himself sat on his horse surveying it, and exclaimed, "Behold at last
that celebrated city!" But he immediately added, in an under-tone, "It
was full time!" He expected to see trains of nobles come out to throw
themselves at his feet and offer submission; but no one appeared, and
not a sign of life presented itself, no smoke from a single chimney,
not a man on the walls. It looked like a city of the dead. The mystery
was soon solved by Murat, who had pushed forward, sending word that
the whole population had abandoned Moscow! Two hundred and fifty
thousand people had forsaken their home in a mass! The tidings struck
the invader with wonder and foreboding; but he added, smiling grimly,
"The Russians will soon learn better the value of their capital." He
appointed Mortier governor of the place, with strict orders that any
man who plundered should be shot; he calculated on Moscow as their home
for the winter--the pledge of peace with Alexander--the salvation of
his whole army. But the troops poured into the vast, deserted city,
and began everywhere helping themselves, whilst the officers selected
palaces and gardens for residences at pleasure.

Buonaparte took up his residence at a palace in the suburbs. In the
night there was an alarm of fire; it broke out in the quarter full
of bazaars and coachmakers' factories. Napoleon rushed to the spot,
and the flames were extinguished by the exertions of the soldiers.
The next day all was quiet, and such French as lived in Moscow came
out of their hiding-places and joined their countrymen. The following
night the fires burst forth again. At first the conflagration had
been attributed to accident; now it was felt to be the result of
design, and Russians were seen fanatically hurrying from place to place
with combustibles in their hands--the preparations of Rostopschin.
Buonaparte during the day had taken possession of the Kremlin, and it
was in imminent danger. When the fire was discovered near it, it came
with the wind; it was extinguished, but the wind changed, and fire rose
on that side, and again blew towards the palace. This occurred several
times during the night; it was clear that there was a determined
resolve to burn down the Kremlin. The flames defied all the efforts of
the soldiers; they hunted down, according to Napoleon's twenty-first
bulletin, no less than three hundred incendiaries, and shot them on the
spot. These were armed with fusees six inches long, and inflammables,
which they threw on the roofs. Buonaparte, who that day had dispatched
a letter to Alexander proposing peace, was in the utmost agitation.
He walked to and fro in distraction. "These are indeed Scythians!"
he exclaimed. The equinoctial gales rose in all their wild fury.
Providence commenced its Nemesis. The Kremlin was on fire, and all was
raging fire around it; churches, palaces, streets, mostly of wood, were
roaring in the storm. It was with difficulty that Buonaparte could be
induced to leave the Kremlin, and as he did so he said gloomily, "This
bodes us great misfortunes." He began to foresee all the horrors which
followed.

The fire raged with unabated fury from the 14th till the 19th--five
days. Then the city lay a heap of burning ashes. All the wealth which
was left behind was burnt or melted down. But there could be no stay
at Moscow, for all their provisions had to be brought from distant
districts by water carriage in summer, and on sledges in winter. But,
as the Russian population had fled, the Russians were only too glad
to starve out the French. Not a single article of food came near the
place. Alexander returned no answer to Buonaparte's letter. The pledge
which he might have made some concessions to redeem had been destroyed
by his own orders, and Buonaparte had now nothing to offer worthy of
his attention. He and his army were awaiting the attack of the wintry
elements to join them in the extermination of the invaders. Buonaparte
dispatched General Lauriston to Alexander with fresh offers; but
Alexander refused to see him, and turned him over to Kutusoff, who
flattered him with hopes and professions of desire for peace, in order
to put off the time, for every day nearer to winter was a day gained
of incalculable importance. But he said that he must send Napoleon's
letter to St. Petersburg, to the Czar, and await his reply. This was
on the 6th of October, and the reply could not be received before the
26th; there was nothing for it but to wait, and Lauriston waited--a
fatal delay for the French!

Kutusoff had made a dexterous march and encamped at Taroutino, a strong
position near Kaluga, between Moscow and Poland, so as to be able to
cut off the retreat of the French into the fertile plains of Poland,
and to cover Kaluga and Tula, the great Russian manufactory of arms and
artillery. Buonaparte sent Murat with the cavalry to watch the camp of
Kutusoff, and the King of Naples established himself in front of the
Russian lines. Murat entered into a sort of armistice with Kutusoff
whilst waiting for the reply from Alexander, in the hope that thus they
should obtain supplies from the peasants; but neither food nor firing
was obtainable except by fighting for it, nor was the armistice at
all observed, except just in the centre, where Murat lay. From every
quarter Cossacks continued to collect to the Russian army--strange,
wild figures, on small, wild-looking horses with long manes and tails,
evidently drawn from the very extremities of the empire. All Russia
was assembling to the grand destruction of the invaders. Behind the
camp the French could hear the continued platoon-firing, indicating the
perpetual drilling of the peasantry that was going on. Other bodies of
peasants formed themselves into troops of guerillas, under the chiefs
of their neighbourhood. The whole of the Russian population since the
burning of Moscow had become grimly embittered, and had taken arms to
have a share in the mighty revenge that was coming. And now, as the
sudden descent of winter was at hand, the same men who had pretended
to admire the soldier-like figure and gallantry of Murat--who galloped
about in all his military finery in front of the Russian camp--began to
ask the officers if they had made a paction with winter. "Stay another
fortnight," they said, "and your nails will drop off, and your fingers
from your hands, like rotten boughs from a tree." Others asked if they
had no food, nor water, nor wood, nor ground to bury them in France,
that they had come so far?

Murat sent continual intelligence of these things to Napoleon, and
urged him to commence his retreat without another day's delay. But, as
if deprived of sense and spirit, Buonaparte continued to linger on in
Moscow, vainly hoping for the answer from Alexander, which never came,
for the Czar not only refused to read the letter of the French Emperor,
but snubbed Kutusoff for sending it to him, or receiving Lauriston for
a moment. Sometimes Napoleon resolved to make an entrenched camp of
Moscow, and pass the winter there, but then came the recollection that
he could procure no provisions. Then, when he resolved upon retreat,
he could not renounce his old habit of plundering the country that he
invaded, collecting all the pictures, images, and ornaments of the
churches which had escaped the fire, and loading them on wains. He had
the gigantic cross on the tower of Ivan the Great, the tallest steeple
of Moscow, taken down, vainly hoping to display these memorials of
his visit to Moscow with the other spoils of the nations in Paris. He
determined to drag away all his artillery with him, and ordered twenty
thousand horses to be bought for the purpose of trailing all this
encumbrance over a vast marsh, where all the Cossacks and fierce tribes
of Russia would dog his heels, and where winter was sure to prostrate
his hosts. But no horses were there, and the command was sheer madness.

But at length the thunder of the Russian cannon roused him from this
delirious dreaming. Kutusoff, inducing Murat by a stratagem to declare
the armistice at an end, attacked his position and defeated him, with
a loss of two thousand men killed, and one thousand five hundred taken
prisoners. He took his cannon and baggage, and drove him from his
entrenchments. The only food found in the French camp was horseflesh
and flayed cats; the King of Naples had no better for his table--thus
showing the miserable straits to which they were reduced. On the 19th
of October Buonaparte marched out of Moscow, leaving, however, a strong
garrison in the Kremlin, under Mortier, for it would appear that he
still intended to return thither. The army which followed him still
consisted of nearly one hundred and twenty thousand men, accompanied
by five hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, and two thousand artillery
waggons. Buonaparte spoke with affected cheerfulness to his generals,
saying that he would march by Kaluga to the frontiers of Poland,
where they would go into comfortable winter quarters. After the army
came another host of camp-followers of French who had been resident
at Moscow but dared not remain behind, and a vast train of carriages
loaded with baggage and the spoils of Moscow.

[Illustration: RETREAT OF THE FRENCH FROM RUSSIA. (_See p._ 50.)]

Buonaparte endeavoured to manœuvre so as to get into Kutusoff's rear,
and thus to have the way into the fertile provinces beyond him open.
He sent forward Delzon to occupy Maloi-Jaroslavitz, a very strong
position; but Kutusoff penetrated his design, made a rapid march, and
encountered Delzon in the very streets of Maloi-Jaroslavitz. A severe
battle took place, and the French finally recovered Maloi-Jaroslavitz,
but only to find it, like Moscow, in flames, and to lose Delzon and his
brother, as well as some thousands of men. Beyond the burning town they
also saw Kutusoff and one hundred thousand men drawn up in a position
which the French generals declared impregnable. Buonaparte received
this information with expressions of consternation unusual to him. He
determined the next morning to examine this position for himself, and
in so doing was very nearly captured by a band of Cossack cavalry. A
council of war was held in a wretched weaver's hut, and he reluctantly
concluded to forego this route, and take that by Vereiva and Viasma,
the same by which he had advanced on Moscow. This was, in fact, to
doom his army to perdition; for all the way by Borodino, Smolensk, and
Vitebsk, the country had been ravaged and desolated in coming; there
was nothing in it to keep alive an army. Had he waited only a few
hours, he would have found Kutusoff himself retreating from his strong
defiles from fear of being outflanked by the French, and their making
their way beyond him to the fertile provinces. Thus the two armies were
each in retreat at the same moment, but Buonaparte's was a retreat upon
death and horror.

At Vereiva, where Buonaparte halted on the 27th of October, Mortier
arrived from Moscow, having blown up the Kremlin with gunpowder, and
with it a crowd of Russians who had rushed in at the moment of his
evacuation. Mortier on his march had also surprised and captured
General Winzengerode. From this place Buonaparte issued a bulletin,
announcing that not only Moscow but the Kremlin was destroyed; that
the two hundred thousand inhabitants of Moscow were wandering in the
woods existing on roots; and that the French army was advancing towards
St. Petersburg with every means of success. Such was the audacity of
lying by which he hoped to conceal the truth from Paris. At this moment
he was exasperated almost to frenzy by his prospects, and since the
defeat of Maloi-Jaroslavitz he had been gloomy and unapproachable from
the violence of his temper. On the march the army passed with horror
the field of Borodino. "The ground," says Segur, "was covered with
fragments of helmets and cuirasses, broken drums, gun-stocks, tatters
of uniforms, and standards steeped in blood. On this desolate spot lay
thirty thousand half devoured corpses. A number of skeletons, left on
the summit of one of the hills, overlooked the whole. It seemed as if
here death had fixed his empire. The cry, 'It is the field of the great
battle!' found a long and doleful murmur. Napoleon passed quickly; no
one stopped; cold, hunger, and the enemy urged us on. We merely turned
our faces as we proceeded to take a last melancholy look at our late
companions in arms."

On the 6th of November came down that fierce Russian winter of which
Buonaparte had been so long vainly warned. A thick fog obscured
everything, and snow falling in heavy flakes blinded and chilled the
soldiers. Then commenced wild winds, driving the snow around their
heads in whirls, and even dashing them to the earth in their fury.
The hollows and ravines were speedily drifted full, and the soldiers
by thousands disappeared in the deceitful depths, to reappear no more
till the next summer revealed their corpses. Numbers of others fell
exhausted by the way, and could only be discovered by their following
comrades by the slight hillocks that their bodies made under the snow.
Thus the wretched army struggled and stumbled to Smolensk, only to
find famine and desolation, seeming to forget, in the mere name of a
town, that it was now but a name, having been burnt by the Russians.
On commencing this terrible march of the 6th of November Buonaparte
received the ill news that there was insurrection in Paris--that
produced by Mallet, but soon put down; and also that Wittgenstein
had driven St. Cyr from Polotsk and Vitebsk, and reoccupied the
whole course of the Düna. To clear his retreat of this obstruction,
Buonaparte dispatched Victor to repulse Wittgenstein and support
St. Cyr. But this was only part of the evil tidings which came in
simultaneously with winter. Two thousand recruits from France, under
Baraguay d'Hilliers, had been surprised and taken prisoners on the
road to Kaluga, and other detachments in other quarters. On arriving
at Smolensk Buonaparte's troops had acquired such a wild, haggard, and
ragged appearance that the garrison at first refused to admit them;
and many perished before they could be relieved from the stores. They
had no shelter amid the terrible frost but wretched sheds, reared from
half-burnt timber, against the fire-blackened walls.

Meanwhile the second and rear divisions of the army under Davoust and
Ney were labouring hard to reach Smolensk, assailed by all the horrors
of the season, and of the myriad Russians collected around them, who
killed all who straggled or fell behind from fatigue and starvation.
The rearguard of Ney suffered most of all, for it was not only more
completely exposed to the raids of the Cossacks and of the enraged
peasants, but they found every house on their way burnt, and nothing
around them but treeless, naked plains, over which the freezing winds
and the hurrahing Cossacks careered in deadly glee. At the passage
of the Dnieper, it was only by stupendous exertions that Ney saved
any part of his army. He lost many men, and much of his artillery.
On the 13th of November, as he approached Smolensk, he was appalled
by the apparition of the remains of the army of Italy pursued by a
cloud of Cossacks, who were hewing them down by thousands. Eugene,
the Viceroy of Italy, had been sent with this division on a northward
route to support Oudinot, who was retreating before Wittgenstein; but
he had found it impossible to reach Oudinot, and had again made for
Smolensk. His passage of the river Vop had been no less destructive
than the passage of the Dnieper by Ney. He had lost all his baggage
and twenty-three pieces of cannon and was only saved by the fortunate
arrival of Ney.

Buonaparte allowed his army, now reunited in Smolensk, five days' rest
and enjoyment of the stores there, and on the 14th of November he
again marched out to force his way into Poland. The second division,
under Davoust, followed on the 16th, and the rear, still under Ney,
on the 17th. The worn-down Italians of Prince Eugene could not move
till the 15th, and did not overtake Buonaparte and assume their proper
position till the 17th. The road which Buonaparte was taking was by
Wilna, Krasnoi, and Borissov to Minsk; at the last two places he had
his stores. But his way was now hemmed in on all sides by Russian
armies. Wittgenstein was already at Vitebsk, and thence advanced on
Borissov on the Beresina, where Buonaparte hoped to cross; whilst
Tchitchagoff, who had joined Tormasoff, and thus raised their force
to sixty thousand men, had driven the Austrians, under Schwarzenberg,
back on the Bug, and had taken Minsk on the very day that Napoleon
marched out of Smolensk. At the same time Kutusoff, with the grand army
of Russia, was marching in a parallel line on the left flank of the
Emperor, ready to fall on him whenever he was reduced to extremities by
the other converging Russian forces. Now was coming the grand crisis.
The elements were fighting fearfully against him; his men were wearied,
half-starved, and disheartened; his enemies on all sides were alert
with hope and revenge. Had Kutusoff used more alertness, and secured
the passage of the Beresina as it ought to have been secured, the event
which Bernadotte had planned must have taken place, and Buonaparte,
with the remainder of his army, must have remained a prisoner there.

As it was, the extreme caution of Kutusoff saved Buonaparte and the
little remnant of his army that ever reached France again. Buonaparte
left Smolensk with only forty thousand, instead of four hundred and
seventy thousand men, which he had on entering Russia, and a great
part of the Italian division of Eugene was cut off by the Russians
before the Viceroy could come up with Buonaparte. Napoleon, therefore,
halted at Krasnoi, to allow of the two succeeding divisions coming up;
but Kutusoff took this opportunity to fall on Buonaparte's division,
consisting of only fifteen thousand men, and attacked it in the rear
by cannon placed on sledges, which could be brought rapidly up and as
rapidly made to fall back.

Sir Robert Wilson, the British Commissioner, urged Kutusoff, indeed,
to make one general and determined attack on Buonaparte and this
small body before the other divisions could come up; and there
can be no doubt that, had he done so, he would have destroyed the
division utterly, and made himself master of Napoleon's person. But
though Kutusoff had fought the battle of Borodino, he had now grown
over-cautious, and did not do that which it was the plan of Barclay de
Tolly, whom he superseded, to do when the right moment came. Whilst
Kutusoff was thus timidly cannonading, the division of Davoust came
up, and he retired, allowing both Buonaparte and Davoust to secure
themselves in Krasnoi. As for Ney, he was left behind wholly surrounded
by the Russians who had harassed the rear of Davoust, and were thus
interposed between Davoust and himself, as well as swarming on his own
flanks and rear. Napoleon could not wait for him, even at Krasnoi. He
learned that the Russians were drawing fast towards his crossing-places
at the Dnieper and the Beresina; that Prince Galitzin with a strong
force was about to occupy Krasnoi; that the Dnieper at Liady would be
immediately in the hands of the enemy. He therefore called Mortier,
and squeezing his hand sorrowfully told him that he had not a moment
to lose; that the enemy were overwhelming him in all directions; that
Kutusoff might have already reached Liady, perhaps Orcha, and the last
winding of the Dnieper was yet before him. Then, with his heart full of
Ney's misfortunes, he withdrew, in despair at being forced to abandon
him, towards Liady. He marched on foot at the head of his Guard, and
often talked of Ney. He called to mind his _coup-d'œil_, so accurate
and true, his courage, proof against everything--in short, all the
qualities which made him so brilliant on the field of battle. "He is
lost! Well! I have three hundred millions in the Tuileries; I would
give them all were he restored to me!"

And, in truth, Ney was in the most terrible of situations. When he left
Smolensk he was at the head of eight thousand men, but followed by
an army of stragglers, whom the cannon of Platoff caused to evacuate
Smolensk instantly, leaving behind him five thousand sick and wounded.
When they reached the battle-field of Krasnoi they saw the carcases of
their late comrades lying in heaps on the ground, and, a little beyond,
the Russians in full force occupying the banks of the Losmina, and
crowding all the hills around. In spite of this, Ney endeavoured to
cut his way through, but failed, after a dreadful slaughter, and only
saved one thousand five hundred men of his whole force by retreating
and taking another route to the river, where he lost all his baggage,
and such sick as he brought with him, for the ice broke with their
weight. Pursued by the Cossacks, he came up with Davoust's division
on the 20th of November. "When Napoleon," says Segur, "heard that Ney
had reappeared, he leaped and shouted for joy, saying, 'Then I have
saved my eagles! I would have given three hundred millions sooner than
have lost him.'" The losses which troubled Napoleon were those which
endangered his own safety or reputation; he thought little of the
hundreds of thousands who had perished through this mad expedition; but
he rejoiced over the safety of Ney, because he deemed it a pledge that
his own escape was also assured.

Napoleon's grand army had now dwindled down to twelve thousand men,
with about thirty thousand stragglers, who added little to his
strength. They were in Poland, and provisions were now more abundant;
but they had still to cross the Beresina, and at this moment he heard
of the fall of Minsk, and that Victor and Oudinot, instead of attacking
Wittgenstein, had quarrelled about the manner of doing it, and so had
not done it at all. Wittgenstein and Kutusoff were thus at liberty
to attack his flanks, and Tchitchagoff to occupy the Beresina before
him. On this, he turned from the route to Minsk and made for Borissov.
At Borissov was a bridge of three hundred fathoms in length, and
this he had sent Dombrowski to secure and hold; but now he heard of
Dombrowski's defeat, that the bridge was in the hands of the Russians,
and that they had broken it down. In his agony, he stamped his cane on
the ground, and exclaimed, looking upwards--"Is it, then, written that
we shall commit nothing but errors?"

Here he heard his faithful servants, Duroc and Daru, whispering, as
they thought he slept, of their critical situation, and caught the
words "prisoner of State." On this, he started up, and demanded whether
the reports of his Ministers were yet burnt, and being answered in
the negative, he had both them and all documents which could give
information of his affairs to the enemy put into the fire. Segur says
that amongst these were materials for writing his life, for, like
Cæsar, he had determined to be his own historian. In tracing the map
for a passage over the Beresina, his eye caught the word Pultowa, and
he said, "Ah! Charles XII.--Pultowa!"

The crossing of the Beresina, in the circumstances, was a desperate
design, but there was no alternative but surrender. Tchitchagoff
was posted with his army on the opposite or left bank; Wittgenstein
and Platoff were pressing down to join them; and Kutusoff, with the
grand army of Russia, was in the rear, able, if he could have been
induced to do it, to drive Buonaparte and his twelve thousand men
into the Beresina, and destroy them. After reconnoitring the river
Napoleon determined to deceive Tchitchagoff by a feint at passing at
Borissov, but really to make the attempt at Studienka, above Borissov.
He therefore kept up a show of preparations to cross at Borissov,
but got ready two bridges at Studienka, one for the artillery and
baggage, the other for the troops and miscellaneous multitude. At this
juncture he was joined by Victor and Oudinot with their fifty thousand
men well provided with everything. Thus he was now possessed of
sixty-two thousand men besides stragglers; and his design of deceiving
Tchitchagoff succeeding so completely that the latter withdrew his
whole force from opposite to Studienka and concentrated it at Borissov,
he began on the 26th of November to cross the river, and had a strong
force already over before Tchitchagoff discovered his error and came
back to attack him. So far all went so well that Buonaparte again
boasted of his star.

But whilst Tchitchagoff attacked the French on the right bank,
Wittgenstein attacked them on the left. The Russians then threw
a bridge of pontoons over the river at Borissov, and, being in
communication, attacked the French vehemently on both sides of the
river at once. Buonaparte and the troops who were over the river
forced their way across some marshes over wooden bridges, which the
Russians had neglected to destroy, and reached Brelowa, a little above
Borissov on the other side. But terrible now was the condition of
the forces and the camp-followers who had not crossed. Wittgenstein,
Victor, and Oudinot were engaged in mortal combat on the left bank at
the approach of the bridge, the French generals endeavouring to beat
off the Russians as the troops and people pressed in a confused crowd
over the bridges. Every moment the Russians drove the French nearer to
the bridges, and the scene of horror became indescribable. The throngs
rushed to make their way over the bridge; the soldiers, forgetting
their discipline, added to the confusion. The weak and helpless were
trampled down; thousands were forced over the sides of the bridge, and
perished in the freezing waters. In the midst of the struggle a fierce
tempest arose, and deluges of rain fell; and to carry the horror to the
highest pitch, the bridge over which the baggage was passing broke
down, plunging numbers of sick, and women and children, into the flood,
amid the most fearful cries and screams. But all night the distracted
multitude continued to press over the sole remaining bridge under the
fire of the Russian artillery, and amongst them passed the troops of
Victor, who gave up the contest on the left bank, and left those who
had not crossed to their fate. Thousands of poor wretches were seen, as
morning dawned, huddled on the bank of the river, amid baggage-waggons
and artillery, surrounded by the infuriated Russians, and in dumb
despair awaiting their fate. To prevent the crossing of the Russians,
the French set fire to the bridge, and left those behind to the mercy
of the enemy.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON ABANDONING HIS ARMY. (_See p._ 54.)]

No scene in history ever was fraught with such multiplied horrors.
Thirty thousand French perished in that fatal passage of the Beresina;
and had Kutusoff done what he might, not a man, not Napoleon himself,
could have escaped. But this cautious old general was contented that
winter should finish the work. In the first few days after Napoleon had
quitted Smolensk the Russians had taken twenty-six thousand prisoners,
including three hundred officers, and two hundred and twenty-eight
guns, with numerous standards. They had killed ten thousand Frenchmen,
and now thirty thousand more had perished. That was enough for Kutusoff.

On assembling his remnant of an army in Brelowa, Buonaparte beheld a
state of general disorganisation prevailing. Perishing with cold and
hunger, every man was only mindful of himself. In a short time the
whole village was pulled down to make camp-fires of the timber, for
the weather was fiercely cold. He could scarcely prevent them from
stripping off the roof under which he had taken shelter. He set out on
his march for Wilna on the 29th of November. The army hurried along
without order or discipline, their only care being to outstrip the
Russians, who were, like famished wolves, at their heels; the Cossacks
continually cutting down numbers of their benumbed and ragged comrades,
who went along more like spectres than actual men. The thermometer was
at twenty degrees below zero.

On the 3rd of December Buonaparte announced to his officers his
intention to leave them and make the best of his way to Paris. He
pleaded the state of affairs there, and especially the conspiracy
of Mallet; but he was now approaching the frontiers of Prussia, and
as he knew that he had declared that, if he returned successful, he
would deprive Frederick William altogether of his crown, he was as
apprehensive of that monarch as of the Russians themselves.

But he went on to Smorgony, and there, the remains of the army
having come up, he called a council of war on the 5th of December.
He told his generals that he had ordered Ney to reorganise the army
at Wilna, and had appointed Murat, King of Naples, generalissimo in
his absence. He assumed a tone of great confidence, promised his army
good winter-quarters beyond the Niemen, and assured them that he was
hasting away to present himself directly at the head of one hundred and
twenty thousand men to keep the Austrians and Prussians firm to their
alliance, and thus to make those he left behind more secure than he
could do by staying with them. He then passed through the crowd of his
officers, who were drawn up in an avenue as he passed, bidding them
adieu with forced and melancholy smiles. He then stepped into a sledge
with Caulaincourt and shut themselves in, and Duroc and Lobau followed
in another sledge; and thus the man who entered Russia with nearly half
a million of men, stole away, leaving the miserable remnant of his vast
army to the elements and the Russians!

Napoleon reached Warsaw on the 10th of December, after a narrow escape
of being taken at a village named Youpranoui. On the 14th of December
he was in Dresden, and had a long conversation with his satrap king
there; and, after escaping some endeavours of the Prussians to seize
him, he arrived safely in Paris at midnight of the 18th, where the
Parisians, who had with some indifference suppressed the conspiracy
got up by the Republicans under General Mallet, hastened to overwhelm
him with the most fulsome flatteries. The story of his rubbing his
hands over the fire on his arrival at the Tuileries, and saying, "This
is pleasanter than Moscow," shows an intensity of selfishness which
no history on earth can equal. In this one campaign, that magnificent
army, the very flower of French, German, and Polish soldiery--perhaps
the finest army ever assembled--had perished to a mere fraction, and
that amid the most unheard of, the most hitherto unconceived horrors.
The remnant of these soldiers was still struggling on in their deserted
march, through these horrors even still more intensified. Numbers
were falling every day all along the frozen desert tracks, exhausted
by famine and cold, and the snows immediately buried them. When they
approached any place of rest or refreshment, they fought furiously for
fragments of firewood or pieces of horse-flesh. When a horse fell under
the burdens they had piled upon him, he was torn by them limb from
limb, while yet palpitating with life, and devoured raw. Such was the
weariness of these miserable fugitives over immeasurable deserts of
frost and snow, through cutting, scythe-edged winds, that nothing but
the sound of the Cossack drum, and the howls of the Cossack avengers
could induce them to rise and pursue their desolate march. And the
man who had brought all these terrible calamities upon nearly half a
million of men--and more than half a million by far, including women,
children, and other camp-followers, to say nothing of the invaded
Russians--felt not a pang for these vast human sufferings, but only for
his own detestable pride.

We need not follow the track of the deserted army with much minuteness.
The moment Buonaparte was gone, all discipline and command ceased. The
chief officers quarrelled vehemently; and Murat denounced his Imperial
brother-in-law in the bitterest terms, and escaped away into Italy on
the first opportunity. The Austrians and Prussians marched off, and
the French, pursued by the Russians till they crossed the Niemen, were
continually assailed, and dispersed or killed; so that Macdonald at
length reached Königsberg with nine thousand men, the body of French
presenting anything but the appearance of an army! In this fatal
campaign, Boutourlin states that, of this splendid army, one hundred
and twenty-five thousand were killed; one hundred and thirty-two
thousand died from fatigue, hunger, and the severity of the climate;
and one hundred and ninety-three thousand, including forty-eight
generals and three thousand officers, were taken prisoners--an awful
comment on the assertions of Buonaparte that he had beaten the
Russians everywhere. The nine thousand soldiers who returned with
Macdonald leave only eleven thousand to be accounted for of the whole
four hundred and seventy thousand, besides women, children, and camp
servitors, who entered Russia. These eleven thousand were, no doubt,
dispersed fugitives, some of whom might eventually reach France. Such
a destruction of human life in one campaign, so utterly unfelt for by
the man who occasioned it, stands alone in the history of this world's
miserable wars. The crime of it, as it rests on the head of that guilty
soul, is beyond mortal calculation.

During this momentous struggle, Russia was munificently supported by
Great Britain. The peace which Mr. Canning, afterwards Lord Stratford
de Redcliffe, our ambassador at Constantinople, had been the means of
effecting between Turkey and Russia, released Admiral Tchitchagoff and
his army of thirty thousand men to march against Buonaparte; and had
not that stupid personage suffered himself to be so grossly deceived by
the French Emperor at the Beresina, neither Buonaparte nor a man of his
army had ever got across that river. At the same time peace was made
with Russia by Great Britain, and Russia sent her fleet, for security,
to an English port during the invasion. Peace also was ratified between
Great Britain and Sweden; and Bernadotte was at liberty to pursue his
plans for aiding in the general movement of the North for the final
extinction of the Buonaparte rule. Great Britain also bountifully
supplied the Russians with money and arms, and other necessaries,
so that a French officer who accompanied General Lauriston to the
headquarters of the Russian army was astonished to find abundance of
British money circulating and in the highest esteem, though Buonaparte
had represented Great Britain as on the verge of bankruptcy. "When I
saw British bank-notes passing," he said, "as if they were gold, I
trembled for our daring enterprise."

Whilst the latter scenes of this great tragedy were passing, in Britain
a new Parliament assembled on the 24th of November, and amongst its
first acts were, before Christmas, to vote one hundred thousand pounds
to the Marquis of Wellington, and two hundred thousand pounds for the
relief of sufferers in Russia. And thus closed the remarkable year of
1812.

The year 1813 opened in Great Britain with high hopes. The defeat of
Napoleon in Russia, and the destruction of his army, opened prospects
of at length seeing this ambitious and unprincipled man, who had
drenched all Europe in blood, brought down and removed from the scene.
Lord Liverpool had for some time predicted that one day a British army
would march into Paris, and encamp on the Bois de Boulogne, and now it
really seemed probable. The nations of the north and centre of Europe
were mustering to follow the aggressor home, and Lord Wellington, in
Spain, was daily advancing towards the southern frontiers of France
by victory after victory. True, there was much yet to be done, and
enormous calls on the wealth of Britain had yet to be made; and at this
time, whilst Great Britain and all Europe were engaged in this mighty
contest, the people of the United States, instead of sympathising
with the grand occasion, were doing all they could to divide our
attention and weaken our hands. There were warm debates in Parliament
on the American question, but Government carried addresses expressing
approbation of the course which Great Britain had taken in regard to
the United States. But this annoying quarrelsomeness of the Americans
tended necessarily to raise the amount of the Budget, already too much
swelled by the aids to Russia and our contest in Spain. The supplies
demanded were seventy-two million pounds--more than had been granted
in any former year. Amongst the ways and means were a fresh loan of
twenty-one million pounds, and vote of credit for six million pounds.
It was, however, some consolation that the nation at last saw the
beginning of the end.

Before pursuing the immediate story of Buonaparte and his pursuers
from the North, we will narrate the progress of Lord Wellington during
this year. It was a favourable circumstance for him that, although he
continued to receive no little trouble, impediment, and discouragement
from the proud and thankless Spaniards, the turn of affairs in the
North compelled Napoleon to withdraw some of his best troops and
his best general from that country to aid him in his new campaign
against Russia, Sweden, and Germany. He had altogether two hundred
and seventy thousand men in Spain, in one quarter or other, to oppose
the small Anglo-Spanish army in the south, and the miscellaneous army
under Lord Wellington, amounting only to about seventy thousand men.
He therefore withdrew one hundred and fifty skeletons of battalions
from Spain--amounting, nevertheless, to only about twenty thousand
men--as a means of disciplining his young conscripts. What was of far
more consequence, he withdrew Soult, the only general that occasioned
Wellington much trouble. The nominal Commander-in-Chief of the French
armies in Spain was King Joseph, but the real commanders were Marshal
Jourdan and Generals Clausel and Foy in the north, General Reille at
Valladolid, Drouet at Madrid, and Suchet at Toledo.

The Spaniards had at length made Lord Wellington Commander-in-Chief of
the Spanish armies, but this appointment was little more than nominal,
for the Spanish generals continued as froward and insubordinate
as ever; and the Spanish Government was poorer than ever, its
remittances from the South American colonies, which were asserting
their independence, being stopped. Wellington's dependence, therefore,
continued to rest on his army of British and Portuguese--sixty-three
thousand infantry and six thousand cavalry.

[Illustration: MARSHAL NEY.]

About the middle of May Wellington entered Spain, leading the centre
division himself, the right being commanded by General Hill, and the
left by Sir Thomas Graham, the victor of Barrosa. As they advanced, the
French hastily retreated towards Valladolid, thence towards Burgos; and
by the 12th of June, Wellington being close on that city, they blew
up the fortifications of the castle, and retreated beyond the Ebro,
which they hoped to be able to defend. But Wellington left them no time
to fortify themselves. On the 14th he crossed the Ebro; on the 16th
he was in full march after them towards Vittoria, for they found the
Ebro no defence, as they had not time to blow up the bridges. On the
16th and 17th Major-General Alten harassed their rear, and dispersed
a whole brigade in the mountains, killing considerable numbers, and
taking three hundred prisoners. On the 19th they found the French
army, commanded by Joseph Buonaparte, with Jourdan as his second and
adviser, drawn up under the walls of Vittoria. It was so placed as to
command the passages of the river Zadora, and the three great roads
from Madrid, Bilbao, and Logroño. Their left extended to the heights
of La Puebla, and behind this, at the village of Gomecha, was posted
a reserve. The position was remarkably strong, and commanded by the
hills interesting to Englishmen as those where the Black Prince, in his
day, had defeated the French army at Najera, commanded by the gallant
Duguesclin. Wellington took till the morning of the 21st to reconnoitre
the position and to concentrate his army for the attack.

[Illustration: FLIGHT OF KING JOSEPH BUONAPARTE FROM VITTORIA. (_See p._
58.)]

In the morning of that day--a fine and sunny day--Hill leading on our
right drove the French from the heights of La Puebla. This was not
done without a severe struggle. The Spanish general, Morillo, led on
his brigade bravely, and was wounded. Colonel the Hon. G. Cadogan, in
the action on the heights, was also mortally wounded, but refused to
quit the field, and was carried to an elevation where he could watch
the progress of the battle while he lived. General Hill then pushed
the French across the river Zadora and the defiles and heights beyond
to the village of Subijana de Alava, which he took possession of, and
the French left fell back on Vittoria. The other divisions, under Lord
Dalhousie, Sir Thomas Picton, and General Cole, also crossed the river
at different bridges or fords, and everywhere drove the French before
them. The scene from the heights, which were crowded with people, was
one of the most animating ever beheld; the British everywhere advancing
amid the roar of cannon and musketry, the French retiring everywhere
on Vittoria. In the meantime, our left, under Sir Thomas Graham,
having a considerable number of Spanish and Portuguese troops in it,
advanced to the heights beyond the Zadora, along the Bilbao road, and
carried the village of Gamara Mayor, while the Spanish division of
Longa carried that of Gamara Monor. Both the Spanish and Portuguese
troops behaved admirably. While Major-General Robertson's brigade
carried Gamara Mayor, Colonel Halkett's, supported by that of General
Bradford, carried the village of Abechuco. Here a determined effort was
made by the French to recover this post, but they were driven back by
Major-General Oswald, with the fifth division.

These points being all gained, the French were not left long in
possession of Vittoria. They were pushed out of the town, and the whole
united army joined in chasing them along the road towards Pampeluna. So
complete was the rout that, according to Wellington's dispatch, they
left behind them all their baggage, ammunition, every gun but one, and
a howitzer.

So close were they upon King Joseph, that a party of the British,
under Captain Wyndham, came upon him in his carriage, and fired
through the window. Joseph had the good fortune to escape to horse,
and gallop off, but his carriage fell into the hands of the British,
and it was found crammed with the most precious spoil of the churches
and palaces of Spain. Amongst his baggage, which also was taken,
were found some of the finest paintings of the Spanish masters, rich
plate, including a splendid dinner-service, a gorgeous wardrobe, and
a number of his women, for he was a perfect Sybarite in luxury and
voluptuousness. No such scene was witnessed, except on the defeat
of some Eastern army. The officers had gorged themselves with the
spoils of Spain, and here they were left, amid crowds of wives and
mistresses, monkeys, poodles, parrots, silks, satins, and jewellery.
The officers and soldiers had run for it, with nothing but their arms
and their clothes on their backs, and all along the roads leading from
the city was one vast crowding, jostling mass of waggons, loaded with
all sorts of rich spoils, splendid dresses, and wines, and money, and
fine ladies in the most terrible hurry and fright. Sheep, cattle,
lambs, like a great fair, were left behind, and became the booty of
the pursuers. There was a vigorous bursting open of packages, and rich
wardrobes of both officers and ladies were soon fluttering in the
winds--gorgeous uniforms on the backs of common soldiers and Portuguese
camp-followers--fine silks and satins, and laces and gold chains, on
the persons and necks of common women. The military chest was seized,
and the soldiers freely helped themselves to its contents. Lord
Wellington says that the troops got about a million of money. Planks
were placed from waggon to waggon, and a great auction was going on
everywhere, the lucky captors converting everything possible--even the
heavy Spanish dollars--into gold, as more convenient for carriage. The
inhabitants of the city made rich bargains, besides managing to help
themselves plentifully in the scramble.

[Illustration: THE FLIGHT OF THE FRENCH THROUGH THE TOWN OF VITTORIA,
JUNE 21st, 1813.

FROM THE PAINTING BY ROBERT HILLINGFORD.]

The army of Joseph dispersed at full speed, and as our cavalry could
not pursue them across the hedges and ditches, they managed to escape,
and made their way to Pampeluna in one wild, chaotic herd. On the field
they profess to have left eight thousand men in killed and wounded, but
their loss was far greater. They left, also, one hundred and fifty-one
pieces of brass ordnance, four hundred and fifteen caissons, more than
forty thousand rounds of ammunition, nearly two million musketball
cartridges, forty thousand six hundred and sixty-eight pounds of
gunpowder, fifty-six forage waggons, and forty-four forge waggons.
The allied army had killed, British, five hundred and one; Portuguese,
one hundred and fifty; Spaniards, only eighty-nine: wounded, British,
two thousand eight hundred and seven; Portuguese, eight hundred and
ninety-nine; Spanish, four hundred and sixty-four. Lord Wellington
reported the conduct of almost every officer engaged as admirable. King
Joseph did not stop till he was safe, for a time, within the strong
walls of Pampeluna, but the garrison there would not admit the rabble
herd of fugitives, but sent them off like enemies; and they were forced
to continue their flight into the Pyrenees.

News of this most extraordinary defeat acted on the French, on all
sides, like the concussion of some violent explosion. They fell back
and fled in confusion before any enemy appeared. General Clausel,
who was advancing from Logroño with fifteen thousand men, fled back
to Saragossa with such precipitation, and thence through the central
Pyrenees into France, that he left all his artillery and most of his
baggage on the road. The same was the case with General Foy, who fled
from Bilbao to Bayonne in hot haste, with General Graham at his heels.
Except at San Sebastian and Pampeluna, where the garrisons were soon
besieged, the French were scarcely to be found in Spain, except those
with Suchet in the south-east.

Pampeluna and San Sebastian being invested, Lord Wellington proceeded
with his main army to occupy the passes of the Pyrenees. These,
Wellington, in his dispatches, says amounted to about seventy, and,
in the service of securing these, he complains that he was left
very much without the necessary supplies for his army. The British
Government had, from some cause--he supposed to send them against the
Americans--reduced the number of convoys, and many of our store-ships
were taken by the French frigates and privateers. It was, as much as
ever, in vain to expect the Spaniards to do anything to supply the
deficiency, after all that the English had done for them. As fast as
they got rid of the French, they busied themselves in making war on the
clergy and putting them down. Wellington was, therefore, continually
obliged to arrest his marches to wait for provisions. Notwithstanding,
by the 7th of July he had driven Joseph Buonaparte through the
mountains into France, chased Clausel beyond Tudela on the Ebro, and
taken his post on the very edge of France. Buonaparte, alarmed at the
progress of Wellington, displaced Jourdan as incapable, and sent back
Soult to do what neither he, nor Ney, nor Marmont, nor Massena had
been able to do before they were necessarily displaced--that is, arrest
the onward march of Wellington into France.

Soult hurried southward, collecting fresh forces to repel the
conquering invader, and issued a proclamation, telling the French
soldiers that they had at length taught the English to fight, and they
must show them that they were still their superiors. Whilst Wellington
was superintending the sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, Soult
advanced, having gathered an army of nearly seventy thousand men, and,
on the 25th of July, he suddenly attacked our outposts simultaneously
in the passes of Roncesvalles and of Maya. Both these passes converged
into one leading to Pampeluna, where Soult hoped to raise the siege.
He himself led on thirty thousand fresh men up the Roncesvalles pass
against Generals Cole and Picton, who had about ten thousand to oppose
him. He compelled them to retreat to some greater elevations, but with
considerable loss, and he hoped there to have them joined by General
D'Erlon, who had ascended the Maya pass, with thirteen thousand men,
against General Stewart, who had only four or five thousand men to
oppose him. The conflict there had been terrible; the British fighting
and giving way only step by step against the superior force. The awful
struggle went on, five thousand feet above the plains of France, amid
clouds and fogs. Stewart did not fall back till he had sixteen hundred
of his small force killed and wounded, and the defiles were actually
blocked up with the slain.

Matters were at this pass when Lord Wellington, who had heard of the
attack, at his headquarters at Lezaco, two days before, came galloping
up on the morning of the 27th. He found Soult only two leagues from
Pampeluna, and saw him so near that he could plainly discern his
features. Wellington caused his own presence to be announced to his two
bodies of troops, and they answered the announcement with loud cheers.
That day the troops of Soult were pushed backwards by a regiment of the
Irish, and a body of Spanish infantry, at the point of the bayonet.
The next day, the 28th, the French were driven down still farther. On
the 29th both armies rested, but on the 30th the fight was renewed
with fury; but Picton and Dalhousie, being sent across the mountains
in opposite directions, managed to turn both flanks of Soult, and the
French fled precipitately as far as Olaque. There the pursuing troops
fell in with the right of the French, which had been worsted by Hill.
In the darkness the French continued their flight, and the next morning
were found in full retreat for France. The British gave chase, and made
many prisoners, taking much baggage. These battles, which have been
named "The Battles of the Pyrenees," Wellington describes as some of
the most severe that he ever saw. He states the loss of the British
in killed at one thousand five hundred, but in killed and wounded at
six thousand. The French, he says, admitted that they had lost fifteen
thousand men, and he therefore gave them credit for the loss being much
more. On one occasion Wellington surprised Soult, and had so laid his
plans for surrounding him that he felt sure of capturing him; but three
drunken British soldiers, rambling carelessly beyond the outposts, were
taken, and let out the secret of Wellington being hidden close at hand,
behind the rocks, and thus saved the French commander. A second time
he was saved by the Spanish generals, Longa and Barcenas, not being
at their posts in a narrow defile near St. Estevan, where he could
only pass by a slender bridge. Still the British were at his heels,
and committed dreadful havoc on his troops in this pass. On the 2nd of
August there was a fresh encounter with Soult's forces near the town of
Echalar, where they were again beaten, and driven from a lofty mountain
called Ivantelly. Soult retired behind the Bidassoa, and concentrated
his routed forces; and Wellington, having once more cleared the passes
of the Pyrenees of the French, gave his army some rest, after nine days
of incessant and arduous action, where they could look out over the
plains of France, which they were ere long to traverse. But the army
had not much rest here. The French made determined efforts to raise the
siege of San Sebastian, while Wellington was as active in endeavouring
to force Pampeluna to capitulate. Unfortunately he had still scarcely
any proper men or tools for siege-work. He had long urged on the
Government the formation of companies of sappers and miners. But,
after eighteen months, they had formed only one company, whilst, as
Wellington informed the Government, there was no French _corps d'armée_
which had not a battalion of them. This first British company of
sappers and miners came out on the 19th of August, and were immediately
set to work. Sir George Collier sent his sailors to assist, and on
the 31st Wellington considered that he had made sufficient breach for
storming. But that morning Soult sent across the Bidassoa a strong body
of French to attack the besiegers. These were met by a division of
eight thousand Spaniards, who allowed the French to ascend the heights
of San Marcial, on which they were posted, and then, with a shout,
charged with the bayonet down hill, at which sight the French instantly
broke, and ran for it. They were pursued to the river, in which many
plunged, and were drowned. In the afternoon Soult sent over again
fifteen thousand men, having put across a pontoon bridge. These, under
the eye and encouragement of Lord Wellington, were charged again by the
Spaniards, and routed as before; many again rushing into the river,
and the rest, crushing upon the bridge, broke it down, and perished in
great numbers also. The Portuguese troops likewise met and defeated
another detachment of French, who had come by another way. These were
supported by British troops, under General Inglis, and with the same
result. Wellington was highly delighted to see the Spaniards thus, at
length, doing justice to their native valour under British discipline,
and praised them warmly. Soult is said to have lost two thousand men.

While this was going on, the town of San Sebastian was stormed by the
British. Sir Thomas Graham conducted the assault, which was led on by
the brigade of General Robinson, bravely supported by a detachment of
Portuguese under Major Snodgrass. The place was captured; the French
were driven through it to the castle standing on a height, in which
they found refuge. Seven hundred prisoners were taken. The British
lost two thousand men in the assault--a loss which would have been
far greater had a mine, containing one thousand two hundred pounds
of gunpowder, exploded, but which was fortunately prevented by the
falling in of a saucisson. Many less would have fallen, however, had
General Graham allowed shells to be thrown into the town, which he
would not, on account of the inhabitants. But the French had not only
prepared this great mine, but exploded various other appliances for
setting the town on fire. In fact they showed no care for the people
or the town. When driven to the castle, after a murderous street
fight--in which they picked off our men from behind walls and windows,
killing Sir Richard Fletcher, the commanding engineer, and wounding
Generals Robinson, Leith, and Oswald, besides slaughtering heaps of our
men--they continued to fire down the streets, killing great numbers
of the inhabitants besides our soldiers. Yet, after all, they charged
Lord Wellington with not only throwing shells into the town, but
with setting it on fire, and plundering it. His lordship indignantly
repelled these accusations in his letter to his brother, Sir Henry
Wellesley. He declares that he himself had been obliged to hasten to
his headquarters at Lezaco, on the morning of the 31st of August, but
that he saw the town on fire in various places before our soldiers
entered it; in fact, the French had set it on fire in six different
places, and had their mine exploded scarcely a fragment of the town
would have been left, or a single inhabitant alive. The lenity shown
to the town by Wellington and Graham, who acted for him, was not used
towards their calumniators in the castle. It was stoutly bombarded, and
being soon almost battered to pieces about the ears of the defenders,
the French surrendered on the 8th of September, two thousand five
hundred in number; but the siege of both town and fort had cost the
allies four thousand men in killed and wounded. Had the town been, as
the French represented, bombarded like the castle, some thousands of
English and Portuguese lives would have been spared, but at the expense
of the inhabitants.

[Illustration: PAMPELUNA.]

Lord Wellington, early in October, called down his troops from their
cold and miserable posts in the mountains, and marched them over the
Bidassoa, and encamped them amongst the French hills and valleys of
La Rhune. The last division moved across on the 10th of November, the
town of Pampeluna having surrendered on the 31st of October. This
was a very agreeable change to the troops; but, before crossing,
his lordship issued the most emphatic orders against plundering or
ill-using the inhabitants. He told them, and especially the Spanish and
Portuguese, that though the French had committed unheard-of barbarities
in their countries, he would not allow of retaliation and revenge on
the innocent inhabitants of France; that it was against the universal
marauder, Buonaparte, and his system, that the British made war, and
not against the people of France. But the passions of the Portuguese
and Spaniards were too much excited against their oppressors, and they
burnt and plundered whenever they had opportunity. On this, Wellington
wrote sternly to the Spanish general, Freyre. "Where I command," he
said, "no one shall be allowed to plunder. If plunder must be had, then
another must have the command. You have large armies in Spain, and
if it is wished to plunder the French peasantry, you may then enter
France; but then the Spanish Government must remove me from the command
of their armies. It is a matter of indifference to me whether I command
a large or a small army; but, whether large or small, they must obey
me, and, above all, must not plunder." To secure the fulfilment of
these orders, he moved back most of the Spanish troops to within the
Spanish frontiers. The strictness with which Lord Wellington maintained
these sentiments and protected the inhabitants produced the best
results. The folk of the southern provinces, being well inclined to the
Bourbons, and heartily wearied of seeing their sons annually dragged
away to be slaughtered in foreign countries for Buonaparte's ambition,
soon flocked into camp with all sorts of provisions and vegetables; and
they did not hesitate to express their wishes for the success of the
British arms.

Under sharp fighting, Wellington crossed the Nivelle on the 10th of
November, and proposed to go into cantonments at St. Jean de Luz,
on the right bank of the Nivelle; but he did not find himself in a
position to obtain supplies there, and he therefore crossed the Nive,
and occupied the country between that river and the Adour. Soult made
desperate efforts to drive the enemy back; but he was compelled to
fall back on his entrenched camp in front of Bayonne; and Wellington
went into winter-quarters about the middle of December, but quarters
extremely uncomfortable. Their late conflicts, between the 9th and
13th of December, had been made in the worst of weather, and they had
marched over the most terrible roads. During these conflicts they
had lost six hundred and fifty killed, and upwards of one thousand
wounded and five hundred missing. The French had lost three times that
number. But the French were at home amid their own people; while the
allies were in a hostile country, suffering every species of want.
At this moment Britain was sending clothes, arms, and ammunition to
the Germans, the Sclavonians, and Dutch; but her own gallant army,
which had chased the French out of Spain, and which had to maintain
the honour of Great Britain by advancing towards Paris, was suffered
to want everything, especially great-coats and shoes, in that severe
season. Wellington had earnestly implored a reinforcement of twenty
thousand men, but it did not arrive.

In the south-east of Spain the motley army of British and Sicilians
had done sufficient to keep the attention of Suchet engaged, so that
he could not quit that post to follow and assist Soult against the
main British army. Lord Wellington had instructed Sir George Murray to
embark his troops at Alicante, and, sailing to Tarragona, endeavour
to make himself master of it; if he found the French too strong in
that quarter to enable him to effect his purpose, he was to re-embark,
return to Valencia, and then attack the French lines on the Xucar
before Suchet could make the long march which would be necessary to
support them. Murray had had his army weakened by the withdrawal of
two thousand troops by Lord William Bentinck, very unnecessarily, to
Sicily; but he undertook these manœuvres, and might have succeeded in
capturing Tarragona, but, alarmed at a rumour of Suchet and General
Mathieu having combined their forces, and being in march against him,
he abandoned the place panic-stricken, and, in spite of the indignant
remonstrances of Admiral Hallowell, embarked his troops in the utmost
precipitation. Lord William Bentinck arrived on the 17th of June,
immediately after the embarkation, but not in time to save nineteen
pieces of artillery, which Murray had abandoned in the trenches. Lord
Bentinck battered down Fort Balaguer, and then sailed away to Alicante,
leaving the Spanish general exposed to the enemy, but he saved himself
by escaping into the mountains. For this conduct, Sir George Murray
on his return to England was tried by court-martial, and gently
reprimanded, but nothing more.

Lord William Bentinck, after having retired to Alicante, once more
returned to Tarragona, and made himself master of that place.
Attempting further advantages in this country, he was compelled to fall
back on Tarragona with considerable loss. He then returned to Sicily,
and General Clinton took the command of the forces, and strengthened
the defences of the post. At the same time news arrived of the retreat
of Buonaparte from Russia and the rising of Germany, which compelled
Suchet to disarm his German regiments, and march them into France
under guard. He had also to send some of his best French troops to
recruit Buonaparte's decimated army, and the Italian ones to resist the
Austrians in Italy, who were once more in motion through the Alps. In
these circumstances the campaign in the south-east of Spain closed for
the year.

During the winter of 1812 and the spring of 1813 Buonaparte was making
the most energetic exertions to renew the campaign against Russia and
the German nations that were now uniting with the Czar. He called
out new conscriptions, and enforced them with the utmost rigour;
the militia were drafted extensively into the regular army, and the
sailors, whose service had been annihilated by the victorious seamen of
Great Britain, were modelled into regiments, and turned into soldiers.
He sent for part of his forces from Spain; and in the spring he was
enabled to present himself in Germany at the head of three hundred and
fifty thousand men. But this was a very different army from that which
he had led into and lost in Russia--an army of practised veterans,
familiar with victory through a hundred fights. It was necessarily but
ill-disciplined, and much more full of the sense of wrong in having
been dragged from home and its ties than of any thirst of glory. The
cavalry was especially defective, and had lost the commander who gave
it such spirit by his own example. Disgusted by the insolence and
sarcasms of Buonaparte, and believing that his career was about to end,
Murat quitted his command on the 16th of January, 1813, and hastened
to Naples, where he was not long in opening negotiations with Great
Britain and the other Powers for the acknowledgment of his kingdom
as one independent of France, and ranking with the other established
Powers of Europe. Nor was this the only alarming circumstance.
Bernadotte was at the head of an army of Swedes against him--Bernadotte
whom he had driven by the same insolent and unbearable domination
into the arms of his enemies, and whom he now denounced as a renegade
Frenchman who had renounced his country. The truth, however, was that
Bernadotte had been adopted by a new country, and was bound to defend
it.

Next came the declaration of war by the King of Prussia, which
Buonaparte styled a treachery; but, on the contrary, the King of
Prussia had only preserved faith towards his oppressor and insulter too
long. Not only all Prussia, but all Germany was on fire to throw off
the detested yoke of the oppressor, and Frederick William would have
been a traitor to his people and to common sense to have hesitated.
Yet he proposed terms of a mutual settlement. To place himself in a
position of independent treaty, he suddenly left Berlin on the 22nd of
January, and made his way to Breslau, where he was out of the reach of
French arms, and in certainty of the arrival, at no very distant date,
of Russian ones. He invited, however, the French ambassador to follow
him, and he there proposed an armistice, on the conditions that the
French should evacuate Dantzic and all the other Prussian fortresses on
the Oder, and retire behind the Elbe, on which the Czar had promised
that he would stop the march of his army beyond the Vistula. But
Buonaparte treated the proposition with contempt; he was determined to
give up nothing--to recover everything.

Immediately on the rejection of his terms Frederick William concluded
a treaty with Alexander on the 28th of February, and Austria was
invited to join the league. Alexander had joined his army himself
on the 22nd of December, and had marched along with it through that
horrible winter. On the 1st of March Prussia concluded its alliance
with Alexander, offensive and defensive. On the 15th Alexander arrived
at Breslau, and there was an affecting meeting of the two sovereigns,
who had been placed in outward hostility by the power of Buonaparte,
but who had never ceased to be friends at heart. The King of Prussia
was moved to tears. "Courage, my brother," said Alexander; "these are
the last tears that Napoleon shall cause you."

The next day the war against France was proclaimed, and for the
righteous cause of restoring the independence of the nations. Prussia,
and indeed all Germany, had now been trampled on sufficiently to crush
the effeminacy out of all classes--to rouse the true soul of liberty
in them. Men of every rank offered themselves as the defenders and
avengers of their country; the students at this moment not only sung,
but aided freedom. The volunteers were formed into Black Bands, and
others assumed the dress and arms of the Cossacks, who had won much
admiration. They were disciplined in the system of Scharnhorst, and
soon became effective soldiers. A leader was found for them after their
own heart--the brave and patriotic Blucher, who had been reserving
himself for this day, and Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, better tacticians
than himself, were appointed to assist him, and carry out all the
strategic movements; whilst Blucher, never depressed by difficulties,
never daunted by defeat, led them on with the cheer from which he
derived his most common appellation of Marshal Forwards--"Forwards!
my children, forwards!" All classes hastened to contribute the utmost
amount possible to the necessary funds for this sacred war. The ladies
gave in their gold chains and bracelets, their diamonds and rubies, and
wore as ornaments chains and bracelets of beautifully wrought iron.

Austria stood in a hesitating position. On the one hand, she felt
reluctant to join the Allies and assist in destroying the throne of
the Emperor's son-in-law; but at the same time she was anxious to
strengthen her own position by giving more strength to her neighbour,
Prussia. For this purpose Austria offered her mediation for a peace
on terms that would restore Prussia to a more becoming position, and
such proposals of mediation were made by the Austrian Minister to
Great Britain. But these entirely failed. On the one hand, Napoleon
would concede nothing, but declared that he would entirely annihilate
Prussia, and would give Silesia to Austria for her assistance in the
war; on the other hand, Great Britain declared that there could be no
peace unless France disgorged the bulk of her usurpations.

On the 15th of April Buonaparte quitted Paris, for the last time as
a permanent abode; on the 16th he was at Mainz, and on the 25th at
Erfurt. Before quitting Paris he had appointed Maria Louisa regent in
his absence. This he deemed a stroke of policy likely to conciliate the
Emperor of Austria. But the Empress's power was merely nominal. She
could appear at the Council board, but it was only as the instrument
of the Emperor; he carried all active power along with him, and ruled
France from his camp. He had still upwards of fifty thousand troops
in the garrisons of Prussia, commanded by Eugene, the Viceroy of
Italy; and he advanced at the head of three hundred thousand men.
Eugene Beauharnais had been compelled necessarily to evacuate Dantzic,
Berlin, and Dresden as the Russians and Prussians advanced, and to
retreat upon the Elbe. In the month of May Bernadotte, according to
concert, crossed over to Stralsund with thirty-five thousand men, and
awaited the reinforcements of Russians and Germans which were to raise
his division to eighty thousand men, with which he was to co-operate
with the Allies, and protect Hamburg. The Allies, under Tetterborn,
Czernicheff, and Winzengerode, spread along both sides of the Elbe, the
Germans rising enthusiastically wherever they came. Hamburg, Lübeck,
and other towns threw open their gates to them. The French general,
Morand, endeavouring to quell the rising of the people of Lüneburg, was
surprised by the Russians, and his detachment of four thousand men was
cut to pieces, or taken prisoners. Eugene marched from Magdeburg to
surprise Berlin, but was met at Möckern, defeated, and driven back to
Magdeburg. Such was the success of the Allies, and the exulting support
of the people, that even Denmark and Saxony began to contemplate going
over to the Allies. Blucher entered Dresden on the 27th of March,
driving Davoust before him, who blew up an arch of the fine bridge to
cover his retreat. The Emperor of Russia and King of Prussia entered
the city soon afterwards, and were received by the inhabitants with
acclamations. On the 28th of April died the old Russian general,
Kutusoff, at Bautzen, and was succeeded by General Wittgenstein.

At the approach of the new French levies, Eugene Beauharnais retreated
from Magdeburg, and joined them on the Saale. The Allies and Napoleon
now lay face to face, the Allies cutting off his advance towards
Leipsic and thence to Dresden. He resolved to make a determined attack
upon them, and demoralise them by a blow which should make him master
of Leipsic, Dresden, and Berlin at once, and give its impression to
the whole campaign. In the skirmishes which took place previous to the
general engagement at Weissenfels and Poserna on the 29th of April and
the 1st of May, Buonaparte gained some advantages; but in the latter
action his old commander of the Imperial Guard, Marshal Bessières, was
killed. His death was deeply lamented, both by his men, who had served
under him from the very commencement of Buonaparte's career, and by
Buonaparte himself.

The first great battle was destined to be fought on the very ground
where Gustavus Adolphus fell, 1632. Buonaparte marched upon Leipsic,
expecting to find the Allies posted there; but he was suddenly brought
to a stand by them at Lützen. The Allies, who were on the left bank of
the Elster, crossed to the right, and impetuously attacked the French,
whose centre was at the village of Kaya, under the command of Ney,
supported by the Imperial Guard, and their fine artillery drawn up in
front of the town of Lützen; the right wing, commanded by Marmont,
extending as far as the defile of Poserna, and the left stretching from
Kaya to the Elster. Napoleon did not expect to have met the Allies on
that side of Leipsic, and was pressing briskly forward when the attack
commenced. Ney was first stopped at Gross-Görschen. Had Wittgenstein
made a decided charge with his whole column, instead of attacking by
small brigades, he would assuredly have broken the French lines. But
Buonaparte rode up, and galloped from place to place to throw fresh
troops on the point of attack, and to wheel up both of his wings so
as to enclose, if possible, both flanks of the Allies. The conflict
lasted some hours, during which it was uncertain whether the Allies
would break the centre of the French, or the French would be able to
outflank the Allies. Blucher was late on the field; the officer who was
sent overnight to him with orders from Wittgenstein is said to have put
them under his pillow and slept on them till roused by the cannon. At
length, after a desperate attack by Napoleon to recover the village of
Kaya, out of which he had been driven, the Allies observing that the
firing of Macdonald and Bertrand, who commanded the two wings, was fast
extending along their flanks, skilfully extricated themselves from the
combat, and led back their columns so as to escape being outflanked
by the French. Yet they did not even then give up the struggle for
the day. The Allied cavalry made a general attack in the dark, but
it failed from the mighty masses of the French on which they had to
act. The Allies captured some cannon, the French none. The loss of
the Allies was twenty thousand men, killed and wounded: that of the
French was equally severe. Seven or eight French generals were killed
or wounded. On the side of the Allies fell General Scharnhorst--an
irreparable loss, for no man had done more to organise the Prussian
landwehr and volunteers. The Prince Leopold of Hesse-Homburg and the
Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, both allied to the royal family of
England, were slain, and Blucher himself was wounded; but he had his
wounds dressed on the field, and would not quit it till the last moment.

[Illustration: BERNADOTTE (KING OF SWEDEN).]

Napoleon, who had every need of success to regain his former position
in the opinion of France, sent off in all haste to Paris the most
exaggerated account of the battle of Lützen, as one of the most
decisive victories that he had ever won, and that it had totally
scattered the Allies, and neutralised all the hopes and schemes of
Great Britain. The Empress went in procession to Notre Dame, where _Te
Deum_ was celebrated by Cardinal Maury, who drew the most extravagant
picture of Napoleon's invincible genius. The same false statements were
sent also to every friendly Court in Europe, even to Constantinople.
The stratagem had its effect. The wavering German princes, who
were ready to go over to their own countrymen, still ranged their
banners with the French. The King of Saxony had gone to Prague as a
place whence he might negotiate his return to the ranks of his own
fatherland; but he now hastened back again, and was in Dresden on the
12th of May with Napoleon, who conducted him in a kind of triumph
through his capital, parading his adhesion before his subjects who had
hailed the Allies just before with acclamations. The Saxon king, in
fresh token of amity to Napoleon, ceded to him the fortress of Torgau,
much to the disgust of his subjects.

But the Allies had only fallen back behind the Elbe, and taken up a
strong position at Bautzen, on the Spree, about twelve leagues from
Dresden, whilst an army under Bülow covered Berlin. No sooner did the
Allies fall back to the right bank of the Elbe than Davoust attacked
Hamburg on the 9th of May with five thousand men, and vowed vengeance
on the city for having admitted the Allies. To their surprise the
citizens found themselves defended by a body of Danes, from Altona,
who were the allies of France, but had been just then thinking of
abandoning Napoleon. But the fate of the battle of Lützen changed their
views, and they retired in the evening of that day, leaving Hamburg to
the attacks of the French. Bernadotte, not having received the promised
reinforcements, did not venture to cover Hamburg. Davoust entered the
place like a devil. He shot twelve of the principal citizens, and drove
twenty-five thousand of the inhabitants out of the city, pulled down
their houses, compelling the most distinguished men of the town to work
at this demolition and at raising the materials into fortifications.
The people had long been subjected by the French to every possible
kind of pillage and indignity; no women, however distinguished, had
been allowed to pass the gate without being subjected to the most
indecent examinations. But now the fury of the French commander passed
all bounds. He levied a contribution of eighteen millions of dollars:
and not satisfied with that, he robbed the great Hamburg bank, and
declared all his doings to be by orders of the Emperor.

Napoleon, reinforced by a number of French, Bavarian, Würtemberg, and
Saxon troops, moved off to attack the Allies at Bautzen, on the 19th of
May. He had detached Lauriston and Ney towards Berlin to rout Bülow,
but they were stopped by Barclay de Tolly and Yorck at Königswartha and
at Weissig, and compelled to retreat. On the 21st Ney combined with
Napoleon, and they made a united attack on Blucher's position on the
fortified heights of Klein and Klein-Bautzen. In this battle German
fought against German, the Bavarians against Bavarians, for they took
both sides, such was the dislocated state of the nation. It was not
till after a long and desperately-fought battle that the Allies were
compelled to give ground, and then they retired, without the loss of
a single gun, and posted themselves strongly behind the fortress of
Schweidnitz, so famous in the campaigns of Frederick of Prussia.

In this battle the Allies lost in killed and wounded ten thousand
men, the French not less than fifteen thousand. The French generals
Bruyères, Kirchner, and Duroc were amongst the killed. Duroc had long
been one of the most intimate friends and attendants of Buonaparte,
who was so much cut up by his loss that for the first time in all his
terrible campaigns he became unable to attend to further details, but
answered every call for orders with "Everything tomorrow!" When he came
to find that not a gun, not a prisoner was left behind by the Germans
and Russians, Napoleon seemed to comprehend the stern spirit in which
they were now contending, and exclaimed, "How! no result after such a
massacre? No prisoners? They leave me not even a nail!" He advanced to
Breslau, various slight conflicts taking place on the way, and on the
1st of June he entered that city, the princesses of Prussia removing
thence into Bohemia.

An armistice was now demanded by the Allies--it is said at the instance
of Austria, who desired to act as mediator--and gladly assented to by
Napoleon, who was desirous of completing his preparations for a more
determined attack. The armistice was signed on the 4th of June at the
village of Pleisswitz.

At the time of this armistice, Napoleon, by the great battles of Lützen
and Bautzen, had recovered his _prestige_ sufficiently to induce the
German Confederates of the Rhine to stand by him; but he was by no
means what he had been. The opinion of his invincibility had been
irreparably damaged by the Russian campaign, and the success in these
battles was not of a character to give confidence to his own army. They
saw that the Allies had lost all superstitious fear of him. To assist
in the negotiations of this armistice, Buonaparte sent for his two
ablest heads, Fouché and Talleyrand, whom he had so long thrown from
him for their sound advice. If Buonaparte could have heard, too, what
was really going on in France, what were the growing feelings there, he
would have been startled by a most ominous condition of things. But he
had thoroughly shut out from himself the voice of public opinion, by
his treatment of the press and of liberty, and he now was to suffer for
it. Great Britain, on the 14th of June, had concluded an alliance with
Russia and Prussia, and promised to send ample materials of assistance,
even an army to the north of Prussia; and many British officers of
the highest rank repaired to the headquarters of the Allies. When
Great Britain was asked to take part in this negotiation she refused,
declaring it useless, as Napoleon would not grant the only demands
which the Allies ought to make.

Austria professed great friendliness to Napoleon, and he thought that
she would not like to break with him on account of the Empress. But
Austria, on the 27th of June, signed an engagement with Russia and
Prussia, at Reichenbach, in Silesia, binding herself to break with
him if he did not concede the terms which they demanded. These were
to restore Illyria and the whole of Austrian Italy; to reinstate the
Pope; to leave Poland to the three Powers who had formerly possessed
themselves of it, and to renounce Spain, Holland, Switzerland, and the
Confederation of the Rhine. Buonaparte treated these demands as sheer
madness; but he was nearly mad himself when Talleyrand and Fouché, and
still more, his best military counsellors, advised him at least to
fall back to the left bank of the Rhine, and make that the boundary of
France. He offered to annihilate the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, giving up
the whole of Poland to Russia--such was his gratitude to the Poles!--to
restore Illyria to Austria, but to cut down Prussia still more by
pushing the Rhenish Confederation to the Oder.

His terms were rejected with disdain. Yet he had a last interview with
Metternich, in which he hoped to terrify him by a dread of the future
preponderance of Russia; but, seeing that it made no impression, he
became incensed, and adopted a very insolent tone towards the Austrian
Minister. "Well, Metternich," he demanded, "how much has England
given you to induce you to play this part towards me?" Metternich
received the insult in haughty silence. Buonaparte, to try how far the
diplomatist still would preserve his deference towards him, let his
hat fall: Metternich let it lie. This was a sign that the Austrian
had taken his part; it was, in fact, the signal of war. Yet, at the
last moment, Napoleon suddenly assumed a tone of conciliation, and
offered very large concessions. He had heard the news of the defeat of
Vittoria. But it was too late. The Congress terminated on the 10th of
August, and the Allies refused to re-open it. On the 12th of August,
two days after the termination of the armistice, Austria declared
herself on the side of the Allies, and brought two hundred thousand
men to swell their ranks. This redoubtable force was commanded by her
general, Prince von Schwarzenberg.

Immediately after the termination of the armistice the Russians and
Prussians joined the great army of the Austrians, which had been
concentrated at Prague. Their plan was to fall upon Buonaparte's rear.
Full of activity, that unresting man had been busy, during the whole
armistice, in defending his headquarters at Dresden by fortifications.
He had cut down all the trees which adorned the public gardens and
walks, and used them in a chain of redoubts and field-works, secured
by fosses and palisades. He was in possession of the strong mountain
fortresses of the vicinity, as well as those of Torgau, Wittenberg,
Magdeburg, and others, so that the valley of the Elbe was in his
hands; and he had a bridge of boats at Königstein, extending his
communications to Stolpe: thus guarding against an attack on the side
of Bohemia. In the beginning of August he assembled two hundred and
fifty thousand men in Saxony and Silesia. Of these, sixty thousand lay
at Leipsic under Oudinot, and one hundred thousand in different towns
on the borders of Silesia, under Macdonald; he himself lay at Dresden
with his Imperial Guard. Eugene Beauharnais he had dispatched to Italy,
where he had forty thousand men. Besides these, he had a reserve of
Bavarians, under General Wrede, of twenty-five thousand men.

Besides the grand army of the Allies, of two hundred thousand, marching
from Bohemia, one hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, and eighty
thousand Russians and Prussians, Blucher lay on the road to Breslau
with eighty thousand; the Crown Prince of Sweden, near Berlin, with
thirty thousand Swedes and sixty thousand Prussians and Russians;
Walmoden lay at Schwerin, in Mecklenburg, with thirty thousand Allies;
and Hiller, with forty thousand Austrians, watched the army of Italy.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON'S INTERVIEW WITH METTERNICH. (_See p._ 67.)]

Whilst these gigantic armies were drawing towards each other, in
the early part of August, for what was afterwards called "the grand
battle of the peoples," the weather seemed as though it would renew
its Russian miseries on the French. They had to march in constantly
deluging rains, up to the knees in mud, and to risk their lives by
crossing flooded rivers. Amid these buffetings of the elements the
conflict began, on the 21st of August, between Walmoden and Davoust, at
Vellahn. A few days afterwards, in a skirmish with Walmoden's outposts
at Gadebusch, Korner, the youthful Tyrtæus of Germany, fell.

The plan of the campaign is said to have been laid down by Bernadotte,
and adopted, after some slight revision, by General Moreau. That
general, whom the jealousy of Buonaparte had expelled from France,
and who had retired to America, now returned in the hope of seeing
the fall of Buonaparte effected, and peace and a liberal constitution
given to his country. He came not to fight against France, but against
Buonaparte. The plan showed that they who devised it knew Napoleon's
art of war. It was to prevent him from attacking and beating them in
detail. Whichever party was first assailed was to retire and draw
him after them, till the other divisions could close round him, and
assail him on all sides. Blucher was the first to advance against
Macdonald and Ney. As had been foreseen, Buonaparte hastened to support
these generals with the Imperial Guard and a numerous cavalry, under
Latour-Maubourg. But Blucher then retired, and, crossing the Katzbach,
sat down near Jauer, so as to cover Breslau. The purpose was served,
for Schwarzenberg, accompanied by the sovereigns of Russia and Prussia,
as well as by Moreau, had rushed forward on Dresden, driving St. Cyr
and twenty thousand men before them, who took refuge in Dresden. The
Allies were at his heels, and on the 25th of August began to attack the
city. They hoped to win it before Buonaparte could return, in which
case they would cut off his line of communication with France--stopping
the advance both of his supplies and reinforcements. But the very
next day, whilst they were in vigorous operation against the city, and
had already carried two redoubts, Buonaparte was seen advancing in hot
haste over the bridges into Dresden. Warned of its danger, he had left
Macdonald to defend himself, and now led his troops across the city
and out at two different gates upon the enemies. The battle continued
that day, and was resumed the next, by Buonaparte pushing forward
immense bodies of troops from different gates, and concentrating them
on the Allies. The attempt to take the city in Buonaparte's absence
had failed, and now they saw themselves in danger of being enclosed by
Murat--who had again been induced to join the Emperor--on the Freiberg
road, and by Vandamme on the road to Pirna, by the Elbe. They were,
therefore, compelled to fall back, and the withdrawal soon proved a
flight. Napoleon pursued them hotly amid torrents of wind and rain,
and made great slaughter, especially of the Austrians, who were seized
with a panic of the enemy who had so often beaten them. Seven or eight
thousand French were killed and wounded; but of the Allies, chiefly
Austrians, more than twenty thousand were killed or disabled. During
the engagement Moreau had both his legs shot away by a cannon ball, and
died in a few days.

[Illustration: VIEW IN DRESDEN.]

Buonaparte continued the pursuit of the Allies as far as Pirna, whence,
owing to indisposition, he returned to Dresden; but Vandamme, Murat,
Marmont, and St. Cyr pushed forward by different ways to cut off
the route of the fugitives into the mountains of Bohemia. Vandamme,
however, having passed Peterswald, beyond which he had orders not to
proceed, was tempted to try for Töplitz, where the Allied sovereigns
lay, and take it. In doing this he was enclosed, in a deep valley near
Kulm, by Ostermann and other bodies of the Allies, completely routed,
and taken prisoner, with Generals Haxo and Guyot, the loss of two
eagles, and seven thousand prisoners. This was on the 29th of August.

On the 26th Blucher had nearly annihilated the division of Macdonald.
No sooner did he learn the return of Buonaparte to Dresden than he
wheeled round upon Macdonald, taking him by surprise, and driving his
troops into the rivers Katzbach and Neisse, swollen by the rains. The
battle raged the most fiercely near Wahlstadt, and, on the subsidence
of the floods, hundreds of corpses were seen sticking in the mud. A
part of the French fled for a couple of days in terrible disorder along
the right bank of the Neisse, and were captured, with their general, by
the Russian commander, Langeron.

The same fate befell the troops of Ney, who had been sent to dislodge
Bernadotte and Bülow before Berlin. He was beaten at Dennewitz on the
6th of September, with a loss of eighteen thousand men and eighty guns.
Macdonald had lost on the Katzbach many thousands slain or dispersed,
eighteen thousand prisoners, and a hundred and three guns. His army was
nearly annihilated. Between this period and the end of September the
French generals were defeated in every quarter: Davoust by Walmoden;
another body of French by Platoff, on the 29th; Jerome by Czernicheff,
on the 30th; and Lefebvre by Thielemann and Platoff, at Altenburg.

These defeats, which were gradually hemming Napoleon round by his
enemies in Dresden, were the direct result of the active aid of Great
Britain to the Allies. Sir Charles Stewart, the brother of Lord
Castlereagh, had been dispatched to the headquarters of the Allies.
By means of the abundant supplies of arms and money, the population
of Hanover was raised; Bernadotte was kept firm to his support of the
Coalition; and, by Sir Charles, he was also urged to march on Leipsic,
and be present at the final conflict. Brigadier-General Lyon was sent
to head the troops in Hanover; and the Duke of Cambridge to conduct the
civil government of the country. Money was supplied in abundance, in
addition to military stores. Two millions were advanced to the Crown
Prince of Sweden for his army, two millions more to the Russians and
Prussians, and another half million to Russia to equip its fleet in the
Baltic. Without these vast supplies the combined armies could not have
kept their ground.

From the 24th of September till the commencement of October Buonaparte
continued to maintain himself at Dresden, though the Allies were fast
gathering round him. Occasionally he made a rush from the city, and on
one occasion pursued Blucher as far as Nollendorf, beyond Kulm; but
these expeditions only served to exhaust his troops, without producing
any effect on the enemy. As he chased one body on one side, others were
closing up on other sides. Seeing that he could not remain long at
Dresden, and that Bernadotte and Bülow had quitted the neighbourhood
of Berlin, he suddenly conceived the design of marching rapidly on that
city, and taking up his headquarters there; but this scheme met with
universal disapprobation from his officers, and he was compelled to
abandon it. He then continued for days, and even weeks, in a state of
listless apathy, for hours together mechanically making large letters
on sheets of paper, or debating some new schemes with his generals; but
the only scheme to which they would listen was that of retreating to
the left bank of the Rhine. In fact, they and the army were completely
worn out and dispirited.

The Allies now determined to close in on all sides, and compel the
French to a surrender. But Buonaparte, after some manœuvres to bring
Blucher to action--that general and the Crown Prince of Sweden having
crossed to the left bank of the Elbe--found it at length necessary
to retreat to Leipsic. He reached that city on the 15th of October,
and learned, to his great satisfaction, that whilst his whole force
would be under its walls within twenty-four hours, the Austrians were
advancing considerably ahead of the Prussians; and he flattered himself
that he should be able to beat the Austrians before the other Allies
could reach them.

Leipsic is nearly surrounded by rivers and marshy lands, and only,
therefore, accessible by a number of bridges. The Pleisse and the
Elster on the west, in various divisions, stretch under its walls;
on the east winds far round the Parthe; on the south only rise some
higher lands. On the 16th of October, at break of day, the Austrians
attacked the southern or more accessible side with great fury, headed
by Generals Kleist and Mehrfeldt, and were opposed by Poniatowski
and Victor. Buonaparte was soon obliged to send up Souham to support
these generals. Lauriston also was attacked by Klenau at the village
of Liebertvolkwitz. After much hard fighting, Buonaparte ordered up
Macdonald, who broke through the Austrian line at the village of Gossa,
followed by Murat; Latour-Maubourg and Kellermann galloped through with
all their cavalry. Napoleon considered this as decisive, and sent word
to the King of Saxony that the battle was won, and that poor dupe and
unpatriotic king set the church bells ringing for joy. But a desperate
charge of Cossacks reversed all this, and drove back the French to
the very walls of the town. In the meantime, Blucher had attacked and
driven in Marmont, taking the village of Machern with twenty pieces
of cannon and two thousand prisoners. On the side of the Pleisse
Schwarzenberg pushed across a body of horse, under General Mehrfeldt,
who fell into the hands of the French; but another division, under
General Giulay, secured the left bank of the Pleisse and its bridges,
and had he blown them up, would have cut off the only avenue of retreat
for the French towards the Rhine. Night fell on the fierce contest,
in which two hundred and thirty thousand Allies were hemming in one
hundred and thirty-six thousand French; for the Allies this time had
adopted Buonaparte's great rule of conquering by united numbers.

The next day the battle paused, as by mutual consent; and as it was
evident that the French must eventually retreat, this day should have
been spent in preparing temporary bridges to cross the rivers; but, as
at Moscow, the presence of mind of Buonaparte seemed to have deserted
him. He dispatched General Mehrfeldt to the Allied monarchs, to propose
an armistice, on condition that he would yield all demanded at the
previous Conference--Poland, and Illyria, the independence of Holland,
Spain, and Italy, with the evacuation of Germany entirely. Before he
went Mehrfeldt informed him that the Bavarians had gone over in a body
to the Allies. But in vain did Buonaparte wait for an answer--none was
vouchsafed. The Allied monarchs had mutually sworn to hold no further
intercourse with the invader till every Frenchman was beyond the Rhine.

On the morning of the 19th the battle recommenced with fury. The French
were now fighting close under the walls of the town, and Napoleon,
posted on an eminence called Thonsberg, watched the conflict. Till
two o'clock the fight raged all along the line, round the city; and
neither party seemed to make any advance. At length the Allies forced
their way into the village of Probstheide, and threw the French on that
side into great confusion. Ney, on the north side, was also fearfully
pressed by Blucher and the Crown Prince of Sweden, and was compelled
to retreat under the walls. On a sudden, as the Russians advanced also
against Ney, the Saxons--ten thousand in number--went over to them
with a shout. They were sent to the rear, but their cannon was at once
turned against the enemy. By evening it was clear that the French could
not hold their position another day. Schwarzenberg announced to the
Allied sovereigns that victory was certain, and they knelt on the field
and returned thanks to God. The French knew this better than their
opponents, for in the two days they had fired two hundred and fifty
thousand cannon-balls, and had only about sixteen thousand cartridges
left, which would not serve for more than two hours, much of their
artillery having been sent to Torgau. The retreat, therefore, commenced
in the night. There was only one bridge prepared, of timber, in
addition to the regular stone bridge, over which one hundred thousand
men must pass, with the enemy at their heels. To add to the misery, the
temporary bridge soon broke down. Napoleon took a hasty leave of the
King and Queen of Saxony, ordered Poniatowski to defend the rear, and
himself made for the bridge. It was not without much difficulty, and
considerable alarm lest he should be surrounded and taken, that he and
his suite got across. Then there was a terrible scene of crushing and
scrambling; and the enemy, now aware of the flight, were galloping and
running from all sides towards the bridge, to cut off the fugitives.
Soon after Buonaparte had got over, the bridge was blown up by the
French officer in charge of the mine already made, and twenty-five
thousand men were left to surrender as prisoners in the town. Amongst
these were Marshals Macdonald and Poniatowski; but, disdaining to
surrender, they sprang, with their horses, into the Pleisse--to swim.
Macdonald escaped, but Poniatowski, though he crossed the Pleisse, was
again nearly cut off, and plunging into the deep and muddy Elster,
was drowned. No braver man perished in these tragic campaigns; both
Allies and French in Leipsic followed his remains to the tomb, in
sincere honour of his gallantry. The triumph of the Allied monarchs was
complete. They met in the great square of the city, and felicitated
each other. The King of Saxony was sent, without any interview, under
a guard of Cossacks to Berlin, and at the General Congress he was made
to pay dearly in territory for his besotted adhesion to the invader of
Germany. In this awful battle the French lost three hundred guns. The
slain on both sides amounted to eighty thousand, and thousands of the
wounded lay for days around the city, exposed to the severe October
nights, before they could be collected into lazarettos; and the view of
the whole environs of Leipsic, covered with dead, was fearful.

On the 23rd of October Napoleon reached Erfurt, whose fortifications
afforded him the means of two days' delay, to collect his scattered
forces. As they came straggling in, in a most wretched condition, and
without arms, his patience forsook him, and he exclaimed, "They are a
set of scoundrels, who are going to the devil! I shall lose eighty
thousand before I get to the Rhine!" In fact, he had only eighty
thousand men left, besides another eighty thousand in the garrisons
in the north of Germany--thus also lost to him. Of his two hundred
and eighty thousand men, had utterly perished one hundred and twenty
thousand. He sent orders to those in the garrisons to form a junction
in the valley of the Elbe, and so fight their way home; but this
was not practicable; and in a few months they all surrendered, on
conditions. He here dismissed such of the Saxons and Baden troops as
remained with him, and offered the same freedom to the Poles; but these
brave men--with a generosity to which the betrayer of their country
had no claim--refused to disband till they had seen him safe over the
Rhine. Murat, with less fidelity, took his leave again, on the plea
of raising troops on the frontiers of France to facilitate Napoleon's
retreat, but in reality to get away to Naples and make terms for
himself.

Before Buonaparte quitted Erfurt he learned that his late allies, the
Bavarians, with a body of Austrians under General Wrede, were marching
to cut off his line of retreat to the Rhine, and that another body of
Austrians and Prussians were marching from near Weimar, on the same
point, with the same object. He left Erfurt on the 25th of October,
amid the most tempestuous weather, and his rear incessantly harassed by
the Cossacks. He met Wrede posted at Hanau, but with only forty-five
thousand men, so that he was able to force his way, but with a loss of
six thousand, inflicting a still greater loss on the Austro-Bavarians,
of nearly ten thousand. On the 30th of October Napoleon reached
Frankfort, and was at Mainz the next day, where he saw his army cross,
and on the 7th of November he left for Paris, where he arrived on the
9th. His reception there was by no means encouraging. In addition to
the enormous destruction of life in the Russian campaign, the French
public now--instead of the reality of those victories which his lying
bulletins had announced--saw him once more arrive alone.

When the advanced guard of the Allies came in sight of the Rhine, over
which the last of the hated invaders had fled, they raised such shouts
of "The Rhine! the Rhine!" that those behind rushed forward, supposing
that it was a call to action; but they soon learned the true cause,
and joined in a mighty acclamation, that proclaimed the haughty and
sanguinary oppressor driven out, and the soil of Germany at length
freed from his licentious and marauding legions. It turned out that
they had left behind them one hundred and forty thousand prisoners,
and seven hundred and ninety-one guns. On the 2nd of November Hanover
was again delivered to Great Britain; the Duke of Brunswick, who
had maintained his stern hatred to Buonaparte, also returned to his
patrimonial domains; the kingdom of Westphalia dissolving like a
dream, the different portions of Jerome's ephemeral realm reverted to
its former owners. The Confederacy of the Rhine was at an end, the
members of it hastening to make peace with the Allies, and save as
much of their dominions as they could. Bernadotte, immediately after
the defeat of Buonaparte at Leipsic, entered Denmark, and overran the
country of that ally of France. The Danish army speedily consented to
an armistice, by which it was agreed that the Swedes should occupy
Holstein and a part of Schleswig till the French were expelled from all
the Danish fortresses. It was already stipulated as the price of his
co-operation, that the Crown Prince should receive Norway to add to the
Swedish Crown.

Holland rose in exultation on the news of the overthrow of Buonaparte
at Leipsic. His dominion over that country had been a bitter thraldom.
Its sons had been dragged yearly, by conscription, to his great
slaughter-houses called battle-fields in distant regions. Their trade
had been crushed by his Continental system; their colonies seized by
Great Britain; their mercantile sources thus dried up--in fact, he had
squeezed the wealth and the life out of Holland as out of a sponge,
and hordes of French officials maintained an insolent dominance all
over the country. At news of the Russian disasters, the Dutch had risen
to throw off this hateful and ruinous yoke; but the French forces in
Holland had then been sufficient to put them down, and to severely
punish them for the attempt. But the necessities in Germany had nearly
drained Holland of French troops, and they now rose once more joyfully
at Amsterdam, on the 15th of November, and at the Hague on the 16th.
They received the most prompt assurances of assistance from Great
Britain. A man-of-war was immediately put at the service of the Prince
of Orange, and after a nineteen years' exile he embarked on the 25th,
and entered Amsterdam on the 1st of December as King of Holland, amid
the most enthusiastic acclamations. An army of twenty-five thousand
men was soon enrolled; the Allies were at hand; the French authorities
fled, after laying hands on all the booty they could carry off; and
with the exception of the fortress of Bergen-op-Zoom, the country was
speedily cleared of them.

[Illustration: THE PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU]

The Swiss acted a more cautious part. Fearful that Napoleon might
yet, by some other wonderful chance, regain his power, they summoned
a Diet, passed an order for the neutrality of the cantons, and issued
an order calling on the Allies to respect this, and not attempt to
march troops through their country. This would have suited Buonaparte
extremely well, as it would have closed his eastern frontiers to the
Austrians, who were marching that way under Count Bubna; but the
Austrians informed the Swiss authorities that they should certainly
march through; and the Allied sovereigns dispatched Count Capo d'Istria
and Herr Lebzeltern to Zurich to state that the power of France over
Switzerland was at an end, and to desire them to send deputies to meet
them, and to establish an independent government for Switzerland. Thus
assured, the greater part of the cantons sent their deputies to Zurich,
who proclaimed the restoration of national independence, and gave free
consent for the armies of the Allies to march through the country.

Whilst all the countries which Buonaparte, at such an incalculable cost
of life and human suffering, had compelled to the dominion of France
were thus re-asserting their freedom, Buonaparte, in Paris, presented
the miserable phantom of a vanished greatness. He called on the Senate
to vote new conscriptions, telling them that theirs had been made by
him the first throne of the universe, and they must maintain it as
such; that without him they would become nothing. But the Allies were
now entering France at one end, and Wellington was firmly fixed in the
other; ere long the insulted nations would be at the gates of Paris,
and the Senate and people demanded peace. Buonaparte refused to listen,
and the Senate voted the conscription of three hundred thousand men,
knowing that there was no longer any authority in the country to raise
them. La Vendée, and all the Catholic South, were on the verge of
insurrection; Murat, in Naples, was ready to throw off his last link of
adhesion to Buonaparte; and the defeated usurper stood paralysed at the
approach of his doom.

It was natural that this mighty turn in affairs on the Continent
should be watched in Great Britain with an interest beyond the power of
words. Though this happy country had never felt the foot of the haughty
invader, no nation in Europe had put forth such energies for the
overthrow of the usurper; none had poured forth such a continual flood
of wealth to arm, to clothe, to feed the struggling nations, and hold
them up against the universal aggressor. Parliament met on the 4th of
November, and, in the speech of the Prince Regent and in the speeches
in both Houses, one strain of exultation and congratulation on the
certain prospect of a close to this unexampled war prevailed. At that
very moment the "Corsican upstart" was on his way to Paris, his lost
army nearly destroyed, the remains of it chased across the Rhine, and
himself advancing to meet a people at length weary of his sanguinary
ambition, and sternly demanding peace.

Lord Castlereagh, in recounting the aid given by Great Britain to
the sovereigns of the Continent in this grand effort to put down
the intolerable military dominance of Buonaparte, drew a picture of
expenditure such as no country had presented since the commencement
of history. He said that the nations of the north of Europe were so
exhausted by their former efforts, that not one of them could move
without our aid; that this year alone we had sent to Russia two million
pounds; to Prussia two million pounds; to Austria one million pounds
in money, and one hundred thousand stand of arms; to Spain two million
pounds; to Portugal one million pounds; to Sicily four hundred thousand
pounds. By these aids Russia had been able to bring up men from the
very extremities of the earth, and Prussia to put two hundred thousand
men into the field. We had sent during the year five hundred thousand
muskets to Spain and Portugal, and four hundred thousand to other parts
of the Continent. There was something sublime in the contemplation
of one nation, by the force of her wealth and her industry, calling
together the armies of the whole world to crush the evil genius of the
earth.

But Lord Castlereagh called on Parliament to maintain the same scale
of expenditure and exertion till the great drama was completed. He
estimated that there would still be wanted for 1814 four million pounds
for the Peninsula, and six million pounds for Germany. He stated that
our army in all quarters of the world amounted to two hundred and
thirty thousand men, and that it was probable that we should have
occasion to send from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand men to
Holland, which, he recommended, should be raised by drafts from the
militia. Of seamen, one hundred and forty thousand, and thirty-one
thousand marines were voted, as it was resolved to chase the flag of
the troublesome Americans from the seas. All these proposals were
assented to without hesitation, and with the warmest encomiums on the
achievements of Lord Wellington in Spain and the south of France,
Parliament adjourned on the 26th of December till the 1st of March,
1814.

At the opening of the year 1814 Buonaparte was busy endeavouring to
make good some of his false steps, so as to meet the approaching
Allies with all possible strength. He made haste to liberate the
captive Pope, and thus remove one of the causes of the hostility of
the Italians to him, for in Italy the Austrians were bearing hard on
his Viceroy, Eugene, who had but about forty-five thousand men there,
whilst Murat, at Naples, so far from supporting the claims of Napoleon,
was endeavouring to bargain with the Allies for the kingdom of Naples.
Buonaparte, at the commencement of the year, sent Cardinal Maury and
the Bishops of Evreux and Plaisance to Pius VII. at Fontainebleau.
But even in such pressing circumstances Buonaparte could not make a
generous offer. He endeavoured to bargain for the cession of a part
of the Papal territories, on condition of the surrender of the rest.
But Pius, who had always shown great spirit, replied that the estates
of the Church were not his to give, and he would not give his consent
to their alienation. Foiled on this point, Buonaparte then sent word
that the Pope should be unconditionally liberated. "Then," said Pius,
"so must all my cardinals." This was refused, but he was permitted to
go alone, and a carriage and guard of honour were given him. Before
departing, Pius called together the cardinals, seventeen in number,
and commanded them to wear no decoration received from the French
Government, and to assist at no festival to which they should be
invited. He then took his leave, on the 24th of January, and reached
Rome on the 18th of May. Thus ended the most foolish of all the
arbitrary actions of Napoleon. The folly of it was so obvious that he
disclaimed having ordered the seizure of the Pope, but he showed that
this was false by keeping him prisoner more than five years.

Another matter which he was eager to set right was the captivity of the
King of Spain. He had one hundred thousand of his best disciplined and
most seasoned troops in Spain, and he was anxious to get them out to
meet the approaching Allies. Besides this, he was equally anxious to
render the stay of Wellington in the south of France indefensible. To
effect these purposes, he determined not only to liberate Ferdinand of
Spain, but to send him home under the conditions of a treaty, by which
a full exchange of prisoners should be effected, and the continuance
of the British there be declared unnecessary. Nay, he did all in his
power to embroil the Spaniards with their deliverers, the British.
By a treaty Buonaparte recognised Ferdinand VII. and his successors
as King of Spain and the Indies, and Ferdinand, on his part, bound
himself to maintain the integrity of his empire, and to oblige the
British immediately to evacuate every part of Spain. The contracting
powers were to maintain their maritime rights against Great Britain;
and whilst Buonaparte surrendered all fortresses held by him in Spain,
Ferdinand was to continue to all the Spaniards who had adhered to King
Joseph the rights, privileges, and property they had enjoyed under him.

Could this treaty have been carried out, Buonaparte would at once have
obtained his one hundred thousand veterans from Spain, and completely
paralysed the army of Lord Wellington. The Duke de San Carlos conveyed
the treaty to Spain. He was instructed to inquire into the state of
the Regency and the Cortes, whether they were really so infected with
infidelity and Jacobinism as Napoleon had represented; but, whether
so or not, he was to procure the ratification of the treaty by these
bodies, and Ferdinand undertook to deal with them himself when once
safe upon the throne. San Carlos travelled eastward into Spain, and
visited the camp of Suchet, who very soon communicated to General
Capons, who was co-operating with General Clinton, that there was peace
concluded between Spain and France, and that there was no longer any
use for the British. Capons was very ready to act on this information
and enter into a separate armistice with Suchet; but fortunately for
both Spain and the British, neither the Regency nor the Cortes would
sign the treaty so long as the king was in durance in France.

Lord Wellington had been duly informed of the progress of these
manœuvres, and they had given him great anxiety; nor were these the
only causes of anxiety which affected him. The British Ministry were
so much absorbed with the business of supporting the Allies in their
triumphant march after Buonaparte, that they seemed to think the
necessity of Lord Wellington's exertions at an end. At the close of
1813 they recalled Sir Thomas Graham and some of his best battalions
to send them into Holland. They appeared to contemplate still further
reductions of the Peninsular army, and Lord Wellington was obliged
to address them in very plain terms to impress them with the vital
necessity of maintaining the force in this quarter unweakened. He
reminded them that thirty thousand British troops had kept two hundred
thousand of Buonaparte's best troops engaged in Spain for five years;
that without this assistance Spain and Portugal would have long ago
been completely thrown under the feet of the invader, and the Allies of
the North would have had to contend against the undivided armies and
exertions of Napoleon; that to render his own army inefficient would
be at once to release one hundred thousand veterans such as the Allied
armies had not had to deal with. This had the proper effect; and as
soon as Wellington had obtained the necessary supplies, he resumed his
operations to drive Soult from under the walls of Bayonne.

Early in February he commenced his operations, and carried them
forward with a vigour most extraordinary. He drove Soult from all his
entrenchments before Bayonne, and again on the 27th he routed him at
Orthez and pursued him to the banks of the Adour. This was a sharply
contested field, the British having nearly three hundred killed and
two thousand wounded; but the loss of the French was far heavier, for
they flung down their arms and ran, and there was a great slaughter
of the fugitives. The towns of Bayonne and Bordeaux being now left
uncovered by the French, Wellington sent bodies of troops to invest
them. Bordeaux opened its gates on March 8th, and proclaimed Louis
XVIII. Lord Wellington had issued orders that the British should take
no part in any political demonstrations, but should leave all such
decisions to the Allies, who would settle by treaty what dynasty should
reign. He himself followed Soult to Tarbes, where he expected that he
would give battle; but Soult was anxious for the arrival and junction
of Suchet, who was advancing from Spain with upwards of twenty thousand
men. Soult, therefore, retreated to Toulouse, which he reached on the
24th of March.

Lord Wellington came up with him on the 9th of April, in the meantime
having had to get across the rapid Garonne, with all his artillery
and stores, in the face of the French batteries. The next morning,
the 10th, being Easter Sunday, Wellington attacked Soult in all his
positions. These were remarkably strong, most of his troops being
posted on well-fortified heights, bristling with cannon, various
strongly-built houses being crammed with riflemen; while a network of
vineyards and orchards, surrounded by stone walls, and intersected
by streams, protected his men, and rendered the coming at them most
difficult. The forces on both sides were nearly equal. Soult had about
forty-two thousand men, and Wellington, besides his army composed of
British, Germans, and Portuguese, had a division of fifteen thousand
Spaniards. The difficulties of the situation far out-balanced the
excess of about three thousand men on the British side; but every
quarter was gallantly attacked and, after a severe conflict, carried.
Soult retired into Toulouse, and during the ensuing night he evacuated
it, and retreated to Carcassonne. The loss of the Allies in killed was
six hundred, and about four thousand wounded. Soult confessed to three
thousand two hundred killed and wounded, but we may calculate his total
loss at little less than that of the Allies, although his troops had
been protected by their stone walls and houses.

On the 12th of April Wellington entered Toulouse amid the acclamations
of the people. But Lord Wellington was accused by the French of
fighting the battle five days after the abdication of Buonaparte, and
therefore incurring a most needless waste of life. The fact was, that
it was not till the afternoon of the 12th of April that Colonel Cooke
and the French Colonel, St. Simon, arrived at Toulouse, bringing the
official information that Buonaparte had abdicated at Fontainebleau on
the 4th. Thus it happened that the battle was fought a week before the
knowledge of the peace was received. Moreover, we have the evidence
of Soult's own correspondence, that on the 7th of April, after he had
heard of the entrance of the Allies into Paris, he was determined to
fight another battle, and for the very reason that the Allies had
entered Paris. When the English and French colonels arrived at Soult's
camp with the same news that they had communicated to Wellington, Soult
refused to submit to the Provisional Government until he received
orders from Napoleon; nor did he acknowledge this Government till the
17th, when Wellington was in full pursuit of him towards Castelnaudary.
On the 18th a convention was signed between Wellington and Soult,
and on the following day a like one was signed between Wellington
and Suchet. On the 21st Lord Wellington announced to his army that
hostilities were at an end, and thanked them "for their uniform
discipline and gallantry in the field, and for their conciliatory
conduct towards the inhabitants of the country."

In preparing to meet the invasion of the Allies Napoleon had to
encounter the most formidable difficulties. In Russia and in
this German campaign he had seen the bulk of his veteran army
dissipated--nay, destroyed. After all his years of incessant drafts on
the life-blood of France, six hundred thousand men could not be readily
replaced. To replace a fourth of that number with well-disciplined
troops was impossible. He could draw none from Germany, for his
boasted Confederation of the Rhine had disappeared as a summer cloud,
and the very princes on whom he had relied were marching against him
in the vast army of the Allies. He could draw none from Italy; for
there Eugene Beauharnais was contending, with only about forty-five
thousand men, against the much more numerous Austrians; whilst his
brother-in-law, Murat, his dashing cavalry general, was gone over to
the enemy. Poland would send him no more gallant regiments, for he
had grievously deceived the Poles; and his trusted ally of Denmark
lay trodden under foot by his former companion-in-arms, Bernadotte.
When he turned his eyes over France, which had so long sent forth her
hordes to desolate Europe at his bidding, he beheld a prospect not
much more cheering. The male population, almost to a man, was drained
off, and their bones lay bleaching in the torrid sands of Egypt and
Syria, the rugged sierras of Spain and Portugal, in the fens of Holland
and the sandy flats of Belgium, on many a heath and plain in Germany,
and far away amid the mocking snows of frozen Muscovy. The fields of
"la belle France" were being cultivated by old men, by women, and
mere boys. Those who had been so long buoyed up under the loss of
husbands, fathers, and children, by the delusive mirage of the glory
of the "grand nation," now cursed the tyrant whose insane ambition had
led such millions of the sons of France to the great slaughter-house
of war. The conscriptions, therefore, were very little attended to.
Besides this, Buonaparte was well aware that there remained a strong
leaven of Jacobinism in Paris and the large towns, and he was afraid
of calling out city guards to set at liberty other soldiers, lest, in
the hour of his absence and weakness, they should rise and renounce his
authority.

Finding that there remained no other means of reinforcing his army,
he drained the garrisons all over France, and drew what soldiers he
could from Soult and Suchet in the south. He was busy daily drilling
and reviewing, and nightly engaged in sending dispatches to urge on the
provinces to send up their men. The _Moniteur_ and other newspapers
represented all France as flying to arms; but the truth was they looked
with profound apathy on the progress of the Allies. These issued
proclamation after proclamation, assuring the people that it was not
against France that they made war, but solely against the man who would
give no peace either to France or any of his neighbours; and the French
had come to the conclusion that it was time that Buonaparte should be
brought to submit to the dictation of force, as he was insensible to
that of reason.

[Illustration: ATTEMPT OF THE COSSACKS TO CAPTURE NAPOLEON AT BRIENNE.
(_See p._ 78.)]

On the 25th of January Buonaparte conferred the Regency again on Maria
Louisa, appointed King Joseph his lieutenant in Paris--the poor man
who could not take care of the capital which had been conferred on
him--and quitted Paris to put himself at the head of his army. This
army, in spite of all his exertions, did not exceed eighty thousand
men; whilst the Allies were already in France with at least a hundred
and fifty thousand, and fresh bodies marching up in succession from
the north. He arrived the next day at Châlons, where his army lay,
commanded by Marmont, Macdonald, Victor, and Ney. The Austrians, under
Schwarzenberg, had entered France on the 21st of December by the Upper
Rhine, and directed their march on Lyons. On the 19th of January, a few
days before Buonaparte quitted Paris, they had already taken Dijon,
and were advancing on Lyons, where, however, they received a repulse.
Blucher, at the head of forty thousand men, called the Army of Silesia,
about the same time entered France lower down, between Mannheim and
Coblenz, at four different points, and pushed forward for Joinville,
Vitry, and St. Dizier. Another army of Swedes, Russians, and Germans,
under the Crown Prince of Sweden, was directed to assist in clearing
Holland and Belgium, as the Crown Prince naturally wished to take no
part in the invasion of his native soil. Whilst, therefore, Bernadotte
remained to protect Belgium, Sir Thomas Graham, who, with General
Bülow, had cleared Holland of the French, except such as occupied the
fortress of Bergen-op-Zoom, remained to invest that stronghold, and
Bülow and Winzengerode entered France by its northern frontier.

As Blucher was, as usual, much ahead of the other divisions of the
Allies, Buonaparte resolved to attack him before he could form a
junction with Schwarzenberg. Blucher, informed of his purpose,
concentrated his forces at Brienne, on the Aube, fourteen miles below
Bar. Brienne is only a small village, having but two streets, one of
them ascending to the château--occupied as a military academy, where
Napoleon himself received his military education--the other leading
to Arcis-sur-Aube. Blucher had quartered himself in the château, and
was at dinner with his staff, on the 27th of January, when he was
astonished to find that Buonaparte was already upon him. The château
being surrounded by a woody park, Napoleon had approached under cover
of it, and suddenly driven in two thousand Russians posted there,
and was rushing on to capture the general and all his staff. A most
miserable look-out must have been kept by the Prussian outposts.
Blucher and his generals, startled by the terrible uproar, had just
time to escape by a postern, and by leading their horses down a flight
of steps. Recovered, however, from their surprise, the Russians turned
on the French, and were soon supported by the Prussians. The Cossacks
galloped forward, and nearly succeeded in capturing Buonaparte at
the head of his troops. One man was laying hands on the Man in the
Grey Coat, when Gourgaud shot him with a pistol. Buonaparte gained
possession of Brienne, but, like Moscow, it was burned over his head,
and it was not till eleven o'clock at night that Blucher, who had
only twenty thousand men engaged, retired, and took up a position
at La Rothière. It could scarcely be styled a victory, yet Napoleon
proclaimed it a brilliant one, asserting that he had taken fifteen
thousand prisoners and forty pieces of cannon, when he had taken no
cannon whatever, and only a hundred prisoners.

Immediately after this engagement Blucher was joined by part of the
grand army, under the Prince of Würtemberg; he therefore determined
to attack Napoleon, and on the 1st of February drew out his forces.
Napoleon would have declined the engagement; but he had the deep river
Aube in his rear, and only the bridge of Lesmont by which to pass it.
He preferred, on this account, to risk the battle, rather than retreat
in such circumstances. Blucher attacked at once from the villages of La
Rothière, Dienville, and Chaumont. The battle was severely contested
for the whole day, the Prince of Würtemberg greatly distinguishing
himself in it. In the end Buonaparte was wholly defeated, lost four
thousand prisoners and seventy-three guns, and must have been captured
himself, had not the Austrians, by surprising slowness, allowed him to
escape over the bridge. He then retreated towards Troyes, where he was
joined by his Imperial Guard; but his losses had been very heavy. Had
Blucher and Schwarzenberg, who had now met, marched on united, they
must have been in Paris in a very short time; but, with the German
fatality of dividing, they had no sooner experienced the benefit of a
powerful union than they called a council at the château of Brienne,
and agreed to separate again. Blucher, joining to his own the divisions
of Yorck and Kleist, proceeded towards Paris by the Marne, and Prince
Schwarzenberg followed the course of the Seine.

Buonaparte saw his opportunity, and, making a movement by a body of
troops on Bar-sur-Seine, he alarmed Schwarzenberg, who thought he
was intending to attack him in full force, and therefore changed his
route, separating farther from Blucher. This point gained, Buonaparte
marched after Blucher. That general had driven Macdonald from Château
Thierry, and had established his headquarters at Vertus. Sacken was in
advance as far as Ferté-sous-Jouarre, and Yorck at Meaux, much nearer
Paris than Buonaparte himself. Paris was in great alarm. But Napoleon,
taking a cross-country road, and dragging his artillery by enormous
exertions over hedges, ditches, and marshes, came upon Blucher's rear,
to his astonishment, at Champaubert. Driving in the Russians, Napoleon
defeated him, taking two thousand prisoners, and most of his artillery;
and being thus posted between Sacken and Blucher, he first attacked and
defeated Sacken, destroying or squandering five thousand men--about
one-fourth of his division--and then turned to attack Blucher himself,
who was marching rapidly up to support Sacken. Blucher, finding himself
suddenly in face of the whole army of Buonaparte, in an open country,
fell back, but conducted his retreat so admirably that he cut his way
through two strong bodies of French, who had posted themselves on the
line of his march, and brought off his troops and artillery safe to
Châlons. Napoleon then turned against Schwarzenberg, and on the 17th
of February he met and defeated him at Nangis. Such were the immediate
consequences of the folly of dividing the Allied forces. In these
movements Napoleon displayed a military ability equal to that of any
part of his career.

The Parisians were now afforded proofs that Napoleon was once more
victorious. The prisoners, banners, and cannon which he had taken
were sent forward rapidly to the capital, and ostentatiously paraded
through the streets. Meanwhile, the Allies were so alarmed, that the
sovereigns wrote to Buonaparte, expressing their surprise at his
attacks, as they had ordered their Plenipotentiaries to accept the
terms offered by his ambassador, Caulaincourt. These terms had indeed
been offered by Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza, at a Congress held
at Châtillon-sur-Seine on the 5th of February, and which was still
sitting; but the Allies had never, in fact, accepted them, and now,
as he was again in the ascendant, Napoleon was not likely to listen
to them. He therefore left the letter unanswered till he should have
thoroughly defeated the Allies, and then he would dictate his reply.

He next attacked and took Montereau from the Allies, but at a terrible
cost of life. Finding then that the Austrians and Prussians were once
more contemplating a junction, he sent an answer to the letter of the
Allied sovereigns, but it was addressed only to the Emperor of Austria,
and its tenor was to persuade the Emperor to make a separate peace.
"Only gain the Austrians," he had said to Caulaincourt, on sending
him to Châtillon, "and the mischief is at an end." The Emperor sent
Prince Wenceslaus of Liechtenstein to Napoleon's headquarters, and it
was agreed that a conference should be held at Lusigny, between him
and Count Flahault, on the 24th of February. But Buonaparte did not
cease for a moment his offensive movements. On the night of the 23rd he
bombarded Troyes, and entered the place the next day. The Congress at
Châtillon still continued to sit, Caulaincourt amusing the sovereigns
and the ambassador of Great Britain, Lord Aberdeen, with one discussion
after another, but having secret instructions from Buonaparte to sign
nothing. At length he wrote to him, on the 17th of February, saying,
"that when he gave him his carte-blanche it was for the purpose of
saving Paris, but that Paris was now saved, and he revoked the powers
which he had given him." The Allies, however, continued till the 15th
of March their offer of leaving France its ancient limits, and then,
the time being expired, they broke up the conference. It is said that
as Caulaincourt left Châtillon he met the secretary of Buonaparte
bringing fresh powers for treating, but it was now too late. On the
1st of March the Allies had signed a treaty at the town of Chaumont,
pledging themselves to combined action against Napoleon, should he
still prove to be obstinate.

A succession of battles now took place with varying success, but
still leaving the Allies nearer to Paris than before. If Buonaparte
turned against Blucher, Schwarzenberg made an advance towards the
capital; if against Schwarzenberg, Blucher progressed a stage. To
check Schwarzenberg whilst he attacked Blucher, Napoleon sent Oudinot,
Macdonald, and Gerard against Schwarzenberg; but they were defeated,
and Napoleon himself was repulsed with severe loss from Craonne and
the heights of Laon. But Buonaparte getting between the two Allied
armies, and occupying Rheims, the Austrians were so discouraged that
Schwarzenberg gave orders to retreat. The Emperor Alexander strenuously
opposed retreat; but the effectual argument was advanced by Lord
Castlereagh, who declared that the moment the retreat commenced the
British subsidies should cease. A sharp battle was fought on the 20th
of March, between Schwarzenberg and Napoleon, at Arcis-sur-Aube, and
Napoleon was compelled to retreat. Blucher, who had received the order
to retreat from Schwarzenberg, had treated it with contempt, and
replied to it by his favourite word, "Forwards!" Napoleon had now to
weigh the anxious question, whether it was better to push on, and stand
a battle under the walls of Paris, with his small, much-reduced force,
against the Allies, and with the capital in a state of uncertainty
towards him--or to follow and harass the rear of the enemy. He seems
to have shrunk from the chance of a defeat under the eyes of his
metropolis, and he therefore, finding a Prussian force in Vitry,
crossed the Marne on the 22nd of March, and held away towards his
eastern frontiers, as if with some faint, fond hope that the peasantry
of Franche Comté and Alsace might rise and fly to his support. But no
such movement was likely; all parts of France were mortally sick of his
interminable wars, and glad to see an end put to them. The Allies had
now taken the bold resolve to march on Paris and summon it to surrender.

The Emperor Francis determined to remain at Aube, with the division
under General Ducca, not thinking it becoming him to join in
the attack on the French capital where his daughter ruled as
empress-regent; and a body of ten thousand cavalry, under command
of Winzengerode and Czernicheff, was ordered to watch the motions
of Napoleon and intercept his communications with Paris, whilst the
Russian and Prussian light troops scoured the roads in advance,
stopping all couriers. Blucher, at the same time, having thrown open
the gates of Rheims, was moving on Châlons and Vitry, to form a
junction with the army of Schwarzenberg. The flying parties captured,
near Sommepuix, a convoy of artillery and ammunition; and, on another
occasion, they fell in with a courier bearing a budget of the most
melancholy intelligence to the Emperor--that the British had made a
descent on Italy; that the Austrians had defeated Augereau, and were in
possession of Lyons; that Bordeaux had declared for Louis XVIII.; and
that Wellington was at Toulouse. These tidings gave immense confidence
to the Allies. Near Fère-Champenoise the Allies met, finding Blucher
in the act of stopping a body of infantry, five thousand in number,
which was bearing provisions and ammunition to the army of Napoleon.
The column consisted of young conscripts and National Guards, who had
never been in action, but they bravely defended their charge till they
were surrounded by the mingling forces of the two armies, and compelled
to surrender.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER I.]

The Allies now advanced in rapid march. They put to flight the
divisions of Mortier and Marmont, whom Buonaparte had posted to give
them a check. These divisions lost eight thousand men, besides a vast
quantity of guns, baggage, and ammunition. A similar fate awaited a
body of ten thousand National Guards. At Meaux Mortier and Marmont
blew up a great powder-magazine as Blucher approached, and then
retired beneath the walls of Paris. The Allies, in three days, had
marched seventy miles. On the 28th of March they were in full view of
Paris, and had driven Marmont and Mortier close under its walls. The
north-east side of Paris, on which they were approaching, was the only
one then fortified. A ridge of hills along that side, including the
heights of Belleville, Romainville, and Montmartre, was defended by an
old wall, and there the French authorities had placed the defenders of
the city--the shattered forces of the two retreating marshals, bodies
of the National Guard, and youths from the Polytechnic schools, many of
them mere boys of from twelve to sixteen years old, some of whom served
the guns on the batteries. The whole of the forces left to defend the
great and wealthy city of Paris amounted to between thirty and forty
thousand men.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON SIGNING HIS ABDICATION. (_See p._ 83.)]

The other side of the city was only defended by the Seine, but the
Allies, who had first to cross that river, feared that Buonaparte
might come up and attack their rear while they were doing so. They
determined, therefore, to attack the line of fortifications. The most
lying proclamations were issued by the ex-King Joseph to assure the
inhabitants that the bodies of the enemy who came in view were only
stragglers who had managed to get past the army of the Emperor, who was
dispersing the Allies most triumphantly. The forces in Paris--eight
thousand troops of the line and thirty thousand of the National
Guard--were reviewed in front of the Tuileries on a Sunday, to impress
the people with a sense of security; but on the morning of the 29th
the Empress and her child quitted the palace, attended by a regiment
of seven hundred men, and fled to Blois, carrying with her the crown
jewels and much public treasure, and followed by nearly all the members
of Government. The population--unlike their fathers, who stopped Marie
Antoinette in her attempt to escape--suffered this departure with
murmurs, but without any attempt to prevent it. When she was gone they
began heartily to curse Buonaparte for the trouble and disgrace he
had brought upon them. That very morning Joseph issued a most flaming
proclamation, assuring the Parisians that the Emperor was at hand, and
would annihilate the last traces of the audacious enemy. But already
the assault had commenced, and the next day, the 30th of March, it was
general all along the line. The Parisians fought bravely, especially
the boys from the Polytechnic schools; and as the Allies had to attack
stone walls and batteries, their slaughter was great. Joseph rode along
the line to encourage them in this useless, because utterly hopeless,
waste of life. The Allied monarchs had, before commencing the assault,
issued a proclamation, promising that all life and property should
be strictly protected if the city quietly opened its gates; and, in
the midst of the storming, they sent in again, by a French prisoner,
the same offer, adding that, should the city be carried by assault,
no power on earth could prevent it from being sacked by the enraged
soldiers, and probably destroyed. Yet Joseph did not give the order for
capitulation till the whole line was in the hands of the Allies, except
Montmartre. The Cossacks were already in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and
bombs flying into the Chaussée d'Antin. Then King Joseph, whose lying
proclamation was still selling on the boulevards at a sou each, ordered
Marmont to capitulate; and though he had vowed in his proclamation to
stand by the Parisians to the last gasp, he then fled after the Empress
to Blois. In this defence four thousand French were killed and wounded,
and double that number of the Allies, as they had to face the towers
and batteries crowded with soldiers and to fight their way up hill.

Meanwhile Buonaparte had taken the route for Troyes and Dijon, ignorant
of the rapid advance of the Allies on Paris. Never in any of his
campaigns does he seem to have been so ill-informed of the movements of
the enemy as at this most momentous juncture. On the 26th of March he
was attacked by the flying squadrons of Winzengerode. At Doulaincourt
he was startled by learning that Paris was on the point of being
assaulted by the Allies. From this place he dispatched one courier
after another to command the forces in Paris to hold out, and, ordering
the army to march with all speed, he himself entered his carriage
and was driven in all haste to Fontainebleau. Thence he was driving
to Paris, when, at an inn, called La Cour de France, he met General
Belliard with his cavalry, who gave him the confounding information
that the Empress, King Joseph, and the Court had fled; that the Allies
were in Paris, and a convention was signed. At this news he began
to rave like an insane man, blamed Marmont and Mortier--as, during
his defeats, he had often bitterly upbraided his generals,--blamed
Joseph, and everybody but himself, and insisted on going to Paris, and
seeing the Allies himself, but was at length persuaded to return to
Fontainebleau, and ordered his army to assemble, as it came up on the
heights of Longjumeau, behind the little river Essonnes.

On arriving in Paris, the Emperor Alexander took up his quarters
at the house of Talleyrand, and there the King of Prussia, Prince
Schwarzenberg and others came to consult. Talleyrand now spoke out,
and declared that it would be madness to treat with Buonaparte;
the only course was to restore the Bourbons, under certain limits.
As early as the 12th of March the Duke of Angoulême had entered
Bourdeaux, and had there proclaimed, amid acclamations, Louis XVIII.
The Comte d'Artois came along in the rear of the Allied army, and had
everywhere issued printed circulars, calling on the people to unite
under their ancient family, and have no more tyranny, no more war, no
more conscriptions. This paper had also been extensively circulated in
Paris. On the 1st of April the walls of Paris were everywhere placarded
by two proclamations, side by side, one from the Emperor Alexander,
declaring that the Allied sovereigns would no longer negotiate with
Napoleon nor any of his family, and the other from the municipality
of Paris, declaring that, in consequence of the tyranny of Napoleon,
they had renounced the allegiance of the usurper, and returned to that
of their legitimate sovereign. On the same day the Senate, under the
guidance of Talleyrand, decreed that he had violated and suppressed
the constitution which he had sworn to maintain; had chained up the
press, and employed it to disseminate his own false statements; drained
the nation, and exhausted its people and resources in wars of mere
personal ambition; and, finally, had refused to treat on honourable
conditions: for these and other plentifully-supplied causes, he had
ceased to reign, and the nation was therefore absolved from all oaths
sworn to him. This decree, on the 2nd and 3rd of April, was subscribed
by the public bodies in and around Paris. A Provisional Government was
appointed.

Caulaincourt, who had been sent by Buonaparte from Fontainebleau to
the Allied sovereigns to treat on his behalf, returned, and informed
Buonaparte of all these events. He declared that he would march on
Paris; and the next day, the 4th of April, he reviewed his troops, and
told them that some vile persons had insulted the tricolour cockade
in Paris, and they would march there at once and punish them. The
soldiers shouted, "_Paris, Paris!_" but, after the review, the marshals
produced the _Moniteur_, told him what had taken place, and that it
was necessary that he should submit. He appeared greatly agitated,
and asked them what they wished. Lefebvre said, bluntly, that he had
been advised by his best friends to make peace in time, when he would
have saved everything; there was nothing for it now but to abdicate.
Napoleon then called for a pen, and abdicated in favour of his son.
Caulaincourt and Ney were to carry this to the Allied sovereigns. They
inquired what terms they should ask for himself. He replied--"None: I
ask nothing." Yet, the moment the commissioners were gone, he started
up and vowed that he would fight with Marmont's corps and the Guards,
and would be in Paris on the morrow.

When Ney and Caulaincourt saw Marmont at Essonnes, he informed them
that he had entered into a convention with the Allied sovereigns on
his own account. They begged him to suspend it and accompany them, and
he consented. Whilst the three commissioners were with the Emperor
Alexander, news was brought that Count Souham, with whom Marmont had
left the command of his troops, had gone over, and marched the division
into the lines of the Allies. On this the Emperor said they had better
return to Napoleon, and assure him that the Allies would accept nothing
short of an absolute and unqualified abdication. When they announced
this to him, to their surprise, he exclaimed, "But what provisions are
made for me? How am I to be disposed of?" They replied that it was
proposed by the Emperor Alexander that he should retain the title of
Emperor; should have the island of Elba, a guard, a small fleet, and
all the attributes of royalty, with a suitable income. With a mood of
mind incomprehensible in any other person, he immediately called for
maps and books about Elba, and began contemplating his future position,
as though he had only been changing one France for another; but there
can be no doubt that he, in reality, was weighing the facilities of
the place for that effort to regain the empire of France, which he
certainly never renounced for a moment. On the 11th of April he drew
up a form of unconditional abdication, signed, and dispatched it.
Ney, Macdonald, and Caulaincourt arrived with the treaty to which the
Allied sovereigns had agreed. Elba was assigned to him--an island
twenty leagues in extent, with twelve thousand inhabitants--and he
was to have an income of six millions of francs, besides the little
revenue of the island. Two millions and a half more were assigned
as annuities to Josephine, and the other members of his family. The
Empress was to be created Duchess of Parma, Placentia, and Guastella,
in full sovereignty. The marshals and other officers of his army were
received into the same ranks and dignities in the army of the Bourbon
sovereign. Lord Castlereagh, who had arrived after the conclusion of
this treaty, pointed out the folly of it, which must have been apparent
to every man of the slightest reflection; for, to a certainty, Napoleon
would not for a day longer than he was compelled observe it in a place
like Elba, in the very vicinity of France. He declined, on the part of
Great Britain, any concern in it; but to avoid a renewal of the war, he
offered no formal opposition. Napoleon arrived at Elba on the 4th of
May.

The Provisional Government of France lost no time in framing a new
constitution, in which the limited monarchy and the House of Lords of
Great Britain were imitated. They declared Louis XVIII., the brother of
the last king, Louis XVI., the rightful occupant of the throne, and his
brothers and the other members of the House of Bourbon, after him in
due succession. Talleyrand was the first to put his signature to this
document; and the Abbé Siéyès, though he did not sign it, declared his
adhesion to the abdication of Buonaparte. On the 11th of April, the
same day that Napoleon signed his abdication, the brother of Louis,
the Count d'Artois, arrived, and the next day was received by the new
Government in a grand procession into Paris. There was a show of much
enthusiasm on the part of the people, but this was more show than
reality; the Bourbonist party was the only one that sincerely rejoiced
at the restoration; and when it was seen that a troop of Cossacks
closed the prince's procession, the people gave unequivocal signs of
disapprobation. The Duke of Angoulême had already entered the city of
Bourdeaux amid much acclamation, for the Bourbonist interest was strong
in the south, and he now came on to Paris. The new king, who had been
living, since the peace of Tilsit, at Hartwell, in Buckinghamshire, a
seat of the Marquis of Buckingham assigned by the British Government
for his residence, now went over. Louis was a quiet, good-natured man,
fond of books, and capable of saying witty things, and was much better
fitted for a country gentleman than for a throne. He was conducted into
London by the Prince Regent, and by crowds of applauding people. The
Prince Regent also accompanied him to Dover, where, on the 24th of
April, he embarked on board a vessel commanded by the Duke of Clarence,
afterwards William IV. He was accompanied by the Duchess of Angoulême,
the Prince of Condé, and his son, the Duke of Bourbon. On landing at
Calais, he embraced the Duchess of Angoulême, saying, "I hold again the
crown of my ancestors; if it were of roses, I would place it upon your
head; as it is of thorns, it is for me to wear it."

On the 2nd of May, two days only before Buonaparte entered his little
capital of Elba, Louis made his public entry into Paris amid quite
a gay and joyous-seeming crowd; for the Parisians are always ready
for a parade and a sensation; and none are said to have worn gloomy
looks on the occasion except the Imperial Guard, now, as they deemed
themselves, degraded into the Royal Guard--from the service of the most
brilliant of conquerors to that of the most pacific and unsoldierlike
of monarchs, who was too unwieldy even to mount a horse. For a time all
appeared agreeable enough; but there were too many hostile interests
at work for it to remain long so. In the new constitution, by which
the Senate had acknowledged Louis, they had declared him recalled on
the condition that he accepted the constitution framed for him; and
at the same time they declared the Senate hereditary, and possessed
of the rank, honours, and emoluments which Buonaparte had conferred
on the members. Louis refused to acknowledge the right of the Senate
to dictate a constitution to him. He assumed the throne as by his own
proper hereditary descent; and he then gave of his free will a free
constitution. This was the first cause of difference between the king
and the people. The Royalists condemned the new constitution as making
too much concession, and the Republicans resented his giving a charter
of freedom, because it made them the slaves of his will. The Royalists
soon began to monopolise offices and honours, and to clamour for the
recovery of their estates, now in the hands of the people, and these
were naturally jealous of their prevailing on the king and his family
to favour such reclamations. The clergy, who, like the Noblesse, had
been stripped of their property, and had now to subsist on annuities
of five hundred livres, or about twenty-six pounds sixteen shillings
and eightpence a-year, looked with resentment on those who were in
possession of the spoil; and the well-known disposition of the king
and his family to restore the status and the substance of the Catholic
Church, made those who had this property, and those--the greater part
of the nation--who had no religion whatever, readily believe that ere
long they would attempt to recall what the Revolution had distributed.
These suspicions were greatly augmented by the folly and bigotry
of the clergy. They refused to bury with the rites of the Church a
Mademoiselle Raucour, simply because she was an actress. Great tumults
arose on the occasion, and the Government was compelled to interfere
and ensure the burial in due form. The more regular observance of
the Sabbath was treated as bringing back the ancient superstitions;
and the taking up of the remains of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette
and conveying them to the royal place of sepulture in the Abbey of
St. Denis was regarded as a direct censure of the Revolution. It was
quite natural that Louis XVIII. should do this, and equally so that
he should show some favour to the surviving chiefs of La Vendée; but
these things had the worst effect on the public mind, as tending to
inspire fears of vengeance for the past, or of restoration of all that
the past had thrown down. In these circumstances, the Royalists were
discontented, because they thought Louis did too little for them, and
the rest of the community because he did too much. The Jacobins, who
had been suppressed, but not exterminated, by Buonaparte, now again
raised their heads, under so mild and easy a monarch, with all their
old audacity. They soon, however, despaired of reviving the Republic,
and turned to the son of their old partisan, Philip Égalité, the Duke
of Orleans, and solicited him to become their leader, promising to make
him king. But the present duke--afterwards King Louis Philippe--was
too honourable a man for their purpose; he placed the invitation
given him in the hands of Louis, and the Jacobins, then enraged, were
determined to bring back Napoleon rather than tolerate the much easier
yoke of the Bourbons. Carnot and Fouché soon offered themselves as
their instruments. Carnot, who had been one of the foremost men of the
Reign of Terror, had refused to acknowledge the rule of Buonaparte, who
suppressed the Revolution, for a long time, but, so late as the present
year, he had given in his adhesion, and was appointed engineer for
carrying on the fortifications of Antwerp. He had now the hardihood to
address a memorial to Louis XVIII., which, under the form of an apology
for the Jacobins during the Revolution, was in truth a direct attack on
the Royalists, describing them as a contemptible and small body, who
had allowed Louis XVI. to be destroyed by their cowardice, and now
had brought back the king by the hands of Englishmen and Cossacks to
endeavour to undo all that had been done for the people. He represented
kings as naturally prone to despotism, and priests and nobles as
inciting them to slaughter and rapine. The pretence was to lead the
monarch to rely only on the people; the object was to exasperate the
people against kings, nobles, and the Church.

[Illustration: ELBA.]

Carnot pretended that this memorial had been published during
his absence, and without his knowledge, but he did not deny the
composition; and it was most industriously circulated throughout Paris
from little carts, to avoid the penalties which would have fallen on
the booksellers had they issued it. As for Fouché, he endeavoured to
persuade Louis to declare himself attached to the Revolution--to assume
the tricolour flag and cockade. For Louis to have ruled according to
the more liberal ideas introduced by the Revolution would have been
wise, without declaring himself formally the disciple of opinions which
had sent so many of his family to the guillotine; but to have followed
the invidious advice of Fouché would have let loose at once that
terrible race of Jacobins which had never ceased to massacre all other
parties and then their own so long as they had the power. The cannon
of Buonaparte alone had arrested their career; the advice of Fouché
would have recalled it in all its horrors. Not prevailing on Louis to
do so foolish an act, he wrote to Napoleon, advising him to get away to
America, or it would not be long before the Bourbons, in spite of the
treaty, would seize and put him to death; and then Fouché entered heart
and soul into the plots of the Jacobins for the restoration of Napoleon.

Whilst these elements of a new convulsion were in active operation,
the Allies had settled to some extent the affairs of Europe, and
had returned home. On the 30th of May a treaty had been signed at
Paris, between Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, with France.
The boundaries of France were settled as they existed in 1792; it was
decreed that Holland and Belgium should be united to form a strong
barrier against France; the independence of Switzerland was restored;
the north of Italy was again made over to Austria, including Venice,
but not including Sardinia, which was enlarged by the addition of
Genoa, out of which Lord William Bentinck, with a British army, had
driven the French. Murat had assisted the Austrians to conquer Eugene
Beauharnais, and hoped to be allowed to retain Naples, yet having many
fears of his new allies, the Austrians, and of the Allies generally.
The Pope was again in peaceful possession of his States; the arms and
the money of Great Britain had triumphed over Buonaparte, and had
restored the monarchs of Europe to their thrones; but it was not to
be denied that in restoring them they had restored so many detestable
despotisms.

Not one of these monarchs, whose subjects had shed their blood and
laid down their lives by hundreds of thousands to replace them in
their power, had in return given these subjects a recompense by the
institution of a more liberal form of government. The German kings
and princes had openly promised such constitutions to induce them to
expel Buonaparte; and, this accomplished, they shamefully broke their
word. As Lord Byron well observed, we had put down one tyrant only to
establish ten. In Spain, where we had made such stupendous exertions to
restore Ferdinand, that monarch entered about the end of March; and his
arrival was a signal for all the old royalists and priests to gather
round him, and to insist on the annihilation of the Constitution made
by the Cortes. He went to Gerona, where he was joined by General Elio
and forty thousand men. Thence he marched to Saragossa and Valencia.
At that city _Te Deum_ was sung for his restoration, and, surrounded
by soldiers and priests, he declared that the Cortes had never been
legally convoked; that they had deprived him of the sovereignty, and
the nobles and clergy of their status; and that he would not swear to
the Constitution which they had prepared. On the 12th of May he entered
his capital, amid the most frantic joy of the ignorant populace, and
proceeded at once to seize all Liberal members of the Cortes, and throw
them into prison. Wellington hastened to Madrid, and with his brother,
Sir Henry Wellesley, the British Ambassador, and General Whittingham,
in vain urged on Ferdinand to establish a liberal constitution,
and govern on liberal principles. It was clear there was a time of
terrible and bloody strife before Spain between the old tyrannies and
superstitions and the new ideas.

In balancing accounts at the Congress at Paris, there was a resignation
on the part of Great Britain of the colonies which she had won with so
much cost of money and men. Our statesmen never thought of placing some
of the enormous sums we had bestowed on the Powers we helped against
the islands we had conquered. We had dearly purchased them. But Great
Britain gave back to France all the colonies possessed by her in 1792,
except Tobago, St. Lucia, and the Isle of France. Still more absurdly,
we returned Pondicherry, in the East Indies, as a focus for fresh
annoyances there from the French, whom we had expelled at such cost
for their meddling and exciting the natives against us. We restored
to the French, under certain conditions, the right of fishing on the
bank of Newfoundland, as they had enjoyed it in 1783; conditions which
they boldly violated, and which the British Ministry did not venture to
insist on being observed. We gave back also to Spain several islands
and colonies; and the same to Holland--namely, Demerara, Essequibo,
Berbice, the immense island of Java, and the rich one of Sumatra,
retaining only the Cape of Good Hope and the settlements in Ceylon.

These arrangements having been made, the sovereigns of Russia and
Prussia came over to London on a visit to the Prince Regent, and
to take a look at that wonderful capital which had poured out such
torrents of gold to bring up their armies to Paris. With them came
the Duchess of Oldenburg, the sister of the Czar, the two sons of the
King of Prussia, and a great number of the victorious field-marshals,
generals, princes, dukes, barons, and the like. But the two grand
favourites of the people were Platoff, whose Cossacks had charmed the
British people so by their wild prowess, and the bluff old Marshal
Blucher. This was a hero exactly after the British heart--blunt,
uncompromising, and, like the British, never knowing when he was
beaten.

[Illustration:

    THE
    STATES OF EUROPE
    in 1815.
]




CHAPTER III.

REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_concluded_).

    The Congress at Vienna--Napoleon's Escape from Elba--Military
    Preparations--England supplies the Money--Wellington organises
    his Army--Napoleon's Journey through France--His Entry into
    Paris--The Enemy gathers round him--Napoleon's Preparations--The
    New Constitution--Positions of Wellington and Blucher--The Duchess
    of Richmond's Ball--Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras--Blucher's
    Retreat--The Field of Waterloo--The Battle--Charge of the Old
    Guard--Arrival of the Prussians--The Retreat--French Assertions
    about the Battle refuted--Napoleon's Abdication--The Allies
    march on Paris--End of the Hundred Days--The Emperor is sent
    to St. Helena--The War in America--Events on the Canadian
    Frontier--Repeated Incapacity of Sir George Prevost--His
    Recall--Failure of American Designs on Canada--Capture of
    Washington by the British--Other Expeditions--Failure of the
    Expedition to New Orleans--Anxiety of the United States for
    Peace--Mediation of the Czar--Treaty of Ghent--Execution of Ney
    and Labédoyère--Inability of Wellington to interfere--Murat's
    Attempt on Naples--His Execution--The Second Treaty of Paris--Final
    Conditions between France and the Allies--Remainder of the Third
    George's Reign--Corn Law of 1815--General Distress--Riots and
    Political Meetings--The Storming of Algiers--Repressive Measures in
    Parliament--Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act--Secret Meetings in
    Lancashire--The Spy Oliver--The Derbyshire Insurrection--Refusal
    of Juries to convict--Suppression of seditious Writings--Circular
    to Lords-Lieutenant--The Flight of Cobbett--First Trial of
    Hone--The Trials before Lord Ellenborough--Bill for the Abolition
    of Sinecures--Death of the Princess Charlotte--Opening of
    the Session of 1818--Repeal of the Suspension Act--Operation
    of the Corn Law--The Indemnity Bill--Its Passage through
    Parliament--Attempts at Reform--Marriages of the Dukes of Clarence,
    Cambridge, and Kent--Renewal of the Alien Act--Dissolution of
    Parliament and General Election--Strike in Manchester--Congress
    of Aix-la-Chapelle--Raids of the Pindarrees--Lord Hastings
    determines to suppress them--Malcolm's Campaign--Outbreak of
    Cholera--Campaign against the Peishwa--Pacification of the Mahratta
    District--Apparent Prosperity of Great Britain in 1819--Opening of
    Parliament--Debates on the Royal Expenditure--Resumption of Cash
    Payments--The Budget--Social Reforms--The Scottish Burghs--Roman
    Catholic Emancipation rejected--Weakness of the Government--Meeting
    at Manchester--The Peterloo Massacre--The Six Acts--The Cato Street
    Conspiracy--Attempted Insurrection in Scotland--Trials of Hunt and
    his Associates--Death of George III.


The Allied sovereigns and their Ministers met at Vienna, in the opening
of the year 1815, in congress, to settle the boundaries of all such
States as had undergone disruptions and transformations through the
will of Buonaparte. They were proceeding, with the utmost composure, to
rearrange the map of Europe according to their several interests and
ambitions. Austria, Spain, France, Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia,
Russia, and Sweden had their sovereigns or their representatives there.
Those for Great Britain were the Duke of Wellington, the Lords Cathcart
and Clancarty, and Sir Charles Stewart. All at once a clap of political
thunder shook the place, and made every astute diplomatist look aghast.
It was announced that Buonaparte had escaped from Elba, and was rapidly
traversing France on the way to Paris, and that his old soldiers were
flocking with acclamation to his standard. It was what was certain to
occur--what every man not a cunning diplomatist must have foreseen
from the first, as certainly as that a stone thrown up is sure to come
down again. Yet no one seems to have foreseen it, except it were Lord
Castlereagh, who, not arriving at Paris before this foolish scheme was
adopted, had protested against it, and then yielded to it. On the 13th
of March the ministers of the Allied Powers met, and signed a paper
which, at length, was in earnest, and showed that they were now as well
convinced of a simple fact as the dullest intellect had been ten years
before--that there was no use treating Buonaparte otherwise than as a
wild beast. They now declared him an outlaw, a violator of treaties,
and an incorrigible disturber of the peace of the world; and they
delivered him over to public contempt and vengeance. Of course, the
British ambassadors were immediately looked to for the means of moving
the armies of these high and mighty Powers, and the Duke of Wellington
to plan and to lead the military operations against the man who had
once more developed himself from the Emperor of Elba into the Emperor
of the French.

The Duke of Wellington wrote to the British Government to inform them
of this event, and that the Allied sovereigns were this time resolved
to make sure of the fugitive; that the Emperor of Austria had agreed to
bring into the field three hundred thousand men; the Czar, two hundred
and twenty-five thousand; Prussia, two hundred and thirty-six thousand;
the other States of Germany, one hundred and fifty thousand; and that
it was expected Holland would furnish fifty thousand. Thus nine hundred
and sixty thousand men were promised, independently of Sweden and Great
Britain; so that a million of men might be calculated upon to crush
Buonaparte, provided that the latter Power were ready to furnish the
necessary millions of money to put this mighty host in motion.

[Illustration: THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA.]

The Duke earnestly recommended the utmost promptness and liberality as
the only means to settle the matter effectually and at once. He said
that to give only moderate assistance was sure to enable Buonaparte
to protract the contest, and would cost Britain more in the end;
that, on the contrary, if Britain found the means of maintaining a
great army, he was confident that "the contest would be a very short
one, and decidedly successful." And this, in the circumstances, was
clearly the best advice. Great Britain, having been no party to the
silly arrangement for setting up Buonaparte as a burlesque emperor
at the very doors of France, might very well have said to the Allied
sovereigns--"This is your work; we have no further concern in it; you
may finish it as you please." But Britain was sure not to do this; as
both the Government and nation had set their mind on hunting down the
slippery and mischievous adventurer, they were sure to follow up the
pursuit.

The British Ministry adopted the advice most cordially. Lord Liverpool,
in the House of Lords, and Lord Castlereagh, in the Commons, on
the 6th of April, announced the astounding fact of the escape of
Buonaparte, and proposed addresses from both Houses to the Prince
Regent, recommending the most energetic measures of co-operation with
the Allies now finally to crush this lawless man. Whitbread vehemently
opposed this measure, declaring that it was not our business "to
commence a new crusade to determine who should fill the throne of
France." This was true enough; but it was a truth, in the then temper
of the Government or public, which was not likely to be attended to.
The addresses were carried in both Houses without any division, and
Lord Wellington was nominated to command the forces which should take
the field for Great Britain; and these were to amount to no fewer than
one hundred and fifty thousand, and to consist of a moderate number of
British soldiers, and the rest to be paid Hanoverians, Belgians, Dutch,
and Germans. Parliament immediately voted the enormous sum of ninety
million pounds for supplies, knowing the vast subsidies which would be
required by the Allied monarchs, besides the large sum necessary to pay
our own quota of troops.

On the 23rd of March the Allied sovereigns, including that of the
United Kingdom, signed, by their plenipotentiaries, a new treaty of
alliance offensive and defensive, on the same principles as the Treaty
of Chaumont, entered into in March, 1814. The Duke of Wellington then
hastened away to Belgium to muster his forces there--for Belgium, as
it had been so often before, was sure to become the battle-ground on
this occasion. So early as the 5th of April he announced that he had
placed thirteen thousand four hundred men in the fortresses of Belgium,
and had besides twenty-three thousand British and Hanoverian troops,
twenty thousand Dutch and Belgian, and sixty pieces of artillery.
Unfortunately, the bulk of his victorious army of the Peninsula had
been sent to the inglorious contest with America, where a good naval
blockade would have been the most effectual kind of warfare. But
he observed that Buonaparte would require some time to assemble a
strong force, and this time must be employed by Britain to collect
a correspondingly powerful army. The Duke, with accustomed energy,
not only applied himself with all his strength to this object, but
to stimulating, by letters, the Allied sovereigns to hasten up their
quotas, some of them notoriously the slowest nations in the world.

Buonaparte landed at Cannes on the 1st of March. His advanced guard
presented themselves before Antibes, and were made prisoners by the
garrison. This did not discourage Buonaparte; he advanced by forced
marches with his now less than one thousand men, and leaving behind
him his train of artillery. Till he reached Dauphiné, however, he
received very little encouragement from any party. All the authorities,
proprietors, and clergy, stood aloof; only a few peasantry occasionally
cried "_Vive l'Empereur!_" but did not join him. He began to be very
uneasy. But on the 7th of March, as he approached Grenoble, Colonel
Labédoyère, who had been gained over before, came out with an eagle
in his hand, and at the gates distributed tricolour cockades, which
had been concealed in a drum. Buonaparte advanced alone towards the
troops, and called on any one who wished to kill his Emperor to do his
pleasure. All cried "_Vive l'Empereur!_" and crowded round him. General
Marchand endeavoured to recall the soldiers to their duty, but in vain.

Whilst Napoleon was thus advancing towards Paris, the besotted Bourbons
rather rejoiced in it, for they said it would compel the two chambers
to invest the king with despotic power--that was what they were still
longing for; and Louis himself, addressing the foreign ambassadors,
bade them assure their sovereigns that he was well, and that the
foolish enterprise of "that man" should as little disturb Europe as it
had disturbed him.

Monsieur and the Duke of Orleans hastened to Lyons, and the Duke
of Angoulême to Nìmes. Corps of volunteers were called out, and an
address to the people was composed by Benjamin Constant, calling on
them to defend their liberties against Buonaparte; and a woman on the
staircase of the Tuileries exclaimed, "If Louis has not men enough
to fight, let him call out the widows and childless mothers who have
been rendered such by Napoleon!" Meanwhile the conspiracy of General
l'Allemand and his brother at Lille, to carry over the garrison of
eight thousand men to Napoleon, was discovered by General Mortier, and
defeated. Had this plot succeeded, Louis and his family must have been
made prisoners. But that was the extent of the adhesion to the Bourbon
cause.

When Buonaparte reached Lyons, the soldiers, in spite of the Duke
of Orleans, of Monsieur, and of Marshal Macdonald, went over to him
to a man. He was now at the head of seven thousand men, and Mâcon,
Châlons, Dijon, and nearly all Burgundy declared for him. Marseilles
and Provence stood out, the authorities of Marseilles setting a price
upon his head. But being now in Lyons, Buonaparte issued, with amazing
rapidity, no fewer than eight decrees, abolishing every change made by
the Bourbons during his absence, confiscating the property of every
Emigrant who had not lost it before, restoring the tricolour flag and
cockade, and the legion of honour; abolishing the two chambers, and
calling a _Champ-de-Mai_, to be held in the month of May to determine
on a new constitution, and to assist at the coronation of the Empress
and the King of Rome. He boldly announced that the Empress was coming;
that Austria, Russia, and Great Britain were all his friends, and that
without this he could not have escaped. These decrees, disseminated
on all sides, had a wonderful effect on the people, and he advanced
rapidly, reaching Auxerre on the 17th of March. He rode on several
hours in advance of his army, without Guards, talking familiarly with
the people, sympathising in their distresses, and promising all sorts
of redresses. The lancers of Auxerre and Montereau trampled the white
cockade under foot and joined him. He appointed Cambacérès minister of
justice; Fouché, of police; and Davoust Minister of War. But Fouché,
doubting the sincerity of Buonaparte, at once offered his services to
Louis, and promised, on being admitted to a private interview, to point
out to the king a certain means of extinguishing the usurper. This was
presumed to mean assassination by some of his secret agents, and was
honourably rejected by Louis, and an officer was sent to arrest Fouché;
but that adroit sycophant retired by a back door, locking it after
him, got over a wall, and was the next moment in the house of the
Duchess of St. Leu, and in the midst of the assembled Buonapartists,
who received him with exultation.

Thus surrounded by treason, Louis doubted the fidelity of Soult, who
resigned his command; but he trusted Ney, and sent him to attack
Buonaparte in the rear, whilst an army at Mélun, under Clarke, Duke
of Feltre, was to attack him in front. Ney took leave of Louis on the
9th of March, declaring that he would bring Buonaparte to him in a
cage; but at Lons-le-Saulnier, on the 14th, he received a letter from
Napoleon, calling him "the bravest of the brave," and inviting him to
resume his place in his army, and Ney went over at once. To abate the
public opinion of his treason, he pretended that this expedition had
been long arranged between himself and Buonaparte, but this Buonaparte
at St. Helena denied.

Astounded by these repeated defections, Louis tried to gather some
notion of the state of other bodies and troops about him. He attended a
sitting of the Chamber of Deputies, and was received with acclamation;
he reviewed twenty-five thousand of the National Guard, and there was
the same display of loyalty; he inspected six thousand troops of the
line, but there the reception was not encouraging. He finally summoned
a council at the Tuileries, and there the generals declared frankly
that he had no real means of resisting Buonaparte. This was on the 18th
of March, and Louis felt that it was time for him to be making his
retreat. At one o'clock in the morning of the 20th he was on his way
towards Lille, escorted by a body of Household Troops. It was time, for
that very day Buonaparte reached the camp of Mélun, where Macdonald had
drawn up the troops to attack him; but Buonaparte threw himself amongst
them, attended only by a slight escort of horse, and the soldiers all
went over to him with a shout. Macdonald rode back to Paris, and,
following the king, assumed the command of the Guard accompanying him.
Louis hoped that the troops at Lille, under Mortier, would stand by
him; but Mortier assured him of the contrary, and so, taking leave of
Macdonald on the frontiers, Louis pursued his way to Ostend and thence
to Ghent, where he established his Court. The Household Troops who had
accompanied him were disbanded on the frontiers, and in attempting to
regain their homes by different routes, most of them were killed, or
plundered and abused.

On the evening of the very day that Louis quitted Paris Buonaparte
arrived in it. He had slept on the night of the 19th at Fontainebleau,
where, in the preceding April, he had signed his abdication. No sooner
had the king departed than the Buonapartists, who were all ready for
that event, came forth from their hiding-places. Lavalette resumed
his position at the post-office, and thus managed to intercept the
proclamations of Louis, and to circulate those of Buonaparte. Exelmans
took down the white flag from the Tuileries and hoisted the tricolour,
and a host of the adherents of the old Imperial Government, hurrying
from all quarters, thronged the avenues to the palace, and filled
the court of the Carrousel. There were ex-Ministers of Buonaparte,
ex-councillors, ex-chamberlains, in imperial costume--in short, every
species of officers and courtiers, down to cooks, and butlers, and
valets, all crushing forward to re-occupy their places.

The Guards at the gates stood with tricolour cockades on their hats,
and the great ladies of the Court came driving in, for they were not
far off. The Duchess of St. Leu had been permitted to remain in Paris,
and her house had been the focus of all the Buonapartist adherents and
conspiracies. From that centre had been sent summonses to every branch
of the Buonaparte family to be in readiness, and all had responded
except Cardinal Fesch, Louis Buonaparte, and Eugene Beauharnais, who
had too much sense to quit Munich with his wife, the daughter of the
Bavarian king. Even Murat, to his ruin, had been induced to declare for
Buonaparte once more.

When the returned Emperor, therefore, drove up to the Tuileries, at
nearly ten o'clock on the night of the 20th--a foggy and wet night--his
carriage, covered with mud, was surrounded by his friends, as if he
had only been absent on one of his campaigns. As he stepped out of his
carriage in his old grey great-coat and cocked hat, now to be seen in
the museum of the Louvre, he was instantly so hemmed in that he called
out, "My friends, you stifle me!" and a number of general officers
at once hoisted him upon their shoulders, and thus bore him into the
palace and up into the State apartments amid deafening shouts of "_Vive
l'Empereur!_"

Thus was the man who had been put down by all the assembled armies
of Europe not twelve months before, who had quitted Paris weeping
like a woman, and threatened, in his exile southward, with being torn
limb from limb--thus was he as it were miraculously borne back again
on men's shoulders, and seated on the throne of the twice-expelled
Bourbons! It was far more like a wild romance than any serious history.
The peace of the world had again to be achieved. The Bourbons had
been worsted everywhere, even in loyal Vendée, and in Marseilles,
which had so recently set a price on Buonaparte's head. The Duke of
Angoulême was surrounded in Marseilles, and surrendered on condition of
quitting France. The Duke of Bourbon found La Vendée so permeated by
Buonapartism that he was obliged to escape by sea from Nantes; and the
Duchess of Angoulême, who had thrown herself into Bordeaux, found the
troops there infected by the Buonaparte mania, and, quitting the place
in indignation, went on board an English frigate.

But the position of Buonaparte was far from being secure or
satisfactory. Though the soldiers had come over to him, and endeavoured
to rouse the populace of Paris to shout for his return, it was in
vain. The Guards, incensed at their silence, struck them with the
flat of their swords, and bade them cry, "Napoleon and Liberty!" but,
though they saw that Napoleon had returned, they very much doubted
whether he had brought liberty with him, and they remained cold and
indifferent. They saw the armies of the Allies looming again in the
distance, and they gave no credence to Napoleon's ready lies that he
was at peace with them. But he omitted no exertions to enter into such
a peace. He dispatched messengers to every Court, offering to accept
the terms of the Treaty of Paris, though he had repeatedly avowed that
this treaty consummated the disgrace of France. To these messages
no answers were returned. It was already determined that he should
receive no communication from the Allied sovereigns but in the shape of
overwhelming armies. They had proclaimed, in their Congress at Vienna,
and in their new Treaty of Coalition, that he had forfeited every claim
to consideration, and the British House of Commons had fully coincided
with them, and already upwards of a million of soldiers were in arms,
and in march towards France to finally crush him.

In England the Chancellor of the Exchequer had found no difficulty in
raising a loan of thirty-six million pounds, and this money was freely
devoted to put the armies of the Coalition in motion. Never had such
vast armaments been in preparation from the very north of Europe to
France. The Congress had removed its _locale_ from Vienna to Frankfort,
to be nearer the scene of action. The Emperors of Russia and Austria,
and the King of Prussia, were again at the head of their forces. On
the side of Switzerland, one hundred and fifty thousand Austrians, who
were liberated from Italy by the defeat of Murat, were ready to march
into France; another army of the same number directed its course to the
upper Rhine. Schwarzenberg was again Commander-in-Chief of Austria. Two
hundred thousand Russians, under Barclay de Tolly, were also marching
for Alsace, and Langeron, Sacken, and other generals were at the head
of other numerous divisions, all under the nominal leadership of the
Archduke Constantine. Blucher was already posted in Belgium with one
hundred and fifty thousand Prussians; and the army of Wellington, of
eighty thousand men, composed of British, and different nations in
British pay, occupied Flanders. The contingents of Holland, Sweden,
and the smaller German states raised the total to upwards of a million
of men, which, if they were not all at hand, were ready to march up in
case of any reverses to those first in the field.

To contend against this enormous force, Buonaparte, by the most
surprising exertions, had again collected upwards of two hundred
thousand men of considerable military practice; but he dared not to
name the conscription to a people already sore on that point; and he
endeavoured to raise further reinforcements by an enrolment of National
Guards all over France. For this purpose commissioners were sent down
into the Departments, on the authority of an Imperial decree of April
the 5th; and he proposed to raise as many federates, or volunteers of
the lower orders--the only class which had raised a cheer for him on
his return. But these schemes proved, for the most part, abortive. In
the northern Departments, where heretofore the commands of Buonaparte
had been most freely obeyed, the inhabitants showed a sullen and dogged
resistance, and the same was the case in Brittany. Farther south
matters were worse. In the Departments of Gard, Marne, and Nether
Loire, the white flag and cockade were openly displayed; and wherever
the tree of liberty was planted--for it was now the trick of Buonaparte
to associate the sacred name of liberty with his, a name and a thing
on which he had so uniformly trampled--it was cut down and burnt. It
was in such circumstances that Buonaparte had to put his frontiers
into a state of defence against the advancing hosts. He had defended
the northern side of Paris with a double line of fortifications;
strongly fortified Montmartre, and on the open southern side cast up
some field-works, relying, however, on the Seine as the best barrier.
Paris he placed under the command of General Haxo; and the fortresses
on the side of Alsace, the Vosges, and Lorraine were all strongly
garrisoned. Lyons, Guise, Vitry, Soissons, Château-Thierry, Langres,
and other towns were made as strong as forts, redoubts, field-works,
and garrisons could make them; and trusting by these to retard the slow
Austrians, and even the Russians, till he could have given a desperate
blow to the Allies in the Netherlands, of whom he was most afraid, on
the 11th of June he quitted Paris, saying, "I go to measure myself with
Wellington!"

He had, however, lost something of his old self-confidence, and the
opposition which he had met with from the State, and the alienation
of the people, were not exhilarating. Napoleon saw that he must
conciliate the French by concessions, but neither his temperament nor
his necessities permitted him to do this liberally. He gave nominal
freedom to the press, but he bought up the majority of the editors and
proprietors; yet, not being able to do this wholly, the opposition
spoke bitter things to him and of him, and damaged his cause seriously.
He called on Siéyès, Carnot, and Fouché to assist in framing his
constitution; and he gave peerages to Carnot and Siéyès, and those once
stern Republicans accepted them. But, even with their aid, he could not
bring himself to grant a free constitution. Nobody believed him to be
sincere even in what he did give. The police were as strict as ever,
and yet every night the walls of Paris were covered with proclamations
of Louis XVIII., forbidding the payment of taxes, and announcing the
approach of one million two hundred thousand men.

The very _Dames des Halles_, the market women, took up the word against
them. They sang a song with much vivacity, "_Donnez-nous notre paire de
gants_,"--equivalent in pronunciation to _notre père de Ghent_, that
is, Louis, who was then residing at Ghent. None but the very lowest
of the population retained the old illusions respecting him. In such
circumstances, not even his new Constitution could satisfy anybody. It
was very much the same as Louis XVIII. had sworn to in 1814. It granted
free election of the House of Representatives, which was to be renewed
every five years; the members were to be paid; land and other taxes
were to be voted once a year; ministers were to be responsible; juries,
right of petition, freedom of worship, inviolability of property,
were all established. But Buonaparte destroyed the value of these
concessions by publishing this, not as a new Constitution, but as "an
additional Act" to his former Constitution. The word "additional" meant
everything, for it proclaimed that all the despotic decrees preceding
this fresh declaration were still in force, and thus it neutralised or
reduced these concessions to a mere burlesque.

[Illustration: SIR THOMAS PICTON.

(_From the Painting by Sir M. A. Shee, P.R.A._)]

Napoleon, however, called his _Champ-de-Mai_ together for the electors
to this anomalous document; but, to add to the incongruity, the
assembly was held in the _Champ-de-Mars_, and not in May at all, but on
the 1st of June. There he and his brothers, even Lucien, who had been
wiled back to his assistance, figured in fantastic robes as emperor and
princes of the blood, and the electors swore to the Constitution; but
the whole was a dead and dreary fiasco. On the 4th the two Chambers,
that of Peers and that of Representatives, met. The Peers, who were his
own officers and picked men, readily agreed to the Constitution; but
not so the Chamber of Representatives. They chose Lanjuinais president,
who had been a zealous advocate of Louis XVI., and who had drawn up the
list of crimes under which Buonaparte's forfeiture had been pronounced
in 1814. They entered into a warm discussion on the propriety of
abolishing all titles of honour in that Chamber. They rejected a
proposition to bestow on Napoleon the title of Saviour of his Country,
and they severely criticised the "additional Act," declaring that "the
nation would entertain no plans of aggrandisement; that not even the
will of a victorious prince should lead them beyond the boundaries of
self-defence." In this state of things Buonaparte was compelled to
depart, leaving the refractory chamber to discuss the articles of his
new Constitution.

Napoleon was at Vervins, on the 12th of June, with his Guard, and on
the 14th he had joined five divisions of infantry and four of cavalry
at Beaumont. The triple line of strong fortresses on the Belgian
frontiers enabled him to assemble his forces unobserved by the Allies,
whilst he was perfectly informed by spies of their arrangements.
Wellington had arrived at Brussels, and had thrown strong garrisons
into Ostend, Antwerp, Nieuwport, Ypres, Tournay, Mons, and Ath. He had
about thirty thousand British, but not his famous Peninsular troops,
who had been sent to America. Yet he had the celebrated German legion,
eight thousand strong, which had won so many laurels in Spain; fifteen
thousand Hanoverians; five thousand Brunswickers, under their brave
duke, the hereditary mortal foe of Napoleon; and seventeen thousand
men, Belgians, Dutch, and troops of Nassau, under the Prince of Orange.
Doubts were entertained of the trustworthiness of the Belgians, who
had fought under Napoleon, and who had shown much discontent of late;
and Napoleon confidently calculated on them, and had Belgian officers
with him to lead them when they should come over to him. But, on the
whole, the Belgians behaved well; for, like all others, their country
had felt severely the tyranny of Napoleon. Altogether, Wellington's
army amounted to about seventy-five thousand men. He occupied
with his advanced division, under the Prince of Orange, Enghien,
Braine-le-Comte, and Nivelles; with his second, under Lord Hill, Hal,
Oudenarde, and Grammont; and with his reserve, under Picton, Brussels
and Ghent. What he had most to complain of was the very defective
manner in which he had been supplied with cannon on so momentous an
occasion, being able to muster only eighty-four pieces of artillery,
though he had applied for a hundred and fifty, and though there were
cannons enough at Woolwich to have supplied the whole of the Allied
armies.

Blucher's headquarters were at Namur, his right extending to Charleroi,
near the left of Wellington, and his left and reserves covering Gevil
and Liége. His force amounted to eighty thousand men, supplied with two
hundred cannon. On the 15th Buonaparte addressed his army, telling them
that the enemies arrayed against them were the same that they had so
often beaten, and whom they must beat again if they were the men they
had been. "Madmen!" he exclaimed, "the moment of prosperity has blinded
them. The oppression and humiliation of the French people are beyond
their power. If they enter France they will there find their tomb!"
This address had such an effect that the French advanced with all the
spirit of their former days. They swept the western bank of the Sambre
of the Prussian outposts; they advanced to Charleroi, drove out the
Prussians under Ziethen, and compelled them to fall back on the village
of Gosselies, and thence to Ligny and St. Amand. It was now seen that
the object of Buonaparte was to cut off the communication between the
Prussians and British, and defeat the Prussians first, instead of
having to fight the two armies at once. To complete this Ney had been
dispatched to attack and drive back the British advance at Quatre Bras
and Frasnes; but, hearing firing in the direction of Charleroi, which
was the engagement with Ziethen, he sent a division to support the
French there, and thus found his main body too weak to move the British
at Quatre Bras. For doing this without orders, Buonaparte reprimanded
Ney, as he afterwards did Grouchy for too implicitly following his
orders in pursuit of Blucher.

The Duke of Wellington was informed, at Brussels, on the same day, of
this attack of Napoleon on the Prussians at Ligny, and of the British
advance, under the Prince of Orange, at Quatre Bras. It has been said
that he was taken by surprise. Quite the contrary. He was waiting in
the most suitable position for the movement of Buonaparte. This was
announced to him by a Prussian officer of high rank, said to be Baron
Müffling, who arrived at half-past one at his hotel in Brussels.
Wellington immediately dispatched orders to all the cantonments of his
army to break up and concentrate on Quatre Bras, his intention being
that his whole force should be there by eleven o'clock the next night,
Friday, the 16th. At three o'clock his Grace sat down to dinner, and
it was at first proposed that notice should be sent to the Duchess of
Richmond to put off a ball which she was going to give at her hotel
that evening; but, on further consideration, it was concluded to let
the ball proceed, and that the Duke and his officers should attend it,
as though nothing was about to occur, by which the great inconvenience
of having the whole city in confusion during their preparations for
departure would be avoided. Accordingly, every officer received orders
to quit the ball-room, and as quietly as possible, at ten o'clock, and
proceed to his respective division _en route_. This arrangement was
carried out, and the Duke himself remained at the ball till twelve
o'clock, and left Brussels the next morning (April 16) at six o'clock
for Quatre Bras. Such were the facts which gave rise to the widespread
report that the Duke knew nothing of the attack of Napoleon till
the thunder of his cannon was heard by the Duke of Brunswick in the
ball-room.

Wellington arrived early in the forenoon at Quatre Bras, and then
rode to Brie, to consult with Blucher. It appeared as if it was the
intention of Buonaparte to bear down with his whole force on Blucher;
and though Bulow's division, stationed between Liége and Hainault,
was too far off to arrive in time, Blucher resolved to stand battle;
and it was agreed that Wellington should, if possible, march to his
assistance, and _vice versâ_, should the attack be on Wellington.
Ney, with a division of forty-five thousand, attacked the British at
Quatre Bras and Frasnes, whilst Napoleon directed the rest of his
force on Blucher at Ligny, and General D'Erlon lay with ten thousand
men near Marchiennes, to act in favour of either French force, as
might be required. Buonaparte did not attack Blucher till about three
o'clock, and then he continued the battle with the utmost fury for
two hours along his whole line. Buonaparte, finding that he could not
break the Prussian line, sent for the division of D'Erlon, and then,
contriving to get into the rear of Blucher's position at Ligny, threw
the Prussians into disorder. Blucher made a desperate charge, at the
head of his cavalry, to repel the French, but his horse was killed
under him; and the French cuirassiers galloped over him, a Prussian
officer having flung a cloak over him. He escaped with his life, and,
remounting, led the retreat towards Tilly. The loss of the French in
this battle is stated by General Gourgaud at seven thousand, but is
supposed to exceed ten thousand. The Prussians admit the loss of as
many, but the French declared that they lost fifteen thousand. It
was, however, a severe blow for the Allies; and had Ney managed to
defeat Wellington, the consequences would have been momentous. But
Ney found that the British had evacuated Frasnes that morning, and
lay across four roads at Quatre Bras--one leading to St. Amand, the
Prussian position. On another, leading from Charleroi to Brussels, was
a wood, called the Bois de Bossu; and here the attack commenced on
the Belgians. The wood was sharply contested, and about three o'clock
the Belgians were driven out by the French, who, in their turn, were
expelled by the British Guards. The battle then became general and
severe, the 42nd Highlanders suffering greatly. Ney endeavoured to
cut through the British by a furious charge of cavalry; but this
was repelled by such a deadly fire as heaped the causeway with men
and horses. Ney then sent for the division of D'Erlon, but that had
been already summoned by Buonaparte. The battle was continued till
it was dark, and the British remained on the field, hoping that the
Prussians had also maintained their ground, and that they might form a
junction in the morning. But the Prussians had retreated in the night
to Wavre, about six leagues in the rear of Ligny, and had gone off in
such silence that Napoleon was not even aware of it. But Wellington
was aware of it, and, on the morning of the 17th, began a retreat also
on Waterloo, where he and Blucher had concerted to form a junction
and give battle. Blucher had made his retreat so artfully, that the
French were at a loss to know which way he had taken. It appeared as
if he had directed his march for Namur, and about three o'clock on
the 17th Grouchy received orders to pursue Blucher, wherever he might
have gone. This dispatch of Grouchy with thirty-two thousand men to
deal with Blucher proved a serious mistake for Napoleon, who, not
having Grouchy's division to support him at the battle of Waterloo,
severely blamed him, and charged his own defeat upon him. But it was
the ungenerous practice of Buonaparte, whenever he was defeated, to
charge it upon some of his generals, even when they had been acting
most meritoriously. This he did in Russia, and this he repeated in the
retreat on Paris in 1814, and this we shall find him doing again in the
battle of Waterloo, to the undaunted and indefatigable Ney. Grouchy
has shown satisfactorily that he himself first brought to Napoleon the
news of Blucher's retreat, and requested orders to pursue him with his
cavalry, but that he could not obtain such order till noon on the 17th,
and then the order was to follow him wherever he went. We shall soon
see that Thielemann, by Blucher's orders, kept Grouchy well employed,
and took care to prevent his return to Waterloo.

[Illustration: WATERLOO VIEWS.]

[Illustration: QUATRE BRAS.

FROM THE PAINTING BY VEREKER M HAMILTON, R.E.]

[Illustration: MARSHAL BLUCHER. (_From the Portrait by Sir Thomas
Lawrence, P.R.A._)]

Napoleon, finding Blucher gone, turned his attentions to Wellington,
expecting to find him still at Quatre Bras; but, as we have said, the
Duke was now on his retreat to Waterloo. Buonaparte dispatched his
cavalry in hot haste after him, and they came up with his rear at
Genappe, where the British had to pass through a narrow street, and
over a narrow bridge across the Dyle. There the French came with such
impetus that they threw the light cavalry into confusion; but the heavy
dragoons soon rode back, and drove the French with such effect before
them, that they made no further interruption of the march. Without
an enemy at their rear the march was repugnant enough to the soldiers.
British soldiers abominate anything like a retreat. They had heard of
the defeat of the Prussians at Ligny; and this retrograde movement
looked too much of the same character to please them. Besides, it was
raining torrents all the way; and they had to tramp across fields up to
the knees in mud. At five in the evening, however, the Duke commanded
a halt, and took up his position on ground which thenceforth was to
be immortal. He was on the field of Waterloo! Long before this the
position had attracted his attention, and he had thought that had he
to fight a battle anywhere in that part of the country, it should be
on that ground. About two miles beyond the village of Waterloo, which
has been chosen to bear the name of this famous battle, and about a
mile beyond the hamlet of Mont St. Jean, there stretches across the
Charleroi road a ridge of some elevation. On this Wellington posted
his army, his left extending to a hamlet called La Haye, and his right
across the Nivelles road, to a village and ravine called Braine Merbes.
These two roads united in the highway to Brussels, just behind the
hamlet of Mont St. Jean, and close behind the centre of Wellington's
position was the farm of Mont St. Jean; a little below his centre, on
the Charleroi road or causeway, leading through Genappe to Quatre Bras,
whence they had come, was another farmhouse, called La Haye Sainte. On
Wellington's right, but down in the valley near the Nivelles road, lay
an old château, with its walled orchard, and a wood beyond it, called
Hougomont--a contraction of Château-Gomont. Below this position ran
a valley, and from it ascended opposite other rising grounds, chiefly
open cornfields; and along this ascent, at about half a mile distant,
Buonaparte posted his army, shutting in by his right the château of
Hougomont, and commanding it from the high ground. Nearly opposite to
Wellington's centre stood a farmhouse, enclosed in its orchards, called
La Belle Alliance. There Buonaparte took his stand, and kept it during
all the fight--each commander being able to view the whole field. Close
behind Wellington the ground again descended towards Mont St. Jean,
which gave a considerable protection to his reserves, and kept them
wholly out of the observation of the French. To make the situation of
Wellington`s army clear, we have only to say that behind the village of
Waterloo extended the beech wood of Soigne along the road to Brussels
for the greater part of the way.

When Buonaparte, early in the morning of the 18th, mounted his horse to
reconnoitre Wellington's position, he was rejoiced to observe so few
troops; for many were hidden behind the height on which Wellington took
his stand. One of his staff suggested that Wellington would be joined
by Blucher; but so wholly ignorant was Napoleon of the settled plan
of the two generals that he scouted the idea. "Blucher," he said, "is
defeated. He cannot rally for three days. I have seventy-five thousand
men: the English only fifty thousand. The town of Brussels awaits
me with open arms. The English opposition waits but for my success
to raise their heads. Then adieu subsidies and farewell coalition!"
And, looking again at the small body of troops visible, he exclaimed,
in exultation, "I have them there at last, these English!" General
Foy, who had had ample experience of "these English" in Spain, said,
"Wellington never shows his troops; but, if he be yonder, I must warn
your majesty that the English infantry, in close fighting, is the very
devil!" And Soult, who had felt the strength of that infantry too
often, confirmed Foy's assertion.

Wellington was quite prepared for the fiercest attack of Buonaparte.
Notwithstanding his loss at Quatre Bras, he had still about sixty-eight
thousand men, though the British portion did not exceed thirty-five
thousand; and Buonaparte, as he had stated, had about seventy thousand,
but most of them of the very best troops of France, whilst few of
Wellington's army had been under fire before, and some of the Belgians
and Hanoverians were of very inferior quality. In point of cannon,
Buonaparte had more than double the number that Wellington had. But
the Duke informed Blucher that he should make a stand here, and the
brave old Marshal replied to Wellington's request of a detachment of
Prussians to support him, that he would be there with his main army.
Wellington therefore expected the arrival of the Prussians about noon;
but though they lay only about twelve miles off, the difficulties of
the route over the heights of Chapelle-Lambert, and the occupation of
part of Wavre by the French division under Grouchy, prevented their
advance under Bulow from reaching the field till half-past four.
Wellington, however, rested in confident expectation of the support of
the Prussians and of their numerous cannon.

Buonaparte posted himself in his centre, near the farmhouse of La Belle
Alliance, having Ney and Soult near him, but Counts Reille and D'Erlon
being in immediate command of the centre. His left, which stretched
round the château of Hougomont, was commanded by his brother Jerome;
his right by Count Lobau. Wellington took his post on the ridge near
where the great mound of the dead surmounted by the Belgian lion now
stands. His troops were divided into two lines; the right of the first
line--consisting of British, Hanoverian, and Belgian troops--under Lord
Hill. The centre, under the Prince of Orange, consisted of troops of
Brunswick and Nassau, flanked on the right by the Guards under General
Cooke, and on the left by the division of the Hanoverian general Alten.
The left wing consisted of the divisions of Picton, Lambert, and Kemp.
The second line consisted of troops in which less confidence was
placed, or which had suffered severely at Quatre Bras on the 16th. In
and around the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, in advance of the centre,
was placed a body of Germans. The plan of each commander was simple:
Wellington's, to keep his ground till Blucher should come up, and then
all simultaneously charge forward to drive the French from the field;
Napoleon's, by his brisk and ponderous charges to break and disperse
the British before the Prussians could arrive.

[Illustration:

    _By permission of Messrs. S. Hildesheimer & Co., Ld._

    _Reproduced by André & Sleigh. Ld., Bushey, Herts._

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO: FRENCH CUIRASSIERS CHARGING A BRITISH SQUARE.

FROM THE PAINTING BY P. JAZET.]

It was not till between eleven and twelve o'clock on the morning of
Sunday, the 18th of June, that this terrible conflict commenced; for
the troops of Napoleon had not yet all reached the ground, having
suffered from the tempests of wind and rain equally with the Allies.
The rain had now ceased, but the morning was gloomy and lowering. The
action opened by a brisk cannonade on the house and wood of Hougomont,
which were held by the troops of Nassau. These were driven out; but
their place was immediately taken by the British Guards under General
Byng and Colonels Home and Macdonald. A tremendous cannonade was kept
up on Hougomont by Jerome's batteries from the slopes above; and under
cover of this fire the French advanced through the wood in front of
Hougomont, but were met by a terrible fire from the British, who had
the orchard wall as a breastwork from which to assail the enemy. The
contest here was continued through the day with dreadful fury, but the
British held their ground with bull-dog tenacity. The buildings of the
farmyard and an old chapel were set fire to by the French shells; but
the British maintained their post amid the flames, and filled the wood
in front and a lane running under the orchard wall with mountains of
dead.

The fire had soon become general, and a desperate struggle was raging
along the whole line. Buonaparte threw column after column forward
against the British squares; but they were met with deadly volleys of
artillery and musketry, and reeled back amid horrible slaughter. A
desperate push was made to carry La Haye Sainte and the farm of Mont
St. Jean, on Wellington's left centre, by the cuirassiers, followed
by four columns of French infantry. The cuirassiers charged furiously
along the Genappe causeway, but were met and hurled back by the heavy
British cavalry. The four columns of infantry reached La Haye Sainte
and dispersed a body of Belgians; but Picton, advancing with Pack's
brigade, forced them back, and the British cavalry, which had repulsed
the cuirassiers, attacking them in flank, they were broken with heavy
slaughter and left two thousand prisoners and a couple of eagles behind
them. But the British, both cavalry and infantry, pursuing their
advantage too far, were in turn repulsed with great loss, and Generals
Picton and Ponsonby were killed. The French then again surrounded La
Haye Sainte, where a detachment of the German legion, falling short of
ammunition, and none being able to be conveyed to them, were literally
massacred, refusing to surrender. In a little time the French were
driven out of the farmhouses by shells.

Soon after, a resolute attack was made on the right of the British
centre by a great body of cavalry, which rode impetuously into the
front of the squares and of thirty pieces of artillery. Though cut
down in heaps, they drove the artillerymen from their guns, but these
only retreated amongst the infantry, carrying with them the implements
for serving the guns, and, the moment the infantry repelled their
assailants a little, the men were at their guns again, and renewed the
firing. The cuirassiers fought most undauntedly; they rode along the
very front of the squares, firing their pistols into them, or cutting
at them with their swords. Again and again they dashed forward to break
the squares, but in every instance were met with such a destructive
fire that they were compelled to draw off, only a mere fragment of
this fine cavalry surviving this heroic but fatal attempt. From that
time the French continued the battle chiefly by an incessant fire of
artillery along the whole line, which the British avoided in great part
by lying on their faces.

By six o'clock in the evening the Allied army had lost ten thousand
men in killed and wounded, besides a great number of the dispersed
Belgians and other foreigners of the worst class, who had run off, and
taken refuge in the wood of Soigne. But the French had suffered more
severely; they had lost fifteen thousand in killed and wounded, and had
had more than two thousand taken prisoners. At about half-past four,
too, firing had been heard on the French right, and it proved to be
the advanced division of Bulow. Grouchy had overtaken the Prussians
at Wavre, but had been stopped there by General Thielemann, by order
of Blucher, and kept from crossing the Dyle till it was too late to
prevent the march of Blucher on Waterloo; so that whilst Thielemann
was thus holding back Grouchy, who now heard the firing from Waterloo,
Blucher was on the track of his advanced division towards the great
battle-field. When Buonaparte heard the firing on the right, he
thought, or affected to think, that it was Grouchy, whom he had sent
for in haste, who was beating the Prussians; but he perceived that he
must now make one gigantic effort, or all would be lost the moment
that the main armies of the British and Prussians united. Sending,
therefore, a force to beat back Bulow, he prepared for one of those
thunderbolts which so often had saved him at the last moment. He formed
his Imperial Guard into two columns at the bottom of the declivity of
La Belle Alliance, and supporting them by four battalions of the Old
Guard, and putting Ney at their head, ordered him to break the British
squares. That splendid body of men, the French Guards, rushed forward,
for the last time, with cries of "_Vive l'Empereur!_" and Buonaparte
rode at their head as well as Ney, as far as the farm of La Haye
Sainte. There the great Corsican, who had told his army on joining it
this last campaign that he and they must now conquer or die, declined
the death by suddenly wheeling his horse aside, and there remaining,
still and stiff as a statue of stone, watching the last grand venture.
The British right at this moment was wheeling towards Buonaparte's
position, so that his Guards were received by a simultaneous fire in
front and in the flank. The British soldiers advanced from both sides,
as if to close round the French, and poured in one incessant fire,
each man independently loading and discharging his piece as fast as he
could. The French Guards endeavoured to deploy that they might renew
the charge, but under so terrible a fire they found it impossible:
they staggered, broke, and melted into a confused mass. As they rolled
wildly down the hill, the battalions of the Old Guard tried to check
the pursuing British; but at this moment Wellington, who had Maitland's
and Adams's brigades of Guards lying on their faces behind the ridge
on which he stood, gave the command to charge, and, rushing down the
hill, they swept the Old Guard before them. On seeing this, Buonaparte
exclaimed, "They are mingled together! All is lost for the present!"
and rode from the field. The battle was won. But at the same moment
Wellington ordered the advance of the whole line, and the French,
quitting every point of their position, began a hasty and confused
retreat from the field.

Buonaparte, in his bulletin of June 21st, found a reason for this utter
defeat in a panic fear that suddenly seized the army, through some
evil-disposed person raising the cry of "_Sauve qui peut!_" But Ney
denied, in his letter to the Duke of Otranto, that any such cry was
raised. Another statement made very confidently in Paris was, that the
Old Guard, being summoned to surrender, replied, "The Guard dies, but
never surrenders!"--a circumstance which never took place, though the
Guards fought with the utmost bravery.

As this rout was taking place, Bulow, who had beaten back the French
battalions from Frischermont and Planchenoit, was approaching La
Belle Alliance, and Blucher with the main army soon after appeared
following him. At a farmhouse called Maison Rouge, or Maison du Roi,
behind La Belle Alliance, the Duke of Wellington and Blucher met and
felicitated each other. Blucher, in the Continental manner, embraced
and kissed the victorious Duke; and it was agreed that, as the army
of Wellington had been fighting hard for eight hours, the Prussians
should make the pursuit. Blucher swore that he would follow the French
whilst a horse or a man could move, and, with three cheers from the
British, he set forward with his troops in chase. So far from "the
Guards dying, but not surrendering," these brave men flew now before
the stern old Prussian, and immediately in the narrow passage at
Genappe they abandoned to him sixty pieces of their cannon. Amongst
other spoil they captured the carriage of Napoleon, and found in it,
amongst other curious papers, a proclamation for publication the next
day at Brussels. As it was moonlight, the Prussians continued the
chase till late into the night, slaughtering the fugitives like sheep.
Numbers quitted the road and fled across the country, seeking shelter
in the woods, where many of them were afterwards found dead or severely
wounded. The highway, according to General Gneisenau, was covered with
cannon, caissons, carriages, baggage, arms, and property of every
kind. The wounded were humanely sent to Brussels, but those who could
continue their flight did so till they had reached France, where they
sold their horses and arms, and dispersed themselves to their homes.
The grand army was no more, with the exception of the division of
Grouchy, who made good his retreat to Paris, only to be upbraided by
Buonaparte as the cause of his defeat. In this battle and retreat the
French lost more men than at Leipsic, the killed and wounded exceeding
thirty thousand.

But the loss of the Allies had also been perfectly awful. The
Prussians, besides the great slaughter at Ligny, had been engaged in a
bloody struggle at Planchenoit, and the British and their Allies had
lost in the battle of Waterloo two thousand four hundred and thirty-two
killed, and nine thousand five hundred and twenty-eight wounded; these,
added to the numbers killed and wounded at Quatre Bras, raised the
total to fifteen thousand. Of British and Hanoverian officers alone
six hundred were killed or wounded at Waterloo. The Duke of Brunswick
fell at the head of his troops at Quatre Bras, without having the
satisfaction of witnessing the final ruin of Buonaparte. So many of
Wellington's staff were disabled that he had at one time no officer to
dispatch with a pressing order. A young Piedmontese, of the family of
De Salis, offered himself. "Were you ever in a battle before?" asked
the Duke. "No, sir," he replied. "Then," said the Duke, "you are a
lucky man, for you will never see such another." When the Duke, who
had witnessed so many bloody battles, saw the carnage of Waterloo, and
heard, one after another, the losses of so many companions in arms, he
was quite overcome. In his despatches he says: "I cannot express the
regret and sorrow with which I look round me, and contemplate the
losses that we have sustained." And again, "The losses I have sustained
have quite broken me down, and I have no feeling for the advantages we
have gained."

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO. (_See p._ 99.)]

It is scarcely worth while to attempt to expose the assertions due to
Napoleon and the mortified vanity of the French, which have declared
that Wellington made a bad choice of his battle-field, and that he
would have been beaten had not the Prussians come up. These statements
have been amply refuted by military authorities. The selection of
the field may be supposed to be a good one when it is known that
Marlborough had chosen the very same, and was only prevented from
fighting on it by the Dutch Commissioners. But no one can examine the
field without seeing its strength. Had Wellington been driven from his
position, the long villages of Mont St. Jean and Waterloo behind him,
succeeded by the beech wood of Soigne, would have enabled him to hold
the French in check for days--much more for the time sufficient for the
whole Prussian force to come up. When it is seen what resistance such
a mere farm as La Haye Sainte, or the château of Hougomont, enabled
the British to make, what would the houses, gardens, and orchards
of Mont St. Jean and Waterloo have done, stretching for two miles,
backed by the wood of Soigne--not a forest choked by underwood, but
of clear ground, from which ascended the tall, smooth boles of the
beech trees? As to the danger of being defeated had not the Prussians
come up, there was none. No advantage through the whole day had been
gained by the French, except making an entry into the court-yard of
Hougomont, and in capturing La Haye Sainte, from both of which they
had long been driven again. The cuirassiers had been completely cut up
before the arrival of the Prussians; not a square of infantry had been
broken; and when Buonaparte made his last effort--that of hurling his
Guards on the British columns--they were, according to the positive
evidence of Marshal Ney, who led them on, totally annihilated. It is
true that the Prussians had been for some time engaged on the right of
the French, and had stood their ground; but they had been terribly cut
up at Planchenoit, and they do not appear to have made much advance
till the total rout of the French by the last charge of the British.
Wellington had advanced his whole line, and was leading on the pursuit
in person when he and Blucher met on the high ground behind La Belle
Alliance--that is, beyond the very ground on which Buonaparte had
stood the whole day. The Prussians fought bravely, but they did not
affect the question of victory or defeat as it regarded the British;
they came in, however, to undertake the chase, for which the British
were too tired after standing on the field twelve hours, and fighting
desperately for eight; and they executed that chase most completely.

On the 19th of June Paris was excited by the announcements of
Buonaparte's bulletin that terrible defeats had been inflicted on the
Prussians at Ligny, and on the British at Quatre Bras. A hundred cannon
and thousands of prisoners were declared to be taken. The Imperialists
were in ecstasies; the Royalists, in spite of the notorious falsehood
of Buonaparte on such occasions, were dejected. On the 21st whispers
were busily circulating that not only had a most dreadful pitched
battle been fought, but that the fine French army which had so lately
left France was utterly annihilated or dispersed. It was soon added
that, instead of being at the head of victorious forces, as he had
represented, Buonaparte had again fled from his army, and was in the
Palace of the Elysée-Bourbon. And this last news was true. Napoleon had
never stopped in his own flight till he reached Philippevillè. There
he proposed to proceed to Grouchy, and put himself at the head of his
division; but he heard that that too was defeated, and he hurried on
to Paris, fearful of the steps that the two legislative Chambers might
take.

[Illustration: "ON THE ROAD FROM WATERLOO TO PARIS."

FROM THE PAINTING BY MARCUS STONE, A.R.A., IN THE CORPORATION OF LONDON
ART GALLERY, GUILDHALL.]

Buonaparte, seeing that nothing was to be expected from the
Chambers--for even the Peers adopted the resolutions of the
Representatives--who had already demanded his abdication--assumed the
air of the despotic emperor, and demanded of Carnot that he should
issue orders for a levy of three hundred thousand men, and should find
supplies. Carnot said both propositions were impossible. Napoleon then
summoned, on the night of the 21st, a general council, consisting of
the late Ministers, the Presidents, and Vice-Presidents of the two
Chambers, where Regnault and Maret recommended a show of resistance
whilst offering terms of peace; but Lafayette said that would only
make matters worse. The Allies were victorious, and there was but one
course for the Emperor; and Lanjuinais and Constant supported that
view. On the 22nd the Chamber of Representatives met early, and again
demanded an act of abdication. Napoleon complied, but, as on his former
abdication, only in favour of his son. The Chamber thanked him, but
took no notice of the clause in favour of Napoleon II. But Lucien
Buonaparte and Labédoyère, in violent language, pressed on the House
of Peers the recognition of Napoleon II. They persisted in passing it
quietly over; but they required Napoleon to issue a proclamation to
the army, declaring his abdication, without which the soldiers would
not believe it, and, to conciliate them, he complied. Still, fearing
lest he should put himself at the head of Grouchy's division, or some
other, though small, troublesome force, they insisted that he should
retire to Malmaison--so long the favourite abode of the repudiated
Josephine, With this, too, he complied, but immediately discovered
that he was surrounded by Guards, and was in fact a prisoner. General
Becker was appointed to have surveillance over Napoleon; and it was
supposed that, as Becker had personal cause of resentment against him,
this surveillance would be rigorous. But Becker was a man of honour;
he respected the misfortunes of a man who, whatever had been his
crimes, had made himself almost master of the world, and he treated
him with the utmost courtesy. Orders were issued by the Provisional
Government for two frigates to convey Napoleon to the United States,
and Becker was to allow of his retirement to Rochefort, in order to his
embarkation--to accompany him there, but not to permit his movement in
any other direction.

Meanwhile, the British and Prussian armies advanced, and on the 1st
of July Wellington was within a few miles of Paris, with his right on
the heights of Richebourg, and his left on the forest of Bondy; and
Blucher, at the same time, crossing the Seine on the 2nd, posted his
army, with its right at Plessis-Piquet, his left at St. Cloud, and
his reserve at Versailles. In this position, Commissioners were sent
by the Provisional Government to Wellington, desiring a suspension of
hostilities, informing him that Buonaparte had abdicated and retired
from Paris. The Duke replied, that so long as the army remained in
Paris there could be no suspension of hostilities, and that he had no
authority to treat on any question of government. The Commissioners
demanded whether the Allies would stop if Napoleon II. was proclaimed?
Wellington said "No." Whether they would stop provided they chose
another prince of a royal house?--probably meaning the Duke of Orleans.
As the Duke said he had no orders to accept any such proposals,
they were useless, and he handed to them the proclamation of Louis
XVIII., offering to grant constitutional liberties, and to pardon all
offenders, excepting a few who had committed the most recent and
aggravated treason. These were supposed to mean Ney, Labédoyère, and
some others. Wellington offered, however, to remain where he was on
condition that the regular troops should be sent beyond the Loire,
and the town be held by the National Guard till the king's arrival.
The Commissioners did not comply with this demand; and the necessity
of such compliance was sufficiently shown by this army disputing the
advance of the Prussians on the 2nd of July. They had resisted Blucher
at St. Cloud, Meudon, and in the village of Issy. Blucher succeeded,
but with considerable loss; and the next day the French made another
attack to recover Issy, but without effect.

Wellington was therefore on the point of entering Paris when, on the
same day, the 3rd, he received a flag of truce from the Provisional
Government, asking for a military convention between the armies at St.
Cloud. This was accepted, and one English and one Prussian officer
met three French officers, and the convention was concluded by the
agreement that the French army should retire behind the river Loire,
and that the Allies should be put in peaceable possession of Paris,
with all the defences on the Montmartre side of the city, as well as
every other. This convention was signed the next day by Wellington,
Blucher, and Davoust, and, according to its stipulation, the French
troops evacuated Paris, and marched towards the Loire. Ney and
Labédoyère made their exit from the city, knowing that they would be
arrested by Louis XVIII., if possible.

On the 7th of July the British and Prussian forces entered Paris. The
former encamped themselves in the Bois de Boulogne, and the Prussians
bivouacked along the Seine. There they came into full view of the
Bridge of Jena, so named to commemorate the victory of Buonaparte on
that field, so fatal to the Prussians, and of the column in the Place
Vendôme, erected with cannon taken from the Austrians, and bearing
insulting mementoes of the defeats of Prussia. The Prussians had
already lowered the statue of Napoleon from the top of the column, and
were beginning to demolish the bridge, when the Duke of Wellington
interfered. He represented that, although these objects were justly
offensive to Prussia, they ought to be left to the decision of the
King of France, in whose capital they were, and that the name of the
bridge might be changed. Blucher was unwilling to give way, and also
insisted on the levy of a military contribution on the city of Paris of
one hundred million francs, as some reparation for the spoliations of
the French in Berlin. Wellington suggested that these matters should
be left for the determination of the Allied sovereigns, and at length
prevailed.

The next day, the 8th of July, Louis a second time entered his capital,
escorted by the National Guard. Fouché announced to the two Chambers
that their functions were at an end; but they still declared themselves
sitting in permanence. But General Desolles, commander of the National
Guard, proceeded to close the Chambers. He found both of them deserted,
and locked the doors, and put his seal upon them, setting also a guard.
Soon afterwards the members of the Chamber of Representatives, who
had only adjourned, began to arrive, but were received with jeers by
the Guards, which were eagerly joined in by the populace, and they
retreated in confusion. Fouché, in reward for his politic private
correspondence with the Allies, was reinstated in his old office of
Minister of Police, and the government of Louis recommenced in great
quiet--affording the French much more real liberty than they had
enjoyed either under Buonaparte or the factions of the Revolution. And
thus ended the celebrated Hundred Days from the landing of Napoleon to
his second exclusion.

Buonaparte had arrived in Rochefort on the 3rd of July--only fifteen
days after the battle of Waterloo. The two frigates provided by the
Provisional Government to convey him to America--the _Saale_ and the
_Medusa_, accompanied by the corvette _Balladière_ and the large brig
_Epervier_--lay in the Aix roads; but Buonaparte was very sure that
the British Government would not permit them to sail. That Government,
anticipating such an event as the endeavour of Napoleon to make his
escape to America--whence he might watch his opportunity of once
more renewing the troubles of the world--had, immediately after the
battle of Waterloo, placed no less than thirty vessels of different
descriptions along the whole coast of France, from Ushant to Cape
Finisterre, thus making it impossible for any vessel to pass out of a
French port without undergoing the severest search. Napoleon thereupon
embarking in a British frigate, the _Bellerophon_, wrote a theatrical
letter, claiming the hospitality of the Prince Regent:--

    "Rochefort, July 13th, 1815.

"Royal Highness,--A victim to the factions which distract my country,
and to the enmity of the greatest Powers of Europe, I have terminated
my political career, and I come, like Themistocles, to throw myself
on the hospitality of the British people. I put myself under the
protection of their laws, which I claim from your Royal Highness, as
the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of my
enemies.

    "NAPOLEON."

This note contained much that was not true. It implied that Buonaparte
had come voluntarily and without necessity on board the _Bellerophon_,
whilst it was well known that perhaps another hour would have been
too late to secure him from seizure by the officers of Louis, king of
France. He affected to claim the protection of British laws, when he
was a notoriously proclaimed outlaw, so proclaimed by the whole of
the Allied Powers for the breach of his solemn engagement to renounce
all claims on the throne of France. There was, therefore, no answer
whatever to that note from the Prince Regent, who was under engagement
to his Allies, as they to him, to hold no communication with a man
who had so shamefully broken his word, and had, moreover, thereby
sacrificed so many valuable lives. The reply was from Lord Melville,
First Lord of the Admiralty, announcing to him that the British
Government, with the approbation of its Allies, had determined that,
to prevent any further opportunity for the disturbance of the peace of
Europe by General Buonaparte, he should be sent to St. Helena; that
they had been guided in this choice, not only by the desire of his
security, but also by the consideration that the island was extremely
healthy, and would afford him much greater liberty than he could enjoy
in a nearer locality; and that he might select three officers, with
his surgeon, and twelve domestics to attend him. From the number of
the officers Savary and Lallemand were expressly excepted. It also
added that the persons permitted to accompany him would be subject to
a certain degree of restraint, and would not be permitted to leave
the island without the sanction of the British Government. It was
finally added that General Buonaparte should make no delay in the
selection of his suite, as Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn, appointed
to the command of the Cape of Good Hope, would convey him in the
_Northumberland_ to St. Helena, and would be presently ready to sail.
Napoleon left Plymouth Sound on the 5th of August, and died at St.
Helena on May 5th, 1821, having spent his last years in quarrelling
with his gaoler, Sir Hudson Lowe, and in an elaborate attempt to
falsify history.

[Illustration: JAMESTOWN, ST. HELENA.]

The war in America, amid the absorbing momentousness of the gigantic
conflict in Europe, went on with little attention from Ministers at
home, and, consequently, with the results which seem destined to attend
Britain's campaigns in that quarter. In Canada, which the Americans
were particularly anxious to obtain, there was a most meagre and
inadequate British force; and, what was much worse, the Ministry still
continued there the incompetent governor, Sir George Prevost. The only
circumstances to which Britain owed the preservation of those provinces
were the loyalty of the people and the sterling bravery of the handful
of soldiers. Early in the year 1813 the American general, Dearborn,
suddenly approached York, on Lake Ontario, and attacked it, supported
by the flotilla under command of Commodore Chauncey. The British had
about seven hundred men there, partly regulars, partly militia, with
some few Indians. General Sheaffe drew off the main part of his force,
and left the rest to capitulate, abandoning a considerable quantity of
military and other stores, which were most desirable for the Americans.
The British Government ought to have taken care to have had a fleet on
the lakes, but this had been neglected, so that the Americans could
not be prevented from bearing down on any point of the lake frontiers.
Dearborn, having a strong flotilla, embarked the stores he won at
York and sailed for Niagara, where he landed at Fort George, with six
thousand infantry, two hundred and fifty cavalry, and a good train
of artillery. The British there, under Vincent, were not a fourth of
the enemy. Vincent, therefore, after some gallant fighting, retired
up the strait to Burlington Bay, about fifty miles from Fort George,
and, collecting the little garrisons from Fort Erie and other points,
found himself at the head of about one thousand six hundred men, and
resolved to make a stand. Dearborn, rendered confident by his great
superiority of numbers, marched after him, and, on the 4th of June, was
seen approaching the British position. He encamped about five miles
from Vincent, with three thousand five hundred men and nine pieces of
artillery. He intended to attack the next morning, but in this he was
forestalled; for Colonel Harvey reconnoitred his camp, and advised
General Vincent to assault it at midnight with fixed bayonets. This was
done, and though the attacking party numbered only seven hundred and
four men, the Americans fled in all directions, leaving two generals,
one hundred prisoners, and four pieces of artillery in their hands.
Colonel Harvey, who had headed the charge, returned to the British camp
loaded with booty. It was expected that, in the morning, when Dearborn
ascertained the inferior force of British, he would renew the fight;
but after destroying provisions and stores, to facilitate his flight,
he decamped, and only halted eleven miles off, where he met with strong
reinforcements.

About the same time Sir James Yeo, who had dared to attack the superior
squadron of Commodore Chauncey on Lake Ontario, and took two of his
schooners, now prevailed on the spiritless Sir George Prevost to
join him in an attack on Sacketts Harbour. Here the Americans had a
dockyard, where they built vessels for the lake fleet, and had now
a frigate nearly ready for launching. Sir George consented, but, on
reconnoitring the place, his heart failed him, and he returned across
the water towards Kingston. Sir James was highly chagrined, but
prevailed on this faint-hearted governor to make the attempt. Seven
hundred and fifty men were landed, who drove the Americans at the point
of the bayonet from the harbour, and set fire to the new frigate,
to a gun-brig, and to the naval barracks and arsenal abounding with
stores. Some of the Americans were in full flight into the woods, and
others shut themselves up in log barracks, whence they could soon have
been burnt out. In the midst of this success the miserable Sir George
Prevost commanded a retreat. Men and officers, astonished at the order,
and highly indignant at serving under so dastardly a commander, were,
however, obliged to draw off. The Americans, equally amazed, turned
back to endeavour to extinguish the flames. The arsenal, the brig, and
the stores were too far gone; but the new frigate, being built of green
wood, had refused to burn, and they recovered it but little injured.
Thus, however, was lost the chance of crushing the American superiority
on the lake, which must have been the case had Sacketts Harbour been
completely destroyed.

Sir James Yeo, greatly disappointed, put Sir George Prevost and his
troops over to Kingston again, and then proceeded to the head of the
lake, to reinforce General Vincent. Dearborn, as soon as he heard
of this junction, fled along the lake shore to Fort George, where he
shut himself up in a strongly-entrenched camp with about five thousand
men. There Vincent, however, determined to attack him, but once more
he was met by the curse of an incompetent appointment. Major-General
Rottenburg had been made Governor of Upper Canada, and assumed the
command over the brave Vincent, only to do nothing.

The western extremity of Lake Erie was the scene of a most unequal
contest at the commencement of 1813. Colonel Procter lay near
Frenchtown, about twenty miles from Detroit, with about five hundred
troops, partly regulars, partly militia and sailors. In addition,
he was supported by about the same number of Red Indians. The
Americans, under General Winchester--an old officer of the War of
Independence--amounted to one thousand two hundred men. With these
Winchester had scoured the Michigan country, and, at the end of
January, advanced to attack Procter. Sir George Prevost had commanded
Procter to act on the defensive; but scorning this cowardly advice, he
suddenly advanced by night, as the Americans had quartered themselves
in Frenchtown, surprised, and captured or destroyed the whole of them,
except about thirty who escaped into the woods. Winchester himself was
seized by Round Head, the Indian chief, who arrayed himself in his
uniform, and then delivered him up to Colonel Procter. From this point
Colonel Procter hastened to cross the lake in a flotilla, and attack
General Harrison at Fort Meigs. He knew that Harrison was expecting
strong reinforcements, and he was anxious to dislodge him before they
arrived. Procter had with him one thousand men, half regulars, half
militia, and one thousand two hundred Indians; but Harrison's force
was much stronger, and defended by a well-entrenched camp. Procter
erected batteries, and fired across the river Miami, endeavouring to
destroy the American block-houses with red-hot shot, but they were of
wood too green to take fire. On the 5th of May Harrison's expected
reinforcements came down the river in boats, one thousand three hundred
strong. Harrison now commenced acting on the offensive, to aid the
disembarkation of the troops; but he was defeated by Procter, who
routed the whole of the new forces, under General Clay, took five
hundred and fifty prisoners, and killed as many more. But his success
had its disadvantage. His Indian allies, loaded with booty, returned
to the Detroit frontier, and the Canadian militia to their farms.
Procter was compelled, therefore, to leave Harrison in his camp, and
return also to Detroit, for Sir George Prevost had provided him with
no new militia, or other force, to supply the place of those gone.
Still worse, Prevost could not even be prevailed on to send sailors to
man the few British vessels on Lake Erie, where the American flotilla
was now far superior to the British one. In vain did Captain Barclay,
who commanded the little squadron, urge Prevost to send him sailors,
or the few vessels must be captured or destroyed; in vain did Colonel
Procter urge, too, the necessity of this measure. Sir George, who
took care to keep out of harm's way himself, sent taunting messages
to Captain Barclay, telling him that the quality of his men made up
for the inferiority of numbers, and that he ought to fight. Barclay,
who was as brave a man as ever commanded a vessel, and had lost an
arm in the service, but who did not pretend to do impossibilities,
was now, however, stung to give battle. He had three hundred and
fifty-six men--few of whom were experienced seamen--and forty-six guns
of very inferior description. The American commodore, Percy, had five
hundred and eighty men, and fifty-four guns, with picked crews on
all his vessels. Barclay fought till he had taken Percy's ship, and
lost his remaining arm. In the end the British vessels were compelled
to strike, but not till they had lost, in killed and wounded, one
hundred and thirty-five men, and had killed and wounded one hundred
and twenty-three of the Americans. This success enormously elated the
Americans, and they now confidently calculated on defeating Procter,
and annexing Upper Canada. Harrison made haste to interpose nearly six
thousand men between Procter--who had now only five hundred, and as
many Indians--and the country on which he was endeavouring to retreat.
The forces of Procter were compelled to give ground, and Harrison
inflicted a severe revenge on the Indians, for their slaughter of the
Americans at Meigs. The chief, Tecumseh, being killed, they flayed him,
and cut up his skin into razor-straps, as presents to the chief men of
the Congress, and Mr. Clay is said to have boasted the possession of
one of these. The American armies now put themselves on the track for
Kingston and Montreal. Harrison marched along the shore of Lake Erie
with upwards of five thousand men, and General Wilkinson, with ten
thousand more, crossed Lake Ontario, towards Kingston, to join him.
General Hampton, at the same time also, was marching on Montreal. Sir
George Prevost was in the utmost alarm, and sent orders to General
Vincent to fall down to Kingston, leaving exposed all Upper Canada.
But as General Rottenburg was moving on Kingston, Vincent, who was now
joined by the remainder of Procter's force, determined to disobey these
orders; and several general officers confirmed him in this resolution,
and offered to share the responsibility. This was the salvation of
Upper Canada. The three American generals were attacked and routed. The
Canadian militia did good service, and the Americans were completely
driven out of both Upper and Lower Canada before winter. In their
retreat they grew brutal, and committed savage cruelties on the unarmed
population. They burnt down the town of Newark, near Fort George,
driving about four hundred women and children out of it into the snow.
They destroyed various villages in their route. This ferocity excited
the British and Canadians to retaliation. Colonel Murray crossed the
water, and pursued them in their own territories. He attacked and
carried Fort Niagara, killed or made prisoners of the whole garrison,
and captured the arms and stores. General Hull came up, with two
thousand men, to check the march of Murray, who with one thousand
regulars and militia, and between three and four hundred Indians, on
the 30th of December, repulsed him with great slaughter, pursued him,
and--to avenge the poor Canadians--set fire to Buffalo and the village
of Black Rock. The whole of that frontier was thus left defenceless.

Whilst these operations were going on the British blockading squadrons
rode in every American port and completely obstructed all commerce.
Their vessels ascended many of the rivers, especially the Chesapeake
and its tributaries. At the end of June Sir S. Beckwith landed, from
the squadron of Admiral Cockburn, at Hampton, in Virginia, where the
Americans had a fortified camp, and drove them out of it, and captured
all their batteries. In the following month Admiral Cockburn visited
the coasts of North Carolina and seized the islands, towns, and ports
of Portsmouth and Ocracoke. The complaints of the Americans of the
miseries of this state of blockade began very unpleasantly to reach the
ears of President Madison.

In the spring of 1814 the Americans made a fresh attempt to invade
Canada. Wilkinson, who had retreated so precipitately the preceding
autumn, was the first to cross the frontier; but he was repulsed and
pursued to Sacketts Harbour, where he took refuge. The British burned
some of his block-houses and barracks, and carried off great quantities
of stores. In April General Drummond, being put across Lake Ontario by
Sir James Yeo's squadron, stormed Fort Oswego, destroyed it, and burnt
the barracks. In May the British were not so successful in intercepting
some naval stores which the Americans were conveying to Sacketts
Harbour. They were repulsed with loss. At the beginning of July the
American general, Brown, crossed the Niagara with a strong force,
attacked and took Fort Erie, and advanced into Canada. General Riall
attempted to stop him at Chippeway, with an insufficient force, and
was compelled to retreat to near Fort Niagara. There he was reinforced
by General Drummond, with a detachment of the troops recently landed
from the army of the Peninsula. Riall and Drummond had now about three
thousand men, and Brown had five thousand. A severe battle was fought,
almost close to the cataract of Niagara, where the veteran Peninsular
men defeated Brown, killing and wounding one thousand five hundred of
his troops, but having six hundred killed and wounded themselves. They
pursued Brown to Chippeway, and thence to Erie. There Drummond rashly
attempted the reduction of the fort with his inferior numbers, and was
repulsed with loss.

Sir George Prevost now put himself at the head of the brave troops that
had so lately advanced from conquest to conquest under Wellington. He
had eleven thousand of these brave fellows, including a fine regiment
of cavalry, and a numerous train of artillery. With such an army, an
able general would not only have cleared the whole frontier of Canada,
but would have inflicted a severe chastisement on the Americans in
their own territory. The great object to be accomplished was the
destruction of Sacketts Harbour, with which must fall at once the whole
naval power of America on Lake Ontario. Every military man expected
that this would be done; but Sir George, after waiting in a camp at
Chamblay, advanced to Plattsburg Harbour, on Lake Champlain. But there
he would do nothing till the American flotilla, which lay in the
harbour, was also attacked. For this purpose Captain Downie was sent
by Sir James Yeo from the Ontario squadron suddenly to take command of
a squadron of a few ships and a miscellaneous naval force, as hastily
mustered and knowing little of each other--Downie knowing only one
of his officers. The ship which he commanded was just launched, was
unfinished, and everything was in confusion: yet in this condition, Sir
George Prevost insisted on their going into action against a superior
and well-prepared American squadron, promising to make a simultaneous
attack on the harbour and defences on land. Downie commenced the attack
on the water, but found no co-operation from Sir George on shore, who
stood still till he had seen Downie killed, and the unequal British
vessels, three in number, fairly battered to pieces, and compelled to
strike. And, after all, Sir George never did commence the attack on the
fort with that fine army, which would have carried it in ten minutes,
but marched back again, amid the inconceivable indignation of officers
and men, who could not comprehend why they should be condemned to obey
the orders of so disgraceful a poltroon. On their march, or rather
retreat, they were insulted by the wondering Americans, and abandoned
vast quantities of stores, ammunition, and provisions. The loss of
men during this scandalous expedition was not more than two hundred;
but eight hundred veterans--who had been accustomed to very different
scenes, under a very different commander--in their resentment at his
indignity went over to the enemy. In fact, had this unhappy general
continued longer in command, the whole British force would have become
thoroughly demoralised.

The officers who had served under Prevost had too long withheld their
remonstrances, expecting that the British Government would see plainly
enough the wretched incompetence of the man. But now Sir James Yeo made
a formal and plain-spoken charge against him, and especially for his
wicked abandonment of Captain Downie and his squadron to destruction.
He was recalled; but it was too late: a natural death had, in the
meantime, rescued him from that punishment which he so richly deserved.
It could not, however, rescue him from the disgrace which must hang on
his memory so long as the history of these transactions remains.

In September the Americans in Fort Erie, being strongly reinforced,
and elated by their repulse of General Drummond, marched out and made
an attack on the British lines. General de Watteville received them
with such effect that they rapidly fell back on Fort Erie and, no
longer feeling themselves safe even there, they evacuated the fort,
demolished its works, and retreated altogether from the shore of Upper
Canada. When the news of peace, which had been concluded in December of
this year, arrived in the spring, before the commencement of military
operations--though thirty thousand men at a time had invaded the
Canadian frontiers, and Hampton, Wilkinson, and Harrison had all been
marching in the direction of Kingston and Montreal simultaneously,
the British were in possession of their fortress of Niagara, and of
Michilimakinac, the key of the Michigan territory; and they had nothing
to give in exchange but the defenceless shore of the Detroit. They
had totally failed in their grand design on Canada, and had lost--in
killed, wounded, and prisoners--nearly fifty thousand men, besides vast
quantities of stores and ammunition. In short, they had incurred an
expenditure quite heavy enough to deter them from lightly attacking the
Canadas again.

[Illustration: NAPOLEON ON BOARD THE "BELLEROPHON." (_From the Picture
by W. Q. Orchardson, R. A._)]

In July, 1814, whilst the struggles were going on upon the Canadian
frontiers, the British projected an expedition against the very capital
of the United States. This was carried into execution about the middle
of August. Sir Alexander Cochrane landed General Ross, and a strong
body of troops, on the banks of the Patuxent, and accompanied them in a
flotilla of launches, armed boats, and small craft up the river itself.
On entering the reach at Pig Point they saw the American flotilla,
commanded by Commodore Baring, lying seventeen in number. They prepared
to attack it, when they saw flames begin to issue from the different
vessels, and comprehended that the commodore had deserted them; and
it was firmly believed that he had so timed the setting fire to his
vessels that they might blow up when the British were close upon them,
if they had not already boarded them. Fortunately, the flames had made
too much progress, and the British escaped this danger. The vessels
blew up one after another, except one, which the British secured.
Both soldiers and sailors were highly incensed at this treachery, and
prepared to avenge it on Washington itself. On the 24th of August they
were encountered at Bladensburg, within five miles of Washington, by
eight or nine thousand American troops, posted on the right bank of
the Potomac, on a commanding ridge. Madison was on one of the hills,
to watch the battle, on the event of which depended the fate of the
capital.

To reach the enemy the British had to cross the river, and that by a
single bridge. This was commanded by the American artillery, and it
might have been expected that it would not be easily carried; but, on
the contrary, a light brigade swept over it, in face of the cannon,
followed by the rest of the army; and the troops deploying right
and left the moment they were over, this single division--about one
thousand six hundred strong--routed the whole American force before the
remainder of the British could come into action. Few of the Americans
waited to be killed or wounded. Madison had the mortification to see
his army all flying in precipitation, and the city open to the British.

Before entering Washington, General Ross sent in a flag of truce--or,
rather, he carried one himself, for he accompanied it--to see that
all was done that could be done to arrange terms, without further
mischief or bloodshed. He demanded that all military stores should be
delivered up, and that the other public property should be ransomed at
a certain sum. But scarcely had they entered the place, with the flag
of truce displayed, when--with total disregard of all such customs
established by civilised nations in war--the party was fired upon,
and the horse of General Ross killed under him. There was nothing for
it but to order the troops forward. The city was taken possession of,
under strict orders to respect private property, and to destroy only
that of the State. Under these orders, the Capitol, the President's
house, the Senate-house, the House of Representatives, the Treasury,
the War-office, the arsenal, the dockyard, and the ropewalk were given
to the flames; the bridge over the Potomac, and some other public
works, were blown up; a frigate on the stocks and some smaller craft
were burnt. All was done that could be done by General Ross, and the
officers under him, to protect private property; but the soldiers were
so incensed at the treachery by which the Americans had sought to blow
up the seamen, by the firing on the flag of truce, and the unprincipled
manner in which the Americans had carried on the war in Canada, as well
as by the insults and gasconading of the Americans on all occasions,
that they could not be restrained from committing some excesses. Yet it
may be said that never was the capital of a nation so easily taken, and
never did the capital of a nation which had given so much irritating
provocation escape with so little scathe. The following evening it was
evacuated in perfect order, and without any enemy appearing to molest
the retreat. On the 30th the troops were safely re-embarked.

But this was not the only chastisement which the Americans had
received. On the 27th Captain Gordon, of the _Seahorse_, accompanied
by other vessels, attacked Alexandria, situated lower on the Potomac.
They found no resistance from Fort Washington, built to protect the
river at that point; and the authorities of Alexandria delivered up
all public property, on condition that the private property should be
spared. The British carried off the naval and ordnance stores, as well
as twenty-one vessels, of different freights. On the 12th of September
General Ross made an assault on the city of Baltimore. This was a
strongly fortified place, and the Americans can always fight well under
cover; and, on that account, the attempt should have been made with due
military approaches. But General Ross had so readily dispersed the army
that defended Washington, and another which had been drawn up in front
of Baltimore, that he made a rash endeavour to carry the place at once,
but was killed in the attempt, as well as a considerable number of his
men. He had inflicted a loss of six or eight hundred men, in killed and
wounded, on the Americans; but this was little satisfaction for his own
loss.

Earlier than this, in July, Colonel Pilkington took all the islands
in the Bay of Passamaquoddy; and in another expedition, in September,
the British took the fort of Castine, on the Penobscot river, defeated
double their number of Americans, pursued up the river the _John
Adams_, a fine frigate, and compelled the commander to burn it. They
took the town of Bangor, and reduced the whole district of Maine,
from Passamaquoddy Bay to the Penobscot. In fact, these ravages and
inroads, which rendered the whole seaboard of America unsafe, made the
Americans, and especially President Madison, exclaim loudly against the
barbarous and wanton destruction of their capital and ports.

But, not contented with this superiority, the British were tempted to
invest and endeavour to storm New Orleans. This was returning to the
old blunders, and giving the American sharp-shooters the opportunity
of picking off our men at pleasure in the open field from behind their
walls and batteries. This ill-advised enterprise was conducted by Sir
Edward Pakenham. Nothing was so easy as for our ships to blockade the
mouth of the Mississippi, and thus destroy the trade, not only of New
Orleans, but of all the towns on that river; but this common-sense
plan was abandoned for the formidable and ruinous one of endeavouring
to take the place by storm. The city of New Orleans lies at the
distance of one hundred and ten miles from the sea, on a low, boggy
promontory, defended on the river side by a chain of powerful forts,
and on the other by morasses. Having landed as near New Orleans as
they could, the British troops, on the 23rd of December, were met
by an American army, and received a momentary repulse; but this was
quickly reversed, and on Christmas day Sir Edward Pakenham encamped
at the distance of six miles from New Orleans. But he found at least
twenty thousand Americans posted between him and the city, behind a
deep canal and extensive earthworks. There was no way of approaching
them except across bogs, or through sugar plantations swarming with
riflemen, who could pick off our men at pleasure. This was exactly
one of those situations which the whole course of our former wars in
that country had warned us to avoid, as it enabled the Americans, by
their numerous and excellent riflemen, to destroy our soldiers, without
their being in scarcely any danger themselves. In fair and open fight
they knew too well that they had no chance with British troops, and
the folly of giving them such opportunities of decimating those troops
from behind walls and embankments is too palpable to require military
knowledge or experience to point it out. Yet Sir Edward Pakenham, who
had fought in the Peninsula, was imprudent enough to run himself into
this old and often-exposed snare. On the 26th of December he commenced
a fight on these unequal terms, the Americans firing red-hot balls from
their batteries on the unscreened advancing columns, whilst from the
thickets around the Kentucky riflemen picked off the soldiers on the
flanks. Pakenham thus, however, advanced two or three miles. He then
collected vast quantities of hogsheads of sugar and treacle, and made
defences with them, from which he poured a sharp fire on the enemy. By
this means he approached to within three or four hundred yards of the
American lines, and there, during the very last night of the year, the
soldiers worked intensely to cast up still more extensive breastworks
of sugar and treacle casks, and earth.

The new year of 1815 was commenced by a heavy fire along the whole of
this defence from thirty-six pieces of cannon, the immediate effect of
which was to drive the Americans, in a terrible panic, from their guns,
and walls composed of cotton bales and earth. Why an immediate advance
was not made at this moment does not appear. It would probably have
placed the whole of the American defences in the hands of the British
troops, and driven the Americans into the city. But even then little
advantage would have been gained, for the news of the contest was
bringing down riflemen in legions from the country all round, and the
British, struggling in bogs, and exposed at every fresh advance, must
be mowed down without a chance of retaliating.

In a little time the Americans, recovering their spirits, returned
to their guns, and plied them so well that they soon knocked the
breastworks of sugar and treacle casks to pieces. As nothing would
tempt the Americans to show themselves from behind their cotton bales
and embankments, after maintaining this murderous position for two
whole nights and days, Pakenham drew back his men, sacrificing some
of his guns, and formed a scheme of sending a detachment across the
river to turn the batteries and then play them upon the enemy. But
for this purpose it was necessary to cut a canal across the tongue of
land on which the army stood, in order to bring up the boats required
to carry the troops over the river. Major-General Lambert had arrived
with reinforcements, so that against the American twenty thousand
Pakenham had now about eight thousand men. All worked at the canal,
and it was finished on the 6th of January. Colonel Thornton was to
carry across the river one thousand four hundred men, and surprise
the great flanking battery of eighteen or twenty guns, whilst Sir
Edward Pakenham advanced against the lines in front. A rocket was to
be thrown up by Pakenham when he commenced his assault, and Thornton
was at that instant to make a rush on the battery and turn it on the
enemy. But they had not sufficiently calculated on the treacherous
soil through which they cut their canal. Thornton found it already so
sludged up that he could only get boats through it sufficient to carry
over three hundred and fifty men, and this with so much delay that,
when Pakenham's rocket went up, he was still three miles from the
battery--and that in broad daylight--which he ought already to have
taken. Unaware of this, Pakenham advanced against the chain of forts
and ramparts. He had ordered ladders and fascines to be in readiness
for crossing the canal, but by some gross neglect it was found that
they were not there, and thus the whole of the British troops were
exposed to the deadly fire of the American batteries and musketry. No
valour was of any use in such circumstances; but Sir Edward cheered on
the few but brave-hearted troops till the ladders and fascines could
arrive; but ere this happened, Pakenham was killed. Generals Gibbs
and Keane took the place of the fallen commander, and still cheered
on their men; but it was only to unavailing slaughter: the American
marksmen, under cover, and with their rifles on rest, picked off the
British soldiers at their pleasure. Gibbs was soon killed and Keane
disabled by a wound. In such circumstances the troops gave way and
retired, a strong reserve protecting the rear; but out of gun-shot
there was no further danger, for the Americans were much too cunning
to show their heads beyond the protection of their defences.

Meanwhile, Colonel Thornton, though delayed, and with only a handful of
men, still pushed on towards the battery, surprised the Americans, who
expected no attack in that quarter, and carried it against overwhelming
numbers. When about to turn the captured guns against the enemy, a
messenger came in haste to say that Pakenham had fallen, and the
attacking force had retired. But Thornton would not retrace his steps
without carrying off a good quantity of the artillery, amongst which
was a howitzer, inscribed, "Taken at the surrender of Yorktown, 1781."
On his return to the main body, which he did without any pursuit--for
even so small a band the Americans did not venture to pursue--it was
found that he had had but three men killed and forty wounded, he
himself being amongst the latter.

On the 18th of January, 1815, commenced the final retreat of the
British to their ships. They were allowed to march away without
molestation, taking all their guns and stores with them, except ten
old ship guns of no value, which they rendered useless before they
abandoned them. Andrew Jackson, afterwards President of the United
States, commanded in this defence of New Orleans, and loud were the
boastings of his prowess all over the States, when, in fact, he had
not risked a man. His merit was to have shown what excellent shots his
countrymen were, and how careful they were to keep out of the reach
of shot themselves. So far as the British were concerned, they had
shown not only their unparalleled bravery, but also, as on many such
occasions, their great want of prudence. This sacrifice of life would
have been spared by a single and much more effectual blockade, and the
most lamentable part of the business was, that all the time peace had
been made, though the news of it had not reached them.

But General Lambert did not retire far without striking another blow.
His predecessor had failed to take New Orleans, but he had brought away
the troops in excellent order, and he passed over in Sir Alexander
Cochrane's squadron and attacked and took the important forts of
Mobile, at the confluence of the Mobile, Tombigbee, and Alabama
rivers--the territories around which have since grown into States. This
was a basis for important operations on those shores; but they were
rendered unnecessary by the peace.

[Illustration:

    _By permission of the Corporation of Liverpool._

ON THE EVENING OF THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.

BY ERNEST CROFTS, R.A. FROM THE PAINTING IN THE WALKER ART GALLERY.]

[Illustration: NEW ORLEANS.]

When peace was made in Europe, the United States became anxious for
peace too. Madison had begun the war in the ungenerous hope of
wresting Canada from Great Britain, because he thought her too
deeply engaged in the gigantic war against Napoleon to be able to
defend that colony. He believed that it would fall an easy prey; that
the Canadians must so greatly admire the model republic that they
would abandon monarchy at the first call, and that he should thus
have the glory of absorbing that great world of the north into the
American Republic. In all this, he and those who thought with him
found themselves egregiously deceived. The Canadians showed they were
staunchly attached to Great Britain, and the attempts at invasion
were beaten back by the native militia and by our handful of troops
with the greatest ease. Meanwhile, the blockade of the east, and the
seizure of the merchant shipping, drove the New England and other
eastern States to desperation. Throughout this war Great Britain made
a uniform declaration of a preference for peace, but her offers were
regularly rejected so long as Napoleon was triumphant. The United
States, professing the utmost love of freedom, were the blind and
enthusiastic worshippers of the man who was trampling the liberties of
all Europe under his feet. It was not till the last moment--not till he
had been defeated in Russia, driven by Britain out of Spain, routed and
pursued out of Germany, and compelled to renounce the Imperial Crown of
France--that the American Government began to understand the formidable
character of the Power which it had so long and so insolently provoked,
and to fear the whole weight of its resentment directed against its
shores. It is certain that, had Britain been animated by a spirit
of vengeance, it had now the opportunity, by sending strong fleets
and a powerful army to the coast of America, to ravage her seaboard
towns, and so utterly annihilate her trade as to reduce her to the
utmost misery, and to precipitate a most disastrous system of internal
disintegration. The New England States, in 1814, not only threatened
to secede, but stoutly declared that they would not furnish another
shilling towards paying the expenses of the war. They even intimated
an idea of making a separate peace with Britain. In Massachusetts
especially these menaces were vehement. Governor Strong spoke out
plainly in the Legislative Chamber of that State. Madison endeavoured
to mollify this spirit by abandoning his Embargo and Emancipation Acts,
but this was now too late, for the strict blockade of the British, in
1814, rendered these Acts perfectly dead.

To procure peace, Madison now sought the good offices of the Emperor
Alexander of Russia with Great Britain, and these offices were readily
accepted, for the latter had never willingly gone into or continued
this unnatural war. A Congress was appointed at Gothenburg, and thence
transferred to Ghent. There, on the 24th of December, 1814, a loose and
indefinite peace was concluded, in which every principle on which the
war had been begun was left to be settled by commissioners; and some of
which--such was the difficulty of negotiating with the Americans--were
not settled for many years. On these points alone were the two Powers
agreed--that all hostilities between the contracting parties and the
Indians should be put an end to, and that both parties should continue
their efforts for the suppression of the slave-trade. Such was the joy
of the north-eastern States of America at the peace that the citizens
of New York carried the British envoy, sent to ratify the treaty, in
triumph through the streets.

When the Bourbons had entered Paris in 1814 they had shown the utmost
liberality towards those who had driven them from France and had
murdered those of their family on the throne and nearest to it. They
did not imitate the summary vengeance of Napoleon, whose Government,
in 1812, had put to death not only General Mallet, who had endeavoured
to restore the Bourbons, but also thirteen of his accomplices, on the
plain of Grenelle. When Louis XVIII. returned, there were numbers of
the bloody Revolutionists who had voted for, and some who had acted
in, the frightful atrocities of the Revolution--many who had urged
on the sufferings, the indignities, and the death of Louis XVI.,
Marie Antoinette, the Princess Elizabeth, the Princess Lamballe, and
the worst form of death of the unhappy Dauphin. Yet no vengeance was
taken, and numbers of these people were allowed to reside unharmed in
Paris. Having been now again driven forth, and seen the readiness with
which those who had sworn to maintain their Government had taken their
oaths and betrayed them, it might have been expected that there would
have been some severe punishments. But the natural mildness of Louis
XVIII., and the wise counsels of Wellington and Talleyrand, produced a
very different scene. Never, after such provocations, and especially to
the sensitive natures of Frenchmen, was so much lenity shown. In the
proclamation of Louis XVIII. of the 24th of July, nineteen persons only
were ordered for trial, and thirty-eight were ordered to quit Paris,
and to reside in particular parts of France, under the observation
of the police, till their fate should be decided by the Chambers. Of
the nineteen threatened with capital punishment, with trial before
a military tribunal, only Ney and Labédoyère suffered; another,
Lavalette, was condemned, but escaped by changing dresses with his
wife in prison. It was also stated that such individuals as should be
condemned to exile should be allowed to sell their property in France,
and carry the proceeds with them. Yet more clamour was raised by the
Buonapartists about the deaths of Ney and Labédoyère than had been made
in any executions by the Imperial or the Revolutionary parties over
whole hecatombs of innocent persons. As for Ney and Labédoyère, their
treason had been so barefaced and outrageous that no reasonable person
could expect anything but summary punishment for them. Ney had declared
to Louis XVIII. that he would bring Buonaparte to him in a cage, and
then carried over his whole army at once to the Emperor. Labédoyère
had been equally perjured after the most generous forgiveness of his
former treasons, and he had been particularly active in stimulating
the Parisians to make a useless resistance to the Allies approaching
Paris, by stating that the Bourbons were preparing a most sanguinary
proscription. Both officers knew that they had no hope of life, no
plea of protection, and they fled in disguise. Yet vehement reproaches
were cast on the Duke of Wellington for having, as the Buonapartists
asserted, broken the 12th article of the Convention of Paris, by which
the city was surrendered to the Allied armies. Madame Ney, after
the seizure and condemnation of her husband, went to the Duke, and
demanded his interference on the Marshal's behalf, as a right on the
ground of this article, which she interpreted as guaranteeing all the
inhabitants, of whatever political creed or conduct, from prosecution
by the restored Government. It was in vain that Wellington explained to
her that this article, and indeed the whole Convention, related solely
to the military surrender, and not to the political measures of the
Government of Louis, with which the Duke had publicly and repeatedly
declared that he had no concern, and in which he would not interfere.
When the Commissioners from the Provisional Government had waited on
him, so early as the 2nd of July, at Estrées, and claimed exemption for
political offenders, he showed them the proclamation of Louis, dated
Cambray, the 28th of June, making exceptions to the general amnesty,
and distinctly told them that he had no orders to interfere with the
measures of the Bourbon Government. To this the Commissioners had
nothing to object, and they thus clearly understood that the British
commander would not take any part in political, but merely in military
measures. Nevertheless, when Ney was executed, the clamour was renewed
that Wellington had betrayed him. We now anticipate, somewhat, to
dispose of this calumny, for there never was a party so recklessly
addicted to charging their enemies with breach of faith as that of
Buonaparte and his followers. The foul charge was so industriously
disseminated over Europe, that Wellington, at Paris, on the 19th of
November, 1815, issued a memorial on the subject, which he first caused
to be sent to all the Allied Powers and then to be published. In this
most decisive document he stated that the Convention of Paris related
exclusively to the military occupation of the place, and was never
intended, and could not be intended, to prevent either the existing
French Government, the Provisional, or any French Government that might
succeed it, from acting towards political offenders as it might deem
proper. He had refused before to enter into a question of settling the
Government. To make this clear, he quoted the 11th article, providing
for the non-interference of the Allied army with property; and the
12th:--"Seront pareillement respectées les personnes et les propriétés
particulières; les habitants, et en général tous les individus qui
se trouvent dans la capitale, continueront à jouir de leur droits
et libertés sans pouvoir être inquiétés, ou recherchés en rein,
relativement aux fonctions qu'ils occupent ou avaient occupées, à leur
conduite, et à leur opinions politiques." Labédoyère was shot on the
19th of August, 1815, and Ney on the 7th of December.

It remains only to notice the terminating scene of the once gay
Murat, Buonaparte's gallant leader of cavalry in so many campaigns,
and finally King of Naples. In consequence of plans that he had laid
with Buonaparte in Elba, Murat rose on the 22nd of March of this
year, and pushed forward with the intention of driving the Austrians
out of Upper Italy. But Austria was well aware of what had been in
progress, and, though Murat proclaimed the independence of Italy,
the Italians fled from him rather than joined him. On the Po he was
met by the Austrians, under General Fremont, fifty thousand strong,
and defeated. He retreated rapidly towards Naples again, suffering
other discomfitures, and at the same time receiving a notice from
Lord William Bentinck that, as he had broken his convention with the
European Powers, Britain was at war with him. To keep the Neapolitans
in his interest, he drew up a liberal Constitution, on the 12th of
May, amid the mountains of the Abruzzi, and sent it to Naples, where
his queen, Caroline Buonaparte, proclaimed it. It was of no avail; the
people, instead of assisting him, were ready to rise against him, and
his soldiers every day rapidly deserted and went to their homes.

Murat hastened in disguise to Naples to consult with his wife, who had
as much courage and more judgment than he had; but this availed him
nothing. On the 20th of May his generals signed a convention with the
Austrians at Casa Lanza, a farmhouse near Capua, to surrender Capua on
the 21st, and Naples on the 23rd, on condition that all the Neapolitan
officers who took the oath of allegiance to King Ferdinand should
retain their respective ranks, honours, and estates. At this news Murat
fled out of Naples, and, with a very small attendance, crossed over in
a fisherman's boat to the island of Ischia, and his wife went on board
the vessel of Commodore Campbell, which, however, she was only able to
effect by a guard of three hundred English sailors and marines, for the
lazzaroni were all in insurrection. Commodore Campbell, having received
Caroline Buonaparte, her property and attendants on board his squadron,
then sailed to Gaeta, where were the four children of Murat, took
them on board, and conveyed them altogether to Trieste, the Emperor
of Austria having given Madame Murat free permission to take up her
residence in Austria, under the name of the Countess of Lipano.

Well had it been for Murat could he have made up his mind to seek the
same asylum; for it appears clear that it would have been granted
him, for he was no longer dangerous. But he clung convulsively to the
fortunes of Napoleon, and making his way in a small coasting vessel,
he followed him to France, and reached the port of Fréjus on the 28th
or 29th of May, where Buonaparte had landed on his return from Elba.
From this place Murat wrote to Buonaparte through Fouché, offering
his services to him; but Buonaparte, who would have been duly sensible
of the services of Murat had he succeeded in holding Italy against
the Austrians, and thus acting as an important divider of the efforts
of the Austrians, was equally sensible of the little value of Murat
as a mere individual, defeated, and having lost Italy. He refused to
give him a word of reply. Murat accordingly lay in concealment with
his followers, vainly hoping for a word of encouragement, till the
news of the utter defeat of Buonaparte at Waterloo came upon him like
the shock of an earthquake. The south of France was no longer a place
for any who had been prominent amongst the retainers of Buonaparte;
some of Murat's followers made haste to escape from the search and
the vengeance of the Royalists. As for Murat himself, he wrote again
to Fouché, imploring his good offices with the Allies to obtain him a
passport for England. Receiving no response to this, Murat condescended
to write a most imploring letter to Louis XVIII., but he had no time
to wait for the slow progress of diplomatic life--he fled and, after
many adventures, reached Corsica. There he was allowed to remain, and a
few weeks would have brought him the assurance of entire freedom from
enmity on the part of the Allies. But, unfortunately, by this time the
shock of the utter overthrow and captivity of Buonaparte following on
his own misfortunes, had overturned his intellect. He conceived the
insane idea of recovering Naples by the same means that Buonaparte had
for a while recovered Paris. A large number of Neapolitan and Corsican
refugees encouraged him in the mad project.

[Illustration: CAPTURE OF MURAT. (_See p._ 117.)]

On the 8th of October Murat landed near Pizzo, on the Calabrian
coast--a coast more than any other in Italy fraught with fierce
recollections of the French. His army now consisted of only
twenty-eight men; yet, in his utter madness, he advanced at the head
of this miserable knot of men, crying, "I am your king, Joachim!"
and waving the Neapolitan flag. But the people of Pizzo, headed by
an old Bourbon partisan, pursued him, not to join, but to seize him.
When they began firing on him, he fled back to his vessels; but the
commander, a man who had received the greatest benefits from him, deaf
to his cries, pushed out to sea, and left him. His pursuers were
instantly upon him, fired at him, and wounded him; then rushing on
him, they knocked him down and treated him most cruelly. Women, more
like furies than anything else, struck their nails into his face and
tore off his hair, and he was only saved from being torn to pieces by
the old Bourbon and his soldiers, who beat off these female savages
and conveyed him to the prison at Pizzo. The news of his capture was
a great delight to Ferdinand. He entertained none of the magnanimity
of the Allies, but sent at once officers to try by court-martial and,
of course, to condemn him. Some of these officers had been in Murat's
service, and had received from him numerous favours, but not the less
readily did they sentence him to death; and on the 13th of October,
1815, he was shot in the courtyard of the prison at Pizzo--with
characteristic bravery refusing to have his eyes bound, and with
characteristic vanity bidding the soldiers "save his face, and aim at
his heart!"

[Illustration: LORD CASTLEREAGH.]

The Congress of Vienna, interrupted by the last razzia of Buonaparte,
now resumed its sittings, and the conditions between France and the
Allies were finally settled, and treaties embodying them were signed at
Paris by Louis XVIII. on the 20th of November. France was rigorously
confined to the frontier of 1790, losing the additions conferred on it
by the first Treaty of Paris; and to prevent any danger of a recurrence
of the calamities which had called the Allies thus a second time to
Paris, they were to retain in their hands seventeen of the principal
frontier fortresses, and one hundred and fifty thousand of their
soldiers were to be quartered, and maintained by France, in different
parts of the kingdom. The term of their stay was not to exceed five
years, and that term might be curtailed should the aspect of Europe
warrant it. The Allied sovereigns also insisted on the payment of
the enormous expenses which had been occasioned by this campaign of
the Hundred Days--the amount of which was estimated at seven hundred
millions of francs. This sum, however, was not to be exacted at once,
but to be paid by easy instalments.

There was one restitution, however, which the Allies had too delicately
passed over on their former visit to Paris--that of the works of art
which Napoleon and his generals had carried off from every town in
Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, during their wars. As has been
already stated, museums had been freely pillaged by Buonaparte or by
his orders. Accordingly, there was now a great stripping of the Louvre,
and other places, of the precious pictures and statues which the hands
of the greatest marauder that the world had ever seen had accumulated
there. The "Horses of the Sun," from St. Mark's, Venice, the "Venus di
Medici," the "Apollo Belvedere," the "Horses of the Car of Victory,"
which Buonaparte had carried away from Berlin, and many a glorious
painting by the old masters, precious books, manuscripts, and other
objects of antiquity, now travelled back to their respective original
localities, to the great joy of their owners, and the infinite disgust
of the French, who deemed themselves robbed by this defeat of robbery.

Louis XVIII., having raised an army of thirty thousand men, thought
that he could protect himself, and was anxious that France might be
spared the expense of supporting the one hundred and fifty thousand
men. Accordingly, one-fifth of the army was withdrawn in 1817. In the
following year a Congress was held, in the month of September, at
Aix-la-Chapelle, at which the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the
King of Prussia attended; on the part of France, the Duke of Richelieu;
and of Great Britain, the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh, when
it was determined that a complete evacuation of France might and should
take place by the 20th of November, when the three years terminated. At
this Congress it was determined also that, besides the seven hundred
million francs for the charges incurred by the Allied armies, another
seven hundred millions should be paid in indemnification of damages
to private individuals in the different countries overrun by France.
These and other items raised the total to be paid by France for
Napoleon's outbreak of the Hundred Days to about sixty million pounds
sterling.

Great Britain, which had amassed so vast a debt in aiding the
Continental sovereigns against Napoleon, played the magnanimous to
the last. She gave up her share of the public indemnities, amounting
to five million pounds, to the King of Holland and the Netherlands,
to enable him to restore that line of fortresses along the Belgian
frontiers which our Dutch king, William III., had planned, and which
Joseph II. of Austria had suffered to fall to decay, thus rendering
invasion from France especially easy. Nor was this all: she advanced
five million pounds to enable the different sovereigns to march their
troops home again, as she had advanced the money to march them up,
the money demanded of France not being ready. Truly might Napoleon,
in St. Helena, say that England, with her small army, had no business
interfering in Continental wars; that "with our fleet, our commerce,
and our colonies, we are the strongest power in the world, so long as
we remain in our natural position; but that our gains in Continental
wars are for others, our losses are for ourselves, and are permanent."

Here, then, our history of the political transactions of the reign of
George III. terminates. That reign really terminated in 1811, with the
appointment of the Regency, which continued the ruling power during
the remainder of his life. From that date it is really the history of
the Regency that we have been prosecuting. But this was necessary to
maintain the unity of the narrative of that most unexampled struggle
which was involving the very existence of every nation in Europe. Of
all this the poor old, blind, and deranged king knew nothing--had no
concern with it. The reins of power had fallen from his hands for ever:
his "kingdom was taken from him, and given to another." He had lived
to witness the rending away of the great western branch of his empire,
and the sun of his intellect went down in the midst of that tempest
which threatened to lay in ruins every dynasty around him. We have
watched and detailed that mighty shaking of the nations to its end. The
events of the few remaining years during which George III. lived but
did not rule, were of a totally different character and belong to a
totally different story. They are occupied by the national distresses
consequent on the war, and the efforts for reform, stimulated by
these distresses, the first chapter of which did not close till the
achievement of the Reform Bill in 1832.

The Government and Parliament which, with so lavish a hand, had enabled
the Continental monarchs to fight their battles, which had spent
above two thousand millions of money in these wars, of which eight
hundred millions remained as a perpetual debt, with the perpetual
necessity of twenty-eight millions of taxation annually to discharge
the interest--that burden on posterity which Napoleon had, with such
satisfaction, at St. Helena, pronounced permanent--this same Government
and Parliament, seeing the war concluded, were in great haste to
stave off the effects of this burden from the landed aristocracy,
the party which had incurred it, and to lay it upon the people. They
saw that the ports of the world, once more open to us, would, in
exchange for our manufactures, send us abundance of corn; and, that
the rents might remain during peace at the enormous rate to which war
prices had raised them, they must keep out this foreign corn. True,
this exclusion of foreign corn must raise the cost of living to the
vast labouring population to a ruinous degree, and threatened fearful
convulsions from starving people in the manufacturing districts; but
these considerations had no weight with the land-holding Government
and its Parliamentary majority. In 1814 they were in haste to pass a
Corn Law excluding all corn except at famine prices; but the lateness
of the season, and an inundation of petitions against it, put it off
for that Session. But in 1815 it was introduced again and carried by
a large majority. By this all corn from abroad was excluded, except
when the price was eighty shillings per quarter. By this law it was
decreed that the people who fought the battles of the world, and who
would bear the bulk of the weight of taxation created by these wars,
were never, so long as this law continued, to eat corn at less than
four pounds per quarter. This was, in fact, not only a prohibition of
cheap bread, but a prohibition of the sale of the labours of the people
to foreign nations to the same extent. It was an enactment to destroy
the manufacturing interest for the imagined benefit of land-owners;
and it was done on this plea, as stated by Mr. Western, one of the
leading advocates of the Bill--"That, if there is a small deficiency
of supply, the price will rise in a ratio far beyond any proportion
of such deficiency: the effect, indeed, is almost incalculable. So,
likewise, in a surplus of supply beyond demand, the price will fall
in a ratio exceeding almost tenfold the amount of such surplus." The
avowed object, therefore, was to prevent the manufacturing population
from reaping the benefit of that Continental peace which they had
purchased at such a cost, and consequently to repress the growth of
their trade to the same degree. Mr. Tooke, in his "History of Prices,"
confirms this view of the matter, asserting that "the price of corn in
this country has risen from one hundred to two hundred per cent., and
upwards, when the utmost computed deficiency of the crops has not been
more than between one-sixth and one-third below an average, and when
that deficiency has been relieved by foreign supplies." Mr. Western
candidly showed that, to the farmer, years of deficiency were the most
profitable, from this principle of enormous rise from a small cause;
that if the produce of an acre of wheat in a good year is thirty-three
bushels at six shillings, the amount realised would be only nine pounds
eighteen shillings; but, if the produce were reduced by an unfavourable
season one-sixth, and the price raised from six shillings to twelve
shillings, the produce of twenty-seven and a half bushels would realise
sixteen pounds ten shillings, the difference being profit!

The effect was immediately shown by a rapid rise of prices, wheat
becoming one hundred and three shillings a quarter. But this did not
satisfy the land-owners, and Mr. Western, in 1816, introduced no less
than fourteen resolutions to make more stringent the exclusion of
foreign corn. It was openly declared "that excessive taxation renders
it necessary to give protection to all articles, the produce of our
own soil, against similar articles, the growth of foreign countries."
Mr. Barham declared that "the country must be forced to feed its own
population. No partial advantage to be derived from commerce could
compensate for any deficiency in this respect. The true principle of
national prosperity was an absolute prohibition of the importations of
foreign agricultural produce, except in extreme cases;" and on this
ground it was proposed to exclude foreign rape-seed, linseed, tallow,
butter, cheese, etc.

Some of the most eminent land-owners were clear-sighted and
disinterested enough to oppose these views with all their power.
The Dukes of Buckinghamshire and Devonshire, the Lords Carlisle,
Spencer, Grey, Grenville, Wellesley, and many members of the Commons,
voted and protested energetically against them; and the additional
restrictions were not carried. But enough had been done to originate
the most frightful sufferings and convulsions. We shall see these
agitations every remaining year of this reign. The Prince Regent, in
his opening speech, in 1816, declared "manufactures and commerce to
be in a flourishing condition." But Mr. Brougham at once exposed this
fallacy. He admitted that there had been an active manufacturing and an
unusual amount of exportation in expectation of the ports of the world
being thrown open by the peace; but he declared that the people of the
Continent were too much exhausted by the war to be able to purchase,
and that the bulk of these exported goods would have to be sold at a
ruinous reduction--at almost nominal prices; and then would immediately
follow a stoppage of mills, a vast population thrown out of employment,
and bread and all provisions made exorbitantly dear when there was the
least power to purchase. All this was speedily realised. British goods
were soon selling in Holland and the north of Europe for less than
their cost price in London and Manchester. Abundant harvests defeated
in some degree the expectations of the agriculturists, and thus both
farmers and manufacturers were ruined together; for, the check being
given to commerce, the manufacturing population could purchase at no
price, and, in spite of the harvest, the price of wheat was still one
hundred and three shillings per quarter. Many farmers, as well as
manufacturers, failed; country banks were broken, and paper-money was
reduced in value twenty-five per cent.; and a circumstance greatly
augmenting the public distress was the reduction of its issues by the
Bank of England from thirty-one millions to twenty-six millions.

The year 1816 was a most melancholy year. Both agricultural and
manufacturing labourers rose in great masses to destroy machinery, to
which, and not to the temporary poverty of the whole civilised world,
exhausted by war, they attributed the glut of manufactured goods,
and the surplus of all kinds of labour. In Suffolk and Norfolk, and
on the Isle of Ely, the agricultural labourers and fen-men destroyed
the threshing-machines, attacked mills and farms, pulled down the
houses of butchers and bakers, and marched about in great bands, with
flags inscribed "Bread or blood!" In Littleport and Ely shops and
public-houses were ransacked, and the soldiers were called out to
quell the rioters, and much blood was shed, and numbers were thrown
into prison, of whom thirty-four were condemned to death, and five
executed. The colliers and workers in the iron mines and furnaces of
Staffordshire and Warwickshire, as well as in the populous districts
of South Wales, were thrown out of work, and the distress was terrible.
The sufferings and consequent ferments in Lancashire were equally
great. In Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Derbyshire, the Luddites
broke out again, as they had done in 1812, and by night demolished the
stocking-frames and the machinery in the cotton-mills. Great alarm
existed everywhere, and on the 29th of July a meeting was called at
the "City of London" Tavern to consider the means of relieving the
distress, the Duke of York taking the chair, the Dukes of Kent and
Cambridge, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and others attending. Many palliatives
were proposed, but Lord Cochrane and other reformers declared that
the only effectual remedy would be the abolition of the Corn Law.
Soup-kitchens were recommended, but in Scotland these were spurned
at as only insults to the sufferers; at Glasgow the soup-kitchen was
attacked, and its coppers and materials destroyed; and at Dundee
the people helped themselves by clearing a hundred shops of their
provisions.

During the whole of these scenes the attitude of Government was not
merely indifferent, but absolutely repulsive. At no time had so cold
and narrow-spirited a Ministry existed. The names of Castlereagh,
Liverpool, Sidmouth, and Lord Eldon as Lord Chancellor, recall the
memory of a callous Cabinet. They were still dreaming of additional
taxation when, on the 17th of March, they were thunderstruck by seeing
the property-tax repealed by a majority of forty. The Prince Regent
had become utterly odious by his reckless extravagance and sensual
life. The abolition of the property-tax was immediately followed by
other resistance. On the 20th of March a motion of disapprobation of
the advance of the salary of the Secretary to the Admiralty, at such
a time, from three to four thousand pounds a-year was made, but lost.
On this occasion Henry Brougham pronounced a most terrible philippic
against the Prince Regent, describing him as devoted, in the secret
recesses of his palace, to the most vicious pleasures, and callous to
the distresses and sufferings of others! Mr. Wellesley Pole described
it as "language such as he had never heard in that House before."

Not only in Parliament, but everywhere the cry for Reform rose with the
distress. Hampden Clubs were founded in every town and village almost
throughout the kingdom, the central one being held at the "Crown and
Anchor" in the Strand, London, its president being Sir Francis Burdett,
and its leading members being William Cobbett, Major Cartwright, Lord
Cochrane, Henry Hunt, and others. The object of these clubs was to
prosecute the cause of Parliamentary reform, and to unite the Reformers
in one system of action. With the spirit of Reform arose, too, that of
cheap publications, which has now acquired such a vast power. William
Cobbett's _Political Register_, on the 18th of November, 1816, was
reduced from a shilling and a halfpenny to twopence, and thence-forward
became a stupendous engine of Reform, being read everywhere by the
Reformers, and especially by the working-classes in town and country,
by the artisan in the workshop, and the shepherd on the mountain. The
great endeavour of Cobbett was to show the people the folly of breaking
machinery, and the wisdom of moral union.

[Illustration: THE MOB OF SPENCEANS SUMMONING THE TOWER OF LONDON.
(_See p._ 121.)]

It is only too true, however, that many of the Hampden Clubs
entertained very seditious ideas, and designs of seizing on the
property of the leading individuals of their respective vicinities.
Still more questionable were the doctrines of the Spenceans, or
Spencean Philanthropists, a society of whom was established in
London this year, and whose chief leaders were Spence, a Yorkshire
schoolmaster, one Preston, a workman, Watson the elder, a surgeon,
Watson the younger, his son, and Castles, who afterwards turned
informer against them. Mr. "Orator" Hunt patronised them. They
sought a common property in all land, and the destruction of all
machinery. These people, with Hunt and Watson at their head, on the
2nd of December, met in Spa Fields. The Spenceans had arms concealed
in a waggon, and a flag displayed declaring that the soldiers were
their friends. The crowd was immense, and soon there was a cry to go
and summon the Tower. Mr. Hunt and his party appear to have excused
themselves from taking part in this mad movement. The mob reached
the Tower, and a man, supposed to be Preston, summoned the sentinels
to surrender, at which they only laughed. The mob then followed
young Watson into the City, and ransacked the shop of Mr. Beckwith,
a gunsmith, on Snow Hill, of its firearms. A gentleman in the shop
remonstrated, and young Watson fired at him and severely wounded
him. Young Watson then made his escape, but his father was secured
and imprisoned; and the Lord Mayor and Sir James Shaw dispersed the
mob on Cornhill, and took one of their flags and several prisoners.
Watson the elder was afterwards tried and acquitted; but a sailor who
was concerned in the plunder of the gunsmith's shop was hanged. A week
after this riot the Corporation of London presented an Address to the
Throne, setting forth the urgent necessity for Parliamentary reform.

These events were a little diversified by the storming of Algiers on
the 27th of August. In 1815 the Government of the United States of
America had set the example of punishing the piratical depredations
of the Algerines. They seized a frigate and a brig, and obtained a
compensation of sixty thousand dollars. They do not appear to have
troubled themselves to procure any release of Christian slaves, or to
put an end to the practice of making such slaves; and, indeed, it would
have been rather an awkward proposal on the part of North Americans,
as the Dey might have demanded, as a condition of such a treaty, the
liberation of some three millions of black slaves in return. But at
the Congress of Vienna a strong feeling had been shown on the part of
European Governments to interfere on this point. It was to the disgrace
of Great Britain that, at the very time that she had been exerting
herself so zealously to put an end to the negro slave trade, she had
been under engagements of treaty with this nest of corsairs; and Lord
Cochrane stated in Parliament this year that only three or four years
before it had been his humiliating duty to carry rich presents from our
Government to the Dey of Algiers. But in the spring of this year it was
determined to make an effort to check the daring piracies of Tunis,
Algiers, and Tripoli. Lord Exmouth was sent to these predatory Powers,
but rather to treat than to chastise; and he effected the release of
one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two Christian slaves. From Tunis
and Tripoli he obtained a declaration that no more Christian slaves
should be made. The Dey of Algiers refused to make such concession
till he had obtained the permission of the Sultan. Lord Exmouth gave
him three months to determine this point, and returned home. A clause
in the treaty which he had made with Algiers ordered that Sicily and
Sardinia should pay nearly four hundred thousand dollars for the ransom
of their subjects; they accordingly paid it. This clause excited just
condemnation in England, as actually acknowledging the right of the
Algerines to make Christian slaves.

But the matter was not to be thus peacefully ended. Before Lord Exmouth
had cleared out of the Mediterranean, the Algerines--not in any concert
with their Government but in an impulse of pure fanaticism--had rushed
down from their castle at Bona on the Christian inhabitants of the
town, where a coral fishery was carried on chiefly by Italians and
Sicilians, under protection of a treaty made by Britain, and under that
of her flag, and committed a brutal massacre on the fishermen, and also
pulled down and trampled on the British flag, and pillaged the house of
the British vice-consul.

Scarcely had Lord Exmouth reached home when he was ordered forth
again to avenge this outrage, and he sailed from Plymouth on the 28th
of July, 1816, with a fleet of twenty-five large and small ships.
At Gibraltar he was joined by the Dutch Admiral Van Cappellan with
five frigates and a sloop, to which were added a number of British
gunboats. On the 27th of August Lord Exmouth sailed right into the
formidable harbour of Algiers, and dispatched a messenger to the Dey,
demanding instant and ample recompense for the outrage; the delivery
of all Christian slaves in the kingdom of Algiers; the repayment of
the money received by the Dey for the liberation of Sicilian and
Sardinian slaves; the liberation of the British consul--who had been
imprisoned--and of two boats' crews detained; and peace between Algiers
and Holland. The messenger landed at eleven o'clock, and two hours
were given the Dey to prepare his answer. The messenger remained
till half-past two o'clock, and no answer arriving, he came off, and
Lord Exmouth gave instant orders for the bombardment. The attack was
terrible. The firing from the fleet, which was vigorously returned from
the batteries in the town and on the mole, continued till nine in the
evening. Then most of the Algerine batteries were knocked literally to
pieces, but the firing did not cease till about eleven. No sooner was
the assault over than a land wind arose and carried the fleet out of
the harbour, so that the vessels were all out of gunshot by two o'clock
in the morning. A wonderful spectacle then presented itself to the eyes
of the spectators in the fleet. Nine Algerine frigates, a number of
gunboats, the storehouses within the mole, and much of the town were in
one huge blaze, and by this they could see that the batteries remained
mere heaps of ruins. The next morning Lord Exmouth sent in a letter to
the Dey with the offer of the previous day, saying, "If you receive
this offer as you ought, you will fire three guns." They were fired.
The Dey made apologies, and signed fresh treaties of peace and amity,
which were not of long endurance. But within three days one thousand
and eighty-three Christian slaves arrived from the interior, and were
received on board and conveyed to their respective countries.

We must return from victory abroad to discontent at home. On the
28th of January, 1817, the Prince Regent opened the fifth Session of
Parliament. In his speech he expressed indignation at "the attempts
which had been made to take advantage of the distresses of the country
for the purpose of exciting a spirit of sedition and violence;" and
he declared himself determined to put down these attempts by stern
measures. The seconder of the Address in the Commons had the good sense
to believe that the demagogues and their acts would die of themselves.
Certainly, if the demagogues had no cause on which to base their
efforts, those efforts must have proved fruitless; and the wisdom of
Government consisted in seriously inquiring whether there were such
causes. To attempt to insure peace by smothering distress is the old
remedy of tyrants, and is like heaping fuel on fire to put it out.
Whilst this debate was proceeding, a message arrived from the Lords
to announce that the Regent, on his return from the House, had been
insulted, and some missile thrown through the windows of his carriage.
The House agreed upon an Address to the Regent on this event, and then
adjourned.

The next day the debate was resumed. It appeared that the Prince had
been hooted at, and a stone, or other missile, flung through the
window of the carriage. The Ministerial party endeavoured to raise the
occurrence into an attempt on the Prince's life; the Opposition hinted
at the expression of public disgust with the tone which Government
was assuming towards the distresses of the people, called zealously
for stringent reductions of expense, and moved an amendment to that
very effect. But the Government had yet much to learn on this head;
and Lord Sidmouth announced that the Prince Regent in three days would
send down a message on the disaffection of the people. It would have
been wise to have added to this measure a recommendation of serious
inquiry into the causes of this disaffection, for disaffection towards
a Government never exists without a cause; but the Government had
carried on matters so easily whilst they had nothing to do but to vote
large sums of money for foreign war that they had grown callous, and
had been so much in co-operation with arbitrary monarchs that they had
acquired too much of the same spirit; and they now set about to put
down the people of England as they, by means of the people of England,
had put down Buonaparte. It was their plan to create alarm, and under
the influence of that alarm to pass severe measures for the crippling
of the Constitution and the suppression of all complaints of political
evil.

In the debate on this subject, George Canning, who on many occasions
had shown himself capable of better things, breathed the very language
of Toryism. He declared the representation of Parliament perfect, and
treated the most moderate proposals for Reform as only emanations
from the mad theories of the Spenceans. The message of the Prince
Regent came down on the 3rd of February, ordering certain papers to be
laid before the House, "concerning certain practices, meetings, and
combinations in the metropolis, and in different parts of the kingdom,
evidently calculated to endanger the public tranquillity, to alienate
the affections of his Majesty's subjects from his Majesty's person and
Government, and to bring into hatred and contempt the whole system of
our laws and institutions." Lord Sidmouth endeavoured to guard the
House of Peers against the belief that the insult to the Regent had
any share in the origination of this message, but the House of Lords,
in its Address, directly charged this event as an additional proof of
the public disaffection. Unfortunately, the Regent had two Houses of
Parliament only too much disposed to make themselves the instruments
of such vengeance. The message was referred to a secret committee in
each House, and on the 18th and 19th of February they respectively
made their reports. Both went at great length into the affair of the
Spa Fields meeting, and the proceedings and designs of the Spenceans
were made to represent the designs of the working classes all over the
kingdom; that such men as Thistlewood, who not long after suffered for
his justly odious conduct, were conspicuous among the Spenceans, and
that there had been an affray in Spa Fields, were circumstances to give
ample colouring to the reports of these committees. The Lords' report
stated--"It appears clear that the object is, by means of societies,
or clubs, established, or to be established, in all parts of Great
Britain, under pretence of Parliamentary reform, to infect the minds
of all classes of the community, and particularly of those whose
situation most exposes them to such impressions, with a spirit of
discontent and disaffection, of insubordination, and contempt of all
law, religion, and morality; and to hold out to them the plunder of all
property as the main object of their efforts, and the restoration of
their natural rights; and no endeavours are omitted to prepare them to
take up arms, on the first signal, for accomplishing their designs."

The country societies were pointed out "as principally to be found in
the neighbourhood of Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham, Mansfield,
Derby, Chesterfield, Sheffield, Blackburn, Manchester, Birmingham,
Norwich, Glasgow, and its vicinity; but," it added, "they extend, and
are spreading in some parts of the country, to almost every village."
The report of the Commons went over much the same ground, dwelling
particularly on the Hampden Clubs as avowed engines of revolution.
It dwelt on the acts and activity of the leaders, of the numbers
which they had seduced and were seducing, the oaths which bound them
together, and the means prepared for the forcible attainment of their
objects, which were the overthrow of all rights of property and all
the national institutions, in order to introduce a reign of general
confusion, plunder, and anarchy.

Now, though in some obscure and ignorant parts of the country
there were clubs which contemplated the foolish idea of seizing
on neighbouring properties, the committees must have been very
ill-informed to have drawn any such conclusion as to the Hampden Clubs,
which were organised for Parliamentary reform under the auspices of Sir
Francis Burdett, Major Cartwright, Lord Cochrane, Cobbett, and others.
Most of these persons had large properties to be sacrificed by the
propagation of any such principles, and the great topics of Cobbett's
_Register_, the organ through which he communicated with the people,
were the necessity of refraining from all violence, and of rising into
influence by purely political co-operation. But these reports answered
the purposes of the Government, and they proceeded to introduce, and
succeeded in passing, four Acts for the suppression of popular opinion.
The first was to provide severe punishment for all attempts to seduce
the soldiers or sailors from their allegiance; the second to give
safeguards to the person of the Sovereign, but which did not include
the most effectual of all--that of making him beloved; the third was
to prevent seditious meetings, and gave great power to the magistrates
and police to interfere with any meeting for the mildest Reforms; the
fourth was the old measure of suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act,
which armed the magistrates with the fearful authority to arrest and
imprison at pleasure, without being compelled to bring the accused to
trial. The last of these Acts was not passed till the 29th of March,
and it was to continue in force only till the 1st of July. But in the
meantime events took place which occasioned its renewal.

Within a few days after the first passing of this Act, that is, in
the first week of March, a body of weavers--said by the Government to
amount to ten thousand men, but by a more competent authority, Samuel
Bamford, the author of the "Life of a Radical," not to have exceeded
four or five thousand--met in St. Peter's Field, at Manchester, and
commenced a march southward. The intention was to proceed to London, to
present to the Prince Regent, in person, a petition describing their
distress. Bamford had been consulted, and had condemned the project as
wild, and likely to bring down nothing but trouble on the petitioners.
He believed that they were instigated by spies sent out by Government
in order to find an opportunity of justifying their arbitrary measures.
Suspicious persons had been trying him. But the poor, deluded people
assembled, "many of them," says Bamford, "having blankets, rugs, or
large coats rolled up, and tied knapsack-like on their backs. Some
had papers, supposed to be petitions, rolled up, and some had stout
walking-sticks." From their blankets, they afterwards acquired the name
of Blanketeers. The magistrates appeared and read the Riot Act, and
dispersed the multitude by soldiers and constables; but three or four
hundred fled in the direction of their intended route, and continued
their march, pursued by a body of yeomanry. By the time that they
reached Macclesfield, at nine o'clock at night, they amounted to only
one hundred and eighty; yet many of them persisted in proceeding, but
they continually melted away, from hunger and from the misery of lying
out in the fields on March nights. By the time that they reached Leek
they were reduced to twenty, and six only were known to pass over the
bridge at Ashbourne.

This was an attempt as constitutional as it was ignorantly and
hopelessly planned by suffering people; but more criminal speculations
were on foot. A second report of the Lords' secret committee,
recommending the renewal of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act, stated that a general insurrection was planned to take place
at Manchester, on the 30th of March--to seize the magistrates, to
liberate the prisoners, burn the soldiers in their barracks, and set
fire to a number of factories; and that such proposals were really in
agitation is confirmed by Bamford and other of the Radical leaders.
The report says that the design was discovered by the vigilance
of the magistrates, a few days before its intended taking place;
but it is far more probable that the magistrates had received some
intimation of what was in progress from those who had misguided the
ignorant multitude. Bamford tells us that both he and his friends
had been applied to to engage in the design, but they had condemned
it as the work of incendiaries, who had availed themselves of the
resentment of the Blanketeers at their treatment, to instigate them
to a dreadful revenge. The truth was, a number of spies in the pay of
Government, with the notorious Oliver at their head, were traversing
the manufacturing districts of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire,
and Lancashire, to stimulate the suffering population into open
insurrection, that they might be crushed by the military. Bamford and
the more enlightened workmen at once saw through the snare, and not
only repulsed the tempters, but warned their fellows against their
arts. The failure of the first design, however, did not put an end to
the diabolical attempt on the part of the spies. They recommended the
most secret meetings for the purpose; that another night attack should
be prepared for Manchester, and that Ministers should be assassinated.
Such proposals were again made to Bamford and his friends, but they not
only indignantly repelled them, but sought safety for their own persons
in concealment, for continual seizures of leading Reformers were now
made.

[Illustration: THE "NOTTINGHAM CAPTAIN" AND THE AGITATORS AT THE "WHITE
HORSE." (_See p._ 126.)]

Disappointed in this quarter, the odious race of incendiary spies of
Government tried their arts, and succeeded in duping some individuals
in Yorkshire, and many more in Derbyshire. That the principal
Government spy, Oliver, was busily engaged in this work of stirring up
the ignorant and suffering population to open insurrection from the
17th of April to the 7th of June, when such an outbreak took place in
Derbyshire, we have the most complete evidence. It then came out, from
a servant of Sir John Byng, commander of the forces in that district,
that Oliver had previously been in communication with Sir John, and no
doubt obtained his immediate liberation from him on the safe netting of
his nine victims. In fact, in a letter from this Sir John Byng (then
Lord Strafford), in 1846, to the Dean of Norwich, he candidly admits
that he had received orders from Lord Sidmouth to assist the operations
of Oliver, who was, his lordship said, going down into that part of the
country where meetings were being frequently held, and that Oliver, who
carried a letter to Sir John, was to give him all the information that
he could, so that he might prevent such meetings. Here, as well as from
other sources, we are assured that Oliver only received authority to
collect information of the proceedings of the conspirators, and by no
means to incite them to illegal acts. We have also the assurance of Mr.
Louis Allsop, a distinguished solicitor of Nottingham, that Oliver was
in communication with him on the 7th of June, immediately on his return
from Yorkshire, and informed him that a meeting was the same evening to
take place in Nottingham, and he and another gentleman strongly urged
him to attend it, which Oliver did. Mr. Allsop says that Oliver had no
instructions to incite, but only to collect information. All this has
been industriously put forward to excuse Ministers. But what are the
facts? We find Oliver not only--according to evidence which came out
on the trials of the unfortunate dupes at Derby--directly stimulating
the simple people to insurrection, but joining in deluding them into
the persuasion that all London was ready to rise, and that one hundred
and fifty thousand from the east and west of the capital only waited
for them. We find him not only disseminating these ideas throughout
these districts from the 17th of April to the 27th of May, but also
to have concerted a simultaneous rising in Yorkshire, at Nottingham,
and in Derbyshire, on the 6th of June. Thornhill-lees, in Yorkshire,
was on the verge of action, and ten delegates, including Oliver, were
arrested. In Derbyshire the insurrection actually took place.

What immediately follows shows that Oliver had planned and brought to
a crisis, by his personal exertions, this unhappy rising. On Sunday,
the 8th of June, Jeremiah Brandreth, a framework-knitter of Nottingham,
appeared with some others at a public-house called the "White Horse,"
in the village of Pentrich, in Derbyshire. This village is about
fourteen miles from Nottingham, and about a mile from the small
market town of Ripley. It is in a district of coal and iron mines,
and is near the large iron foundry of Butterley. The working people
of the village, and of the neighbouring village of South Wingfield,
were chiefly colliers, workers in the iron mines or iron foundry,
or agricultural labourers--a race little informed at that day, and
therefore capable of being readily imposed on. This Brandreth had been
known for years as a fiery agitator. He was a little, dark-haired
man, of perhaps thirty years of age. He had been much with Oliver,
and was one of his most thorough dupes, ready for the commission of
any desperate deed. He had acquired the cognomen of the "Nottingham
Captain," and now appeared in an old brown great-coat, with a gun in
his hand, and a pistol thrust into an apron, which was rolled round his
waist as a belt.

Two of the workmen from Butterley Foundry entered the "White Horse,"
which was kept by a widow Wightman, whose son George was deep in the
foolish conspiracy into which Oliver and this his blind, savage tool,
the Nottingham Captain, were leading him. They found Brandreth with a
map before him, and telling them there was no good to be done, they
must march up to London and overthrow the Government. He said all the
country was rising; that at Nottingham the people had already taken
the castle and seized the soldiers in their barracks, and were waiting
for them. This shows that he had come straight from Oliver, who, on
the 7th, was at Nottingham, attending the meeting there, and who knew
that the meeting in Yorkshire had been prevented. Yet he had allowed
the people of Nottingham to believe that the Yorkshire men were coming,
according to agreement, in thousands; and he allowed Brandreth to go
and arouse Derbyshire, under the belief that Nottingham that night
would be in the hands of the insurgents. On Monday night, the 9th of
June, Brandreth and a knot of his colleagues proceeded to muster their
troop of insurgents for the march to Nottingham. They roused up the
men in their cottages, and, if they refused to go, they broke in the
doors with a crowbar, and compelled them to join them. Most of these
unwilling levies slipped away in the dark on the first opportunity.
At South Wingfield he assembled his forces in an old barn, and then
they proceeded through the neighbourhood demanding men and guns. An
old woman had the courage to tap the "captain" on the shoulder, and
say--"My lad, we have a magistrate here;" and many of the men thought
Brandreth must be mad or drunk. At the farm of widow Hetherinton he
demanded her men and arms, and when she stoutly refused him, he put
the gun through the window and shot one of her men dead. As the
day dawned, Brandreth and his infatuated troop appeared before the
gates of Butterley Foundry, and demanded the men; but Mr. Goodwin,
the manager, had been apprised of their approach, and had closed the
gates. Brandreth had planned to take Butterley Foundry, and carry away
not only the men but a small cannon kept there; but Mr. Goodwin went
out and told Brandreth he should not have a man for any such insane
purpose, and seeing an old man that he well knew, Isaac Ludlam, who
bore a good character, and had been a local preacher amongst the
Methodists, he seized him by the collar and pushed him into the foundry
court, telling him not to be a fool, but stay at home. Ludlam, however,
replied, "he was as bad as he could be," rushed out, and went on--to
his death; for he was one of those that were executed.

All this time it was raining heavily, and Brandreth, daunted by the
weather, or by the courageous conduct of the manager, gave the word to
march. The manager calculated that there were only about a hundred of
them at this point; but they were soon after joined by another troop
from Ripley, and they took two roads, which united about three miles
farther on, collecting fresh men by the most direful threats. When they
reached Eastwood, a village three or four miles farther on the road
to Nottingham, they were said to amount to three hundred, but ragged,
famished, drenched with the rain, and not half of them armed, even
with rude pikes. Near Eastwood they were met by a troop of horse from
Nottingham, which had been summoned by Mr. Rolleston, a magistrate, and
at the sight they fled in confusion. About forty guns and a number of
pikes were picked up, and a considerable number of prisoners were made,
amongst them Brandreth. These prisoners were afterwards tried at a
special assize at Derby. They were defended by Thomas (afterwards Lord)
Denman, whose eloquence on the occasion raised him at once into notice,
and whose generous, gratuitous, and indefatigable exertions on behalf
of these simple, ignorant victims of Government instigation, showed
him to be a man of the noblest nature. Notwithstanding his efforts,
twenty of these unhappy dupes were transported for different terms, and
three--Brandreth, Ludlam, and Turner--were hanged and then beheaded as
traitors.

Such were the means employed by the British Government in 1817 to quiet
the country under its distress--a distress the inevitable result of the
long and stupendous war. The only idea was to tighten the reins of
Government--to stimulate the sufferers into overt acts, and then crush
them. Fortunately, with the exception of the Derby juries, the juries
in general saw through the miserable farce of rebellion, and discharged
the greater part of Oliver's and Lord Sidmouth's victims. Watson was
acquitted of high treason in London on the 16th of June, less than a
week after the Derbyshire insurrection. His son had eluded the pursuit
of the police. Seventeen prisoners on the like charges were liberated
in July in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and were paid seven shillings each to
carry them home. On the 22nd of August, of the twenty-four persons that
Oliver had entrapped in Yorkshire, twenty-two were discharged--against
eleven of them no bills being found by the grand jury--and the two left
in prison were detained there because, under the suspension of the
Habeas Corpus Act, they were not brought up for trial. The Manchester
Blanketeers were, in like manner, all discharged, though the Duke
of Northumberland did his utmost to stimulate Lord Sidmouth to get
them punished. On the country at large the impression was that the
Government had propagated a most needless alarm, and that those who had
fallen on the scaffold had been exalted by them from poor, ignorant
labourers into burlesque traitors, through the execrable agency of
their incendiaries, Oliver, Castles, Mitchell, and others.

But the Government had to receive another lesson this year on the folly
of endeavouring, in the nineteenth century, to crush the liberties of
Britons. There was an organ called the Press, which, partaking neither
of the Governmental fears of a natural complaint by the public of the
evils which preyed upon it, nor the Governmental hopes of silencing the
sufferers without any attempt to mitigate their calamities, reported
freely the mingled folly and cruelty of Ministers, and called for
the only remedy of the country's misfortunes--Reform. On moving the
second reading of the Bill for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act, Lord Sidmouth observed that some noble lords had complained that
the authors and publishers of infamous libels on the Government were
not prosecuted. He assured them that the Government were quite as
anxious as these noble lords to punish the offenders, but that the law
officers of the Crown were greatly puzzled in their attempts to deal
with them; that authors had now become so skilful from experience, that
the difficulties of convicting them immeasurably exceeded those of any
former time.

It would seem that the law officers of the Crown despaired of
proceeding in the old way, but they, or the Ministers themselves, hit
on a new and more daring one. On the 27th of March the Secretary of
State addressed a circular letter to the lords-lieutenant of counties,
informing them that the Law Officers were of opinion that a justice
of the peace may issue warrants to apprehend persons charged with the
publication of political libels, and compel them to give bail; and
he required the lords-lieutenant to communicate this opinion to the
ensuing Quarter Sessions, that all magistrates might act upon it. This
was the most daring attack on the liberty of the subject which had
been made in England since the days of the Stuarts. Lord Grey, on the
12th of May, made a most zealous and able speech in the House of Lords
against this proceeding, denouncing the investment of justices of the
peace with the power to decide beforehand questions which might puzzle
the acutest juries, and to arrest and imprison for what might turn
out to be no offence at all. He said:--"If such be the power of the
magistrate, and if this be the law, where, I ask, are all the boasted
securities of our independence and freedom?" But it appears from the
correspondence of Lord Sidmouth, that he was at this moment glorying
in this expedient and triumphing in its imagined success. He said the
charge of having put such power into the hands of magistrates, he would
do his best and most constant endeavour to deserve; and that already
the activity of the dealers in libellous matter was much diminished.
He had, in truth, struck a deadly terror to the hearts of the stoutest
patriots, who saw no prospect but ruin and incarceration if they dared
to speak the truth. Cobbett then fled, and got over to America. In
taking leave of his readers, in his _Register_ of March 28th, he gave
his reasons for escaping from the storm:--"Lord Sidmouth was 'sorry
to say' that I had not written anything that the Law Officers could
prosecute with any chance of success. I do not remove," he continued,
"for the purpose of writing libels, but for the purpose of being able
to write what is not libellous. I do not retire from the combat with
the Attorney-General, but from a combat with a dungeon, deprived of
pen, ink, and paper. A combat with the Attorney-General is quite
unequal enough; that, however, I would have encountered. I know too
well what a trial by special jury is; yet that, or any sort of trial,
I would stand to face. So that I could be sure of a trial of whatever
sort, I would have run the risk; but against the absolute power of
imprisonment, without even a hearing, for time unlimited, in any gaol
in the kingdom, without the use of pen, ink, and paper, and without
communication with any soul but the keepers--against such a power it
would have been worse than madness to attempt to strive."

Nor were the fears of Cobbett imaginary. The Ministry at this time were
such fanatics in tyranny, that they would have rejoiced to have thus
caged the great political lion, and kept him in silence. At this very
moment they had pounced upon one who was equally clever in his way,
and who had, perhaps, annoyed them still more, but whom they did not
so much fear to bring into a court of justice. This was William Hone,
who had for some time been making them the laughing-stock of the whole
nation by his famous parodies. Hone was a poor bookseller in the Old
Bailey, who had spent his life in the quest after curious books, and
in the accumulation of more knowledge than wealth. His parodies had
first brought him into notice, and it did not appear a very formidable
thing for the Government to try a secluded bookworm not even able to
fee counsel for his defence. His trial did not come on at the Guildhall
till the 18th of December, and then it was evident that the man of
satirical fun meant to make a stout fight. The judge, Mr. Justice
Abbott, and the Attorney-General, Sir Samuel Shepherd, from their
manner of surveying the accused, did not apprehend much difficulty in
obtaining a verdict against him. But they very soon discovered their
mistake. The charge against Hone was for having published a profane
and impious libel upon the Catechism, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten
Commandments, thereby bringing into contempt the Christian religion.
The special indictment was for the publication of John Wilkes's
catechism. The Attorney-General did not very judiciously commence
his charge, for he admitted that he did not believe that Hone meant
to ridicule religion, but to produce a telling political squib. This
let out the whole gist of the prosecution, though that was very well
perceived by most people before; and it was in vain that he went on to
argue that the mischief was just the same. Hone opened his own defence
with the awkwardness and timidity natural to a man who had passed his
life amid books, and not in courts; but he managed to complain of his
imprisonment, his harsh treatment, of his poverty in not being able to
fee counsel, of the expense of copies of the informations against him,
and of the haste, at last, with which he had been called to plead. The
judge repeatedly interrupted him, with a mild sort of severity, and the
spectators were expecting him to make a short and ineffective defence.
Hone, on the contrary, began to show more boldness and pertinacity.
He began to open his books, and to read parody after parody of former
times. In vain Mr. Justice Abbott and the Attorney-General stopped him,
and told him that he was not to be allowed to add to his offence by
producing other instances of the crime in other persons. But Hone told
them that he was accused of putting parodies on sacred things into his
books, and it was out of his books he must defend himself. The poor,
pale, threadbare retailer of old books was now warmed into eloquence,
and stood in the most unquestionable ascendency on the floor of the
court, reading and commenting as though he would go on for ever; and he
did go on for six hours. He declared that the editor of _Blackwood's
Magazine_ was a parodist--he parodied a chapter of Ezekiel; Martin
Luther was a parodist--he parodied the first Psalm; Bishop Latimer was
a parodist; so was Dr. Boys, Dean of Canterbury; so was the author
of the "Rolliad;" so was Mr. Canning. He proved all that he said by
reading passages from the authors, and he concluded by saying that
he did not believe that any of these writers meant to ridicule the
Scriptures, and that he could not, therefore, see why he should be
supposed to do so more than they. Nay, he had done what they never
did: as soon as he was aware that his parodies had given offence he
suppressed them--and that long ago, not waiting till he was prosecuted.
They, in fact, were prosecuting him for what he had voluntarily and
long ago suppressed. The Attorney-General, in reply, asserted that it
would not save the defendant that he had quoted Martin Luther and Dr.
Boys, for he must pronounce them both libellous. The judge charged the
jury as if it were their sacred duty to find the defendant guilty; but,
after only a quarter of an hour's deliberation, they acquitted him.

[Illustration: WILLIAM COBBETT.]

This signal and unexpected defeat seemed to rouse the Government to
a fresh effort for victory over the triumphant bookseller. The Lord
Chief Justice Ellenborough, who was not accustomed to let juries and
the accused off so easily, rose from his sick bed, where he was fast
drifting towards the close of his career. The defendant was called into
court the next morning, the 19th of December. There sat Ellenborough,
with a severe and determined air. Abbott sat by his side. Hone this
time was charged with having published an impious and profane libel,
called "The Litany, or General Supplication." The Attorney-General
again asserted that, whatever might be the intention of the defendant,
the publication had the effect of bringing into contempt the service
of the Church. Hone opened his books to recommence the reading of
parallel productions of a former day, or by persons high in esteem in
the Church, but this was precisely what the invalid Lord Chief Justice
had left his bed to prevent. The judge told him all that was beside the
mark, but Hone would not allow that it was so, opened his books, and
read on in spite of all attempts to stop him. Never had Ellenborough,
not even in his strongest and best days, been so stoutly encountered;
scarcely ever had such a scene been witnessed in the memory of man. The
spectators showed an intense interest in the combat, for such it was,
and it was evident that the general sympathy went with the accused,
who put forth such extraordinary and unlooked-for power. The exhausted
Chief Justice was compelled to give way, and Hone went on reading one
parody after another, and dwelt especially on the parodies of the
Litany which the Cavaliers wrote to ridicule the Puritan Roundheads.
When he had done, the Lord Chief Justice addressed the jury in a strain
of strong direction to find a verdict for the Crown. He said "he would
deliver the jury his solemn opinion, as he was required by the Act of
Parliament to do; and under the authority of that Act, and still more
in obedience to his conscience and his God, he pronounced this to be
a most impious and profane libel. Believing and hoping that they, the
jury, were Christians, he had no doubt but they would be of the same
opinion." This time the solemn and severe energy of the Lord Chief
Justice seemed to have made an impression on part of the jury, for they
took an hour and a half to determine their verdict, but they again
returned one of Not Guilty.

Here, had the Government been wise, they would have stopped; but they
were not contented without experiencing a third defeat. The next
morning, the 20th of December, they returned to the charge with an
indictment against Mr. Hone for publishing a parody on the Athanasian
Creed, called "The Sinecurist's Creed." The old Chief Justice was
again on the bench, apparently as resolved as ever, and this time the
defendant, on entering the court, appeared pale and exhausted, as he
well might, for he had put forth exertions and powers of mind which
had astonished the whole country and excited the deepest interest.
The Attorney-General humanely offered to postpone the trial, but the
defendant preferred to go on. He only begged for a few minutes' delay
to enable him to put down a few notes on the Attorney-General's address
after that was delivered; but the Chief Justice would not allow him
this trifling favour, but said, if the defendant would make a formal
request for the purpose, he would put off the trial for a day. This
would have injured the cause of the defendant, by making it appear that
he was in some degree worsted, and, fatigued as he was, he replied,
promptly, "No! I make no such request." William Hone, on this third
trial, once more seemed to forget his past fatigues, and rose with a
strength that completely cowed the old and fiery judge. He did not
desist till he had converted his dictatorial manner into a suppliant
one. After quoting many eminent Churchmen as dissentients from the
Athanasian Creed, and amongst them Warburton and Tillotson, he added,
"Even his lordship's father, the Bishop of Carlisle, he believed, took
a similar view of this creed." This was coming too near; and the judge
said, "Whatever that opinion was, he has gone, many years ago, where
he has had to account for his belief and his opinions. For common
delicacy, forbear." "O, my lord," replied the satisfied defendant, "I
shall certainly forbear." The judge had profited by the lesson to-day:
he gave a much more temperate charge to the jury, and they required
only twenty minutes to return the third and final victory of Not
Guilty. Never had this arbitrary Government suffered so withering a
defeat. The sensation throughout the country was immense. The very next
day Lord Ellenborough sent in his announcement of retiring from the
bench, and in a very short time he retired from this world altogether
(December 13, 1818), it being a settled conviction of the public mind
that the mortification of such a putting-down, by a man whom he rose
from his sick-bed to extinguish, tended materially to hasten that
departure.

The only matters of interest debated in Parliament during this year,
except that of the discontent in the country, were a long debate
on Catholic emancipation, in the month of May, which was negatived
by a majority of only twenty-four, showing that that question was
progressing towards its goal; and a motion of Lord Castlereagh for the
gradual abolition of sinecures. This intimated some slight impression
of the necessity to do something to abate the public dissatisfaction,
but it was an impression only on the surface. This Ministry was too
much determined to maintain the scale of war expenditure to which
they had been accustomed to make any real retrenchment. A committee
appointed to consider the scheme recommended the abolition of sinecures
to the amount of fifty-four thousand pounds per annum, but neutralised
the benefit by recommending instead a pension-list of forty-two
thousand pounds per annum. The country received the amendment with
disgust and derision.

The year, gloomy in itself from the dislocation of trade and the
discontent of the people, terminated still more gloomily from another
cause--the death of the Princess Charlotte. This event, wholly
unexpected, was a startling shock to the whole nation. This amiable
and accomplished princess was not yet twenty-two. She had been married
only in May, 1816, to Prince Leopold of Coburg, and died on the 6th
of November, 1817, a few hours after being delivered of a stillborn
child. What rendered the event the more painful was that her death
was attributed to neglect by her accoucheur, Sir Richard Croft. Dr.
Baillie, who saw her soon after her confinement, refused to join in
the issue of a bulletin which the other medical men had prepared,
stating that she was going on well, and a few hours proved the fatal
correctness of his opinion. Sir Richard, overwhelmed by the public
indignation and his own feelings, soon afterwards destroyed himself. No
prince or princess had stood so well with the nation for many years.
The people saw in her a future queen, with the vigour, unaccompanied by
the vices and tyrannies, of Elizabeth. She had taken the part of her
mother against the treatment of her father, and this was another cause
which drew towards her the affections of the people. All these hopes
were extinguished in a moment, and the whole nation was plunged into
sorrow and consternation, the more so that, notwithstanding the twelve
children of George III., there had only been this single grandchild,
and several of his sons remained unmarried.

The year 1818 commenced gloomily. On the 27th of January Parliament was
opened by a Speech, drawn up for the Prince Regent, but read by the
Lord Chancellor. The first topic was, of course, the severe loss which
the country and the prince had sustained in the death of the Princess
Charlotte. It was only too well known that the prince and his daughter
had not for some time been on very cordial terms, the princess having
taken the part of her mother; and the vicious and voluptuous life of
the Regent did not probably leave much depth of paternal affection in
his nature, which had originally been generous and capable of better
things. It was remarked by Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley and Ward,
that the mention of the princess "was rather dry--sulky, rather than
sad." But the death of his only issue, and that at the moment that she
might have been expected to give a continued succession to the Throne,
was a severe blow to him. There was an end of all succession in his
line. He stood now without the hopeful support which his daughter's
affectionate regard in the country had afforded him, and he was ill
able to bear the loss of any causes of popularity. He received a
serious shock; and it was only by copious bleeding that he was saved
from dangerous consequences; yet, so little was the depth of his
trouble, that within three months of his loss he attended a dinner
given by the Prussian ambassador, and entertained the company with a
song.

The rest of the Speech consisted of endeavours to represent the country
as in a prosperous condition; to have escaped from insurrection by
the vigilance of Ministers, and to have recovered the elasticity of
commerce. No amendment was moved to the Address in either House, but
not the less did the conduct of Ministers escape some animadversion. In
the Peers, Lord Lansdowne ridiculed the alarms which had been raised
regarding the movements in Derbyshire, which, he said, had not been at
all participated in by the working population at large, and had been
put down by eighteen dragoons. He contended that there was no evidence
of any correspondence with these conspirators in other quarters; but
this was notoriously incorrect, for there had been a correspondence in
Lancashire and Yorkshire, a correspondence especially disgraceful to
Ministers, for it was on the part of their own incendiary agents. He
observed truly, however, that the insurrection, as it was called, had
by no means justified the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, for it
could have been most readily put down without it by the regular course
of law. In the Commons, Sir Samuel Romilly thought that the Derbyshire
insurrectionists had been very properly brought to trial; for Brandreth
had committed a murder, and, therefore, those who acted with him were,
in the eye of the law, equally guilty. But if they were properly
brought to trial, there were others who ought still more properly
to have been brought to trial too--the very men whom Government had
sent out, and who had aroused these poor people into insurrection
by false and treacherous statements. There was no justice in trying
and punishing the victims, and screening their own agents; and this
was what Government had done, and were still doing. It is in vain,
therefore, that their defenders contend that they gave no authority
to Oliver and the other spies to excite the people to outbreak: these
spies having notoriously done it, they still protected and rewarded
them, and thus made themselves responsible for their whole guilt. If
they had not authorised the worst part of the conduct of the spies,
they now acted as though they had, and thus morally assumed the _onus_
of these detestable proceedings. One thing immediately resulted from
the pæans of Ministers on the flourishing state of the country--the
repeal of the Suspension Act. The Opposition at once declared that
if the condition of the country was as Ministers described it, there
could be no occasion for the continuance of this suppression of the
Constitution; and accordingly a Bill for the repeal of the Suspension
Act was at once brought in and passed by the Lords on the 28th, and by
the Commons on the 29th of January.

[Illustration: OLD BAILEY, LONDON, 1814.]

Now, much of this at the moment was true; the manufacturers were
naturally anxious to resume their business, and a fall in the price of
corn, after the plentiful harvest of 1817, to seventy-four shillings
and sixpence, relieved a little the pressure on the working classes.
Could cheap bread have been secured, the condition of the people
might soon have become easy; but the fatal Corn Law came immediately
into operation. By the end of 1817 corn had risen in price again to
eighty-five shillings and fourpence; and then the ports were opened,
but the supplies did not bring down the markets. The spring of 1818
proved wet, and then about the middle of May a drought set in, and
continued till September, so that the apprehension of a deficient
harvest kept up the price of all articles of life, notwithstanding that
a million and a half quarters of wheat had been imported during the
year. So long as bread was tolerably cheap, and work more abundant,
political agitation in the manufacturing districts subsided; but it was
soon proved that the apparent increase of activity in manufacturing
and commercial exports was but a feverish desire on the part of
manufacturers and merchants to force a trade for which the exhausted
Continent was not yet prepared. Nothing but a free importation of corn
could have carried the country comfortably through the crisis; and
this was denied by the measures of Government, except at a rate of
price that put the proper consumption of bread beyond the means of the
working classes.

[Illustration: BEAUS AND BELLES OF THE REGENCY PERIOD.]

Meanwhile Ministers, anxious to exonerate themselves from the odium so
fully their due for fomenting insurrection, commenced Parliamentary
inquiries which only the more clearly demonstrated their guilt. On the
2nd of February the celebrated green bag was sent down by the Prince
Regent to the Lords, and another green bag on the following day to the
Commons. These green bags--or rather, this green bag, for they were
classed as one by the public, their contents being one--made a great
figure in the newspaper comments of the time. They were stuffed with
documents regarding the late extraordinary powers assumed by Ministers,
and the occurrences in the midland counties which had been held to
justify them. No doubt the papers had been carefully selected, and they
were now submitted to a secret committee of each House, which, being
named by Ministers, was pretty sure to bring in reports accordingly.
On the 23rd the Lords' committee brought up their report, and on the
27th the Commons' produced theirs. As might have been expected from
their parentage, there was a striking likeness in the offspring of
the committees; they were veritable twins. Both travelled over the
same ground; the statements made by the secret committee of 1816
averring that schemes of conspiracy were in agitation, and the events
of 1817, particularly in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, as fully confirming
these averments. They were compelled, however, to confess that the
insurrections, though clearly connected in different counties, in
Lancashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire, were not very
formidable, and that the mass of the population in these counties
did not at all sanction, much less second, such proceedings. Yet,
notwithstanding this confession, the fact remained that under the
arbitrary measures of Ministers a great number of persons had been
thrown into prison, against whom no charge could be established; and
that at Derby three had been executed, and twenty others transported
or imprisoned for long terms, and these, every one of them, through
the acts and incitements of the emissaries of Ministers themselves. On
the motion for printing the report of the Commons, which, of course,
justified Ministers, Mr. Tierney said it was scarcely worth while
to oppose the printing of "a document so absurd, contemptible, and
ludicrous."

But Ministers were too sensible of the unconstitutional character
of their deeds to rest satisfied with the mere justification of an
accepted report. A Bill of Indemnity was introduced to cover "all
persons who had in 1817 taken any part in apprehending, imprisoning, or
detaining in custody persons suspected of high treason, or treasonable
practices, and in the suppression of tumultuous and unlawful
assemblies." Thus Ministers were shielded under general terms, and to
avoid all appearance of personal movement in this matter by those in
the Cabinet the most immediately active, the Bill was introduced by the
Duke of Montrose, the Master of the Horse.

There was an energetic debate in each House as the Bill passed through.
It was opposed in the Peers by Lords Lansdowne, Holland, and Erskine,
but was carried by ninety-three against twenty-seven. Ten peers entered
a strong protest on the journals against the measure, denying the
traitorous conspiracy or the extensive disaffection to the Government
alleged, affirming that the execution of the ordinary laws would
have been amply sufficient, and that Ministers were not entitled to
indemnity for causeless arrests and long imprisonments which had taken
place, for the Bill went to protect them in decidedly illegal acts.
In the House of Commons the Bill was strongly opposed by Brougham,
Tierney, Mr. Lambton--afterwards Lord Durham--and Sir Samuel Romilly.
They condemned the conduct of Ministers in severe language, while the
Bill was supported by Canning, by Mr. Lamb--afterwards Lord Melbourne,
who generally went with the other side--by Sir William Garrow, and Sir
Samuel Shepherd, Attorney-General.

Ministers carried their indemnity in the Commons by one hundred and
sixty-two against sixty-nine; but this did not prevent a prolongation
of the demands of the Reformers for a searching inquiry into their
employment of the spies. Many petitions were presented to the House
of Commons for this inquiry--one of them from Samuel Bamford, who had
been a sufferer by imprisonment. On the 3rd of February Hone's case
was brought forward by William Smith, of Norwich; on the 10th, Lord
Archibald Hamilton made a motion for inquiry into similar prosecutions
of persons in Scotland, and especially of Andrew M'Kinley, and this
was supported by Sir Samuel Romilly and others, but rejected; yet the
next day Mr. Fazakerley made a demand for a rigid inquiry into the
employment of the spies, and for ascertaining whether they really had
exceeded their instructions. Here was an opportunity for Ministers
to clear themselves, were they really innocent of sending them out
to excite as well as to discover conspirators. There was a violent
debate, but the motion was rejected by one hundred and eleven against
fifty-two. The discussion left no doubt of the employment of Oliver
and others, and this fact being put beyond dispute, Ministers should,
in self-vindication, have cleared themselves, if they were guiltless,
as their friends pretended; but they did not do so. On the 17th Lord
Folkestone moved for inquiry into the treatment in prison of Mr. Ogden
and others, and a similar motion was made on the 19th, in the Lords,
by the Earl of Carnarvon. In both cases Ministers, instead of courting
inquiry, resented it, and closed the door of investigation by large
majorities. Lords Sidmouth, Bathurst, and Liverpool were prominent in
staving off these inquiries; and Lords Grosvenor, King, and Holland
were earnest in urging the necessity of such inquiry for their own
good fame. Lord Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby, put this in the
strongest light. He said that he thought Ministers "had been much
calumniated, but they would be most so by themselves if they refused
to inquire into those acts, when inquiry, according to their own
statements, would fully acquit them of the charges laid against them."
This was so self-evident that the fact that they would not admit this
inquiry might, were there no other grounds for decision, be taken as
positive proof of their guilt. But it is not likely that Oliver and his
comrades, who were for months in daily communication with Ministers
whilst on their detestable missions, would have dared so far to exceed
their orders, or, had they done so, that they would have been protected
at the expense of the reputations of Ministers themselves, and rewarded
into the bargain. The instructions to these men were undoubtedly of too
dark a character to be produced in open daylight.

Amid this melancholy manifestation of a convicted, yet dogged, treason
against the people on the part of their rulers, many motions for reform
and improvements in our laws were brought forward. On the part of Mr.
Sturges Bourne, a committee brought in a report recommending three
Bills for the improvement of the Poor Law: one for the establishment
of select vestries, one for a general reform of the Poor Law, and one
for revising the Law of Settlement. On the part of Henry Brougham, a
Bill was introduced for appointment of commissioners to inquire into
the condition of the charities in England for the education of the
poor. There were many attempts to reform the Criminal Law, in which Sir
Samuel Romilly especially exerted himself. One of these was to take
away the penalty of death from the offence of stealing from a shop to
the value of five shillings, another was to prevent arrests for libel
before indictment was found, and another, by Sir James Mackintosh,
to inquire into the forgery of Bank of England notes. There was a
Bill brought in by Mr. Wynn to amend the Election Laws; and one for
alterations in the Law of Tithes, by Mr. Curwen; another by Sir Robert
Peel, father of the great statesman, for limiting the hours of labour
in cotton and other factories; a Bill to amend the Law of Bankruptcy,
and a Bill to amend the Copyright Act, by Sir Egerton Brydges; and
finally a Bill for Parliamentary Reform, introduced by Sir Francis
Burdett, and supported by Lord Cochrane, subsequently the Earl of
Dundonald. All of these were thrown out, except the Select Vestries
Bill, Brougham's Bill to inquire into the public charities, a Bill for
rewarding apprehenders of highway robbers and other offenders, and a
Bill granting a million of money to build new churches. The cause of
Reform found little encouragement from the Parliamentary majorities of
the Sidmouths, Liverpools, and Castlereaghs. This list of rejections
of projects of reform was far from complete; a long succession
followed. The Scots came with a vigorous demand, made on their behalf
by Lord Archibald Hamilton, for a sweeping reform of their burghs.
Municipal reform was equally needed, both in Scotland and England. The
whole system was flagrantly corrupt. Many boroughs were sinking into
bankruptcy; and the elections of their officers were conducted on the
most arbitrary and exclusive principles. The Scots had agitated this
question before the outbreak of the French Revolution, but that and
the great war issuing out of it had swamped the agitation altogether.
It was now revived, but only to meet with a defeat like a score of
other measures quite as needful. Lord Archibald Hamilton asked for the
abolition of the Scottish Commissary Courts in conformity with the
recommendation of a commission of inquiry in 1808; General Thornton
called for the repeal of certain religious declarations to be made on
taking office; and Dr. Phillimore for amendment of the Marriage Act
of 1753; and numerous demands for the repeal of taxes of one kind or
another all met the same fate of refusal.

The death of the Princess Charlotte left the prospect of the succession
to the Crown equally serious. Of the numerous sons and daughters of
George III. not one had legitimate issue. It might be necessary soon
to look abroad in Germany or in Denmark for an heir to the Crown. This
consideration led to a number of royal marriages during the earlier
part of this year. The first of these marriages was not of this
description. It was that of the Princess Elizabeth, his Majesty's third
daughter, to the Landgrave and Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Homburg, on
the 7th of April. As the princess was already nearly eight-and-forty,
no expectation of issue in that quarter was entertained. On the 13th
of April Lord Liverpool brought down a message from the Regent to the
Peers, and Lord Castlereagh to the Commons, announcing treaties of
marriage in progress between the Duke of Clarence and the Princess
Adelaide Louisa, of Saxe-Meiningen; and also between the Duke of
Cambridge and the Princess Augusta Wilhelmina, of Hesse, youngest
daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse. The House of Commons was also asked
to add an additional ten thousand pounds a year to the allowance of the
Duke of Clarence, and six thousand pounds a year each to those of the
Dukes of Cumberland and Cambridge, and to that of the Duke of Kent,
if he, too, should marry. Ministers intimated that it had been the
intention to ask much larger sums, but they found that it was necessary
to reduce the sum asked for the Duke of Clarence. It was a matter of
notoriety that the duke had already a large family by the actress,
Mrs. Jordan, and probably the feeling of the House was influenced
by his desertion of that lady; but there was a stout opposition
and the sum was reduced to six thousand pounds. Loud acclamations
followed the carrying of this amendment, and Lord Castlereagh rose
and said, after the refusal of the sum asked, he believed he might
say that the negotiation for the marriage might be considered at an
end. The next day the duke sent a message declining the sum granted;
yet, after all, his marriage took place. The Duke of Cumberland was
already married to the Princess Frederica Sophia, the daughter of the
Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who had been divorced from Frederick
Louis, Prince of Prussia. The Duke of Cumberland was one of the most
unpopular men in the whole kingdom, for there were rumours of very
dark passages in his life, and Parliament had rejected an application
for an additional allowance on his marriage; and it now rejected this
application amid much applause. The sum asked for the Duke of Cambridge
was carried, but not without considerable opposition. The spirit of
reform was in the air.

On the 13th of May came down a message, announcing the approaching
marriage of the Duke of Kent with the daughter of the Duke of
Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Victoria Maria Louisa, sister of Prince Leopold,
and widow of Emich Charles, the Prince of Leiningen. The princess was
already the mother of a son and daughter. The nation was extremely
favourable to this match. The Duke of Kent was popular, and the more
so that he had always been treated with unnatural harshness by his
father. He had been put under the care of an old martinet general in
Hanover, who had received a large annual allowance with him, and kept
him so sparely that the poor youth ran away. He had been then sent
to Gibraltar, where the severe discipline which he had been taught
to consider necessary in the army brought him into disgrace with the
garrison. But towards the public at large his conduct had been marked
by much liberality of principle.

It was deemed necessary, before the end of the Session, which would
close the term of Parliament, to renew the Alien Act. It had been
renewed in 1814, and again in 1816, each time for two years. On the
last occasion it had been vehemently opposed, and as determined an
opposition was now manifested against its renewal. From the 5th of May
to the 29th the fight was continued, every opportunity and advantage
which the forms of Parliament afforded being resorted to to delay and
defeat it; but on the 29th it passed the Commons by ninety-four votes
against twenty-nine. It was introduced into the Lords on the 1st of
June by Lord Sidmouth. But it had been discovered that, by an Act of
the Scottish Parliament of 1685, all foreigners holding shares in
the Bank of Scotland to a certain amount became thereby naturalised;
and, by the Act of Union, all subjects of Scotland became naturalised
subjects of England. A clause, therefore, was introduced by the Lords
to obviate this, and passed; but on the Bill being sent down to the
Commons it was struck out; and Ministers were compelled to allow the
Bill without this clause to pass, and to introduce their separate Bill,
which was passed on the 9th of June.

Ministers were in haste to close and dissolve Parliament in order
to call a new one before the very probable demise of the king--for
though they had provided that in case of the decease of the queen
the Parliament should not reassemble, this did not apply to the
decease of the king; and should this take place before the day fixed
for the assembling of the new Parliament, the old Parliament--even
though formally dissolved--would reassemble: therefore, on the 10th
of June--the very day after the passing of the supplementary Alien
Bill--the Prince Regent came down to the House of Lords, prorogued
Parliament, and then immediately the Lord Chancellor pronounced it
dissolved. The members of the Commons were taken by surprise. No such
sudden dismissal had taken place since 1625, when Charles I. dismissed
his Oxford Parliament after a single week's session. On the return to
their own House the Speaker was proceeding, as usual, to read the Royal
Speech, but he was reminded by Mr. Tierney that there was no Parliament
in existence, and by Lord Castlereagh that, by so doing, he might
render himself liable to a Præmunire, and he therefore desisted and the
members withdrew.

The elections for the new Parliament were carried on with much vigour,
and there were upwards of a hundred contested ones. In some cases
the contest was extremely violent, considering the death of the king
was almost daily expected, and that the term of the Parliament must
necessarily be a short one. In Westminster there were no less than six
candidates. Lord Cochrane was about to depart for Chili to take the
command of the naval forces of that state, and therefore did not offer
himself again. There were Sir Francis Burdett again, the Honourable
Douglas Kinnaird, Sir Murray Maxwell, Sir Samuel Romilly, Major
Cartwright, and Mr. Henry Hunt, commonly called Orator Hunt. Of these
Sir Murray Maxwell was a Tory, and received severe treatment. Major
Cartwright and Hunt obtained very little support, and soon withdrew
from the contest. The members returned were Romilly and Burdett, a Whig
and a Radical. For London were returned four new members, all Whigs,
Wood, Wilson, Waithman, and Thorpe. Brougham patriotically stood for
Westmoreland, to break, if possible, the influence of the Lowther
family; but he was compelled to retire on the fourth day, and two of
the Lowther family were returned. A hundred and ninety new members
were returned, and the Opposition gained considerably by the election.
An acute observer, well accustomed to party battles, remarked that
Government did not appear much beloved, and that they had almost spent
all their war popularity; and they were not destined to recover it in
the coming year.

[Illustration: GIBRALTAR.]

Scarcely were the elections over when a strike took place amongst the
working cotton-spinners in Manchester. Food was dear, and the rate of
wages was not in any proportion to the dearness. The men who turned
out paraded the streets, and, as is generally too much the spirit of
strikes, endeavoured forcibly to compel the workmen of other factories
to cease working too. The magistrates, on the 1st of September, issued
a proclamation, that they were determined to resist such attempts,
and to punish the offenders. Sir John Byng, the same who had favoured
the endeavours of Oliver in Yorkshire, commanded the forces there,
and every precaution was taken to secure the factories still in work.
On the very next day the spinners were joined by a great mob from
Stockport, and they endeavoured to break into Gray's mill, in Ancoat's
Lane, and force the men to cease. But there was a party of soldiers
placed within in expectation of the attack, and they fired on the
assailants, and killed one man and wounded two others. The troops
then dispersed the mob, which was said to have amounted to at least
thirty thousand men. This ended the strike and the rioting for the
time. The coroner's jury pronounced the death of the man justifiable
homicide, and Ministers congratulated themselves on the speedy end of
the disturbance. But the elements of fresh ones were rife in the same
districts. The country was by no means in the prosperous condition that
they had represented it.

In the autumn the great Congress of Sovereigns assembled at
Aix-la-Chapelle. We have already anticipated their chief object--the
final evacuation of France by the Allied troops, and the settlement
of compensations. They assembled about the middle of September,
and remained together till the middle of November. Their business
conferences, however, did not commence till the 30th of September.
With regard to the evacuation of France, we need only state that it
was greatly promoted by the exertions of the Duke of Wellington.
Robert Owen was there to endeavour to enlist the Sovereigns in his
schemes of social reform, but did not make any proselytes amongst the
crowned heads, though the Czar Alexander told him he fully entered into
his views, as he was generally accustomed to tell all reformers and
religious professors, leaving them in the pleasing delusion that they
had won him to their opinions. Clarkson was there to engage them to
sanction the suppression of the slave trade, but with as indifferent a
result. This was the closing scene of the great European drama, which
opened with the French Revolution and terminated with the capture of
Buonaparte. The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle may be regarded as the
recital of the epilogue.

The year 1818 did not close without one more brush of war. This was
in India. There had not been much quiet, even after the destruction
of Tippoo Sultan and the power of Mysore. When the Earl of Moira
(afterwards Marquis of Hastings) succeeded, as Governor-General,
to Earl Minto, in 1813, he found the country still disturbed in
different directions, particularly on the north-west frontiers. The
Burmese engaged his immediate attention, and then the Nepaulese,
who were not quietened till after two campaigns. But there was a
far more troublesome enemy than either of these in the field. These
were the Pindarrees, a multitude of horsemen made up of the scum
of Hindostan--men who had either lost caste, or never had any--who
formed themselves into flying bands, and with the swiftness of the
wind rushed down on the cultivated districts, and swept all before
them--cattle, sheep, money, jewels, everything that could be made prey
of. The two most celebrated chiefs of the Pindarrees were Kureem and
Cheetoo, but Cheetoo managed to put down Kureem, and became the one
great and formidable head of these robbers. In 1811 he rode at the
head of twenty-five thousand cavalry. In 1814, whilst our troops were
engaged in Nepaul, the Pindarrees, under Cheetoo, crossed the Nerbudda,
the Godavery, and advanced to the Kistnah, ravaging the whole of the
Deccan and the neighbouring territories; and in spite of our forces
under Major Frazer in one direction, and Colonel Doveton in another,
they effected their retreat across the Nerbudda again, loaded with
enormous booty. In 1816 they made a still more extensive incursion,
ten thousand of them descending into the Madras Presidency as far as
Guntoor, and though Colonel Doveton exerted himself to come up with
them, it was in vain. In twelve days Cheetoo's marauders had plundered
three hundred and ninety villages in the Company's territory, put to
death one hundred and eighty-two people, wounded five hundred and five,
and tortured in various ways three thousand six hundred.

It was now found that our pretended Mahratta allies, the Peishwa,
Scindiah, and other chiefs, were in league with Cheetoo, and unless
this conspiracy were broken the most fearful devastations might be
expected on our states. The Governor-General represented this to the
authorities at home, and recommended that the Pindarrees should be
regularly hunted down and destroyed. In the course of 1816 he received
full authority to execute this scheme. At the end of October he posted
Lieutenant-Colonel Walker along the southern bank of the Nerbudda, to
prevent the Pindarrees from crossing into the Company's territories;
but as the line of river thus to be guarded was one hundred and fifty
miles in length, the force employed was found insufficient against such
adroit and rapid enemies. In November Cheetoo dashed across the river
between Lieutenant-Colonel Walker's posts, and his forces dividing,
one part made a rapid gallop through forests, and over rivers and
mountains, right across the continent, into the district of Ganjam, in
the northern Circars, hoping to reach Juggernaut and plunder the temple
of its enormous wealth. But this division was met with in Ganjam by the
Company's troops, and driven back with severe loss. The other division
descended into the Deccan, as far as Beeder, where it again divided:
one portion being met with by Major Macdonald, who had marched from
Hyderabad, was completely cut up, though it was six thousand strong.
The other body struck westward into Konkan, under a chief named Sheik
Dulloo, and then, turning north, plundered all the western coast, and
escaped with the booty beyond the Nerbudda, though not without some
loss at the hands of the British troops on that river.

As it was now clearly useless to endeavour to prevent these desperate
hordes from crossing the Nerbudda, it was determined to march into
their own retreats beyond that river, and regularly hunt them down.
Sir John Malcolm, one of our ablest officers, who has left us a most
graphic account of these transactions, had just now returned from
England, and he was appointed, with Major-General Marshall, to this
service. Not only Cheetoo, but Kureem, was again on foot; and Sir John
learnt that Cheetoo was posted near the camp of the Holkar Mahrattas,
and had received a lac and sixty thousand rupees from the Peishwa. By
this time he had advanced as far as Agra, but on this information he
fell back on Oojein, where Sir Thomas Hislop lay with another body of
troops. On the 21st of December, 1817, Holkar's army and Cheetoo's
army made a united attack on the British at Mahidpore, on the banks of
the Seepra. They were received with a murderous slaughter, and fled,
leaving seventy pieces of artillery, all they had, and a great quantity
of arms. They fled in confusion to Rampoora, a fortified town in Malwa.
The British on their part had suffered severely, having one hundred and
seventy-four killed, and six hundred and four wounded. Amongst these
were thirty-five officers wounded, half of them severely.

Sir John Malcolm and Captain Grant pursued the fugitives along the
banks of the Seepra, killing numbers, and seizing immense booty,
including elephants and numerous camels. He left them no time to
reassemble, but advanced rapidly on the capital of Holkar, joined by
reinforcements from the Bombay army under Major-General Sir William
Keir. Alarmed at this vigorous action, the Holkar Mahrattas hastily
concluded peace, gave up all their forts, and placed their territories
under British protection. Some Pathan chiefs attempted to resist,
trusting to the defences of Rampoora; but General Brown soon stormed
that place, and the whole country of the Holkar Mahrattas was reduced
to obedience. No respite was granted to the Pindarrees. Cheetoo was
followed from place to place by the Gujerat army under Sir William
Keir, and sought refuge in vain amongst the hills and jungles of Malwa
and along the Nerbudda. At length, in January, 1818, Cheetoo's last
camp was surprised and cut to pieces. After seeking refuge amongst
various tribes, Cheetoo was ultimately found in the jungle near the
fort of Aseerghur, torn to pieces by a tiger, his horse grazing not far
off, safe, and a bag on his saddle containing his remaining jewels and
two hundred and fifty rupees. And thus ended the existence of the long
formidable hosts of the Pindarrees.

Whilst this extirpation of the Pindarrees had been going on, the
cholera broke out at Jessore, in the low lands of the Delta of the
Ganges. This fatal disease has been supposed by medical men to receive
its force, if not its origin, from the want of salt in this unhealthy
district. Salt being one of the monopolies of the East India Company,
it was not permitted, though abundant in Madras, to be carried into
Bengal except on payment of a duty of two hundred per cent. The
natives, therefore, who subsisted on a rice diet, not being able to
procure this necessary antiseptic, frequently fell victims to the
terrible scourge of cholera. From this centre, where it may fairly be
said to have raged in perpetuity, it now spread rapidly up the course
of the Ganges, the Jumna, and their confluent rivers, and if the
British impost on salt had anything to do with the prevalence of the
epidemic, a severe retribution now fell upon those who profited by it.
The Marquis of Hastings, the Governor-General, was posted in Bundelcund
with his army, when it appeared there and swept away thousands. The
very men attending on the Governor-General at dinner dropped down
behind his chair and died. To seek a healthier region, he marched
eastward, but all the way the pest pursued him, and when he reached
the healthy station of Erich, on the right bank of the Betwah river,
towards the end of November, one-tenth of the force had fallen under
its ravages. The scourge did not stop there, but for a number of years
continued to spread at an amazing speed, and eventually overspread
Europe with its horrors.

During the time that Malcolm, Keir, Hislop, and other officers were
running down the Pindarrees, Major-General Smith, who had received
reinforcements at Poonah, was performing the same service against Bajee
Rao, the Peishwa who had furnished Cheetoo with funds. He marched from
Poonah at the end of November, 1817, accompanied by Mr. Mountstuart
Elphinstone. They encountered the army of the Peishwa on the Kistnah,
where his general, Gokla, had posted himself strongly in a ghaut. The
pass was speedily cleared, and the army of the Peishwa made a rapid
retreat. The chase was continued from place to place, the Peishwa
dodging about in an extraordinary manner, till, at length, he managed
to get behind General Smith, and, passing between Poonah and Seroor, he
was joined by his favourite Trimbukjee, whom he had long lost sight of,
with strong reinforcements of both horse and infantry. General Smith,
so soon as he could discover the route of the Peishwa, pursued it,
but soon after the Mahrattas showed themselves again in the vicinity
of Poonah. To secure that city from the Peishwa's arms, Captain F. F.
Staunton was dispatched from Seroor on the last day of the year with
six hundred sepoys, three hundred horse, and two six-pounders; but he
was not able to reach Poonah. The very next day, the 1st of January,
1818, he found his way barred by the whole army of the Peishwa,
consisting of twenty thousand horse and several thousand foot. Could
they have remained a little longer, General Smith, who was on the track
of the Peishwa, would have been up to support them. But in the night of
the 2nd of January, having no provisions, Staunton fell back, carrying
with him all his wounded and his guns, and reached Seroor by nine
o'clock on the morning of the 3rd of January.

[Illustration: SURRENDER OF THE PEISHWA. (_See p._ 141.)]

That very day General Smith reached Corregaum in force, and at this
apparition the Peishwa fled back towards the sources of the Kistnah,
whence he had descended. Not only General Smith, but Brigadier-General
Pritzler and Colonel Boles kept up the pursuit, advancing from
different quarters, as the slippery Mahratta chief turned and
manœuvred. At length weary of the chase, they determined to reduce
Satara, his capital, and then each of his strong forts and towns one
after another, thus depriving him of supplies, and leaving him no
place of refuge or subsistence. Satara surrendered to General Smith on
the 10th of February, the same day that he appeared before it. As one
place after another fell, Gokla, the Peishwa's general, made an effort
to arrest this process of reduction, and this enabled General Smith
to attack him on the 20th of February, at Ashtee, where he completely
routed him. Gokla himself was killed, and the Peishwa only escaped
by abandoning his palanquin and mounting a horse. General Smith and
Lieutenant Warrand were wounded, but not a man was killed on the
British side. Great booty was taken, including twelve elephants and
fifty-seven camels.

The remnant of the Mahratta army fled northwards, pursued and
continually reduced by the British. At the same time the reduction of
the towns and forts was steadily going on, and every day the fugitive
Peishwa became more and more involved in the toils of his enemies. He
endeavoured to escape into Nagpore, but on the banks of the Wurda he
was met, on the 1st of April, by Colonel Scott and driven back, only
to fall into the hands of Colonel Adams, who attacked him near Soonee
with only one regiment of native cavalry and some horse artillery, and
gave him a thorough defeat, taking five guns, three elephants, and two
hundred camels. More than a thousand Mahrattas fell, and the Peishwa
himself narrowly escaped, his palanquin, which he had abandoned, being
found shot through. Bajee Rao now endeavoured to get to the north-east
into Malwa, but he was stopped by General Sir Thomas Hislop, who was
advancing from that quarter towards the Deccan. At length, his forces
dispersed, his towns in possession of the British, his way on all
sides cut off, the Peishwa came in and surrendered himself to Sir John
Malcolm, on the 3rd of June, 1818, on promise of good treatment. Sir
John granted him eight lacs of rupees per annum, on condition that
he resigned the title of Peishwa for ever, and surrendered all his
possessions. This was confirmed by the Supreme Government at Calcutta.
Thus was the existence of the Pindarrees, and the power of the
Mahrattas, broken up, and the Rajah of Satara restored. He was a minor,
but on reaching the age of twenty-one, which was in the year 1821,
he was invested with the government of his dominions. These included
a district of about eleven thousand square miles, and produced a net
revenue of fifteen million rupees. Out of this, however, three lacs per
annum were reserved for chiefs who had become subjects of the Company,
and three more lacs were alienated. As for Trimbukjee, whose crimes and
murders had determined the British to secure him at any cost, he was
discovered, after a long quest, in the neighbourhood of Nassick, by
Captain Swanston, and carried to Tannah, the prison from which he had
escaped. He was thence transferred to Calcutta, and finally to the rock
of Chunar, near Benares. The last success of this war was the reduction
of the fortress of Aseerghur, one of the most formidable strongholds in
India, which had undergone some most arduous sieges.

None of the princes who accepted our protection benefited more than
Scindiah. He was relieved from the insolence of haughty military
chieftains, who commanded his armies, and left him as little free will
as they left to his subjects quiet possession of their property. He
was enabled to disband his vast armies, and reduce them to thirteen
thousand infantry and nine thousand horse. His disbanded soldiers
returned home, and became tillers of the land lately running into
jungle, by which, and other influences of peace, his revenue was nearly
doubled. All the districts wrested from him by the Pindarrees were
restored to him; he lost only the mischievous fortress of Aseerghur.
Sir John Malcolm cleared the country of the swarms of Arabs, and
of Mekranees from Beluchistan, who had acquired a most formidable
ascendency in the armies of the Indian chiefs; and these chiefs
were informed that again to employ these mercenary ruffians, or to
allow them to remain on their territories, would be regarded as a
declaration of hostility by the British Government. Similar changes
were introduced into the territories of the dethroned Peishwa by the
Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, who resided at Poonah; and by the
conquest of the Poonah territory, by the treaty of Mundissoor, made by
Sir John Malcolm after his great victory at Mahidpore, and by exchanges
made with the Guicowar of Baroda, and other arrangements, the British
dominions were now linked together in one broad and continuous expanse,
from Calcutta to Bombay, and from Bombay to Madras, as by the former
Mahratta war they had been established between Madras and Calcutta.

If we were to believe figures, and the returns of exports and imports,
and of duties paid, we must set down the opening of the year 1819 as
considerably prosperous. This was the view which Ministers took of the
condition of Great Britain when they met the new Parliament on the
14th of January. The speculations that had been carried on during 1818
had swelled the revenue, and given an impression of growing commerce,
which unfortunately did not exist. The results of these speculations in
imports of raw material, especially of cotton, and in extensive exports
of manufactures to countries not yet sufficiently reinvigorated to
purchase, had produced numerous and heavy failures during the latter
part of the past year, and these still continued, in strange contrast
to the self-congratulating language of Ministers. In nothing was the
fall of price so great as in cotton, and those who had bought largely
suffered in proportion. These bankruptcies were not confined to Great
Britain; they extended to New York, and to southern ports of the United
States, where the same speculation had been going on largely.

Besides the flattering assurances of the steady improvement in commerce
and manufactures, and, consequently, in the revenues, the Regent's
Speech, read, as usual, by the Lord Chancellor, justly congratulated
the country on the successful termination of the Pindarree war by the
Marquis of Hastings. It informed the two Houses that a new treaty had
been entered into with the United States for adjusting the different
points at issue between the two nations, not settled by the treaty of
peace, and also for regulating the commerce between them. It announced
the results of the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle, and stated that some
new measures were needed for the care of his Majesty's person in
consequence of the death of the queen. The Address, in both Houses, was
carried almost _pro formâ_. Mr. Manners Sutton was elected Speaker of
the Commons by acclamation.

The new arrangements for the care of the king's person came on first
for discussion. On the 25th of January Lord Liverpool introduced a
Bill to make the Duke of York guardian of his Majesty's person in
place of the late queen. This question was decided with little debate.
On the 4th of February a message was brought down from the Regent
informing the House of Commons that, in consequence of the demise of
her Majesty, fifty-eight thousand pounds became disposable for the
general purposes of the Civil List; and recommending that the claims
of her late Majesty's servants to the liberality of the House should
be considered. Lord Castlereagh moved that the House should go into
committee on this subject, as, besides the fifty-eight thousand pounds,
there was another sum of one hundred thousand pounds, which had been
appropriated to the maintenance of the establishment at Windsor. It
was understood that Ministers would propose to reduce the sum for the
establishment at Windsor to fifty thousand pounds, but that they would
recommend that ten thousand pounds, which her Majesty had received in
consideration of her charge of the king, should be transferred to the
Duke of York. Mr. Tierney objected to the charge of fifty thousand
pounds for the maintenance of the establishment at Windsor. He said
he could not conceive how this money was to be spent, or on whom, for
certainly it could not be on the king, who, he understood, was in that
state of mental and bodily debility which made it necessary that as
few persons as possible should be about him, and that his regimen was
so very simple that it could cost next to nothing.

On the 22nd the Commons went into committee on this subject, and Mr.
Tierney then proposed that both the establishment at Windsor and the
salary to the Duke of York should be paid out of the Privy Purse
or other private funds of the Crown. There was a private property
belonging to the Crown of one hundred and forty thousand pounds a year,
and surely this was sufficient to defray the charge of the necessary
care of the king's person. He reminded the House also of the sums which
had been voted for the royal family since 1811. Besides fifty thousand
pounds a year set apart for the debts of the Prince Regent, he had a
privy purse of sixty thousand pounds a year, besides an additional
grant of ten thousand pounds a year made since. The king had also
a privy purse of sixty thousand pounds a year, with an additional
revenue of ten thousand pounds from the Duchy of Lancaster. Surely,
out of all these sums, there must be ample means of taking care of the
king's person. To all these second statements Mr. Peel--afterwards
the Sir Robert who began his political career in the ranks of high
Toryism--replied that the Duke of York would accept no salary which
came from the Privy Purse, and he quoted Sheridan and Adam, old friends
of the Prince Regent, and staunch Whigs, who had zealously advocated
the sacredness of the Privy Purse. When the vote was taken for the
disposal of the sum for the Windsor establishment, it was carried by
two hundred and eighty against one hundred and eighty-six, a sufficient
proof that in the new Parliament the Government possessed a strong
majority. On the 25th the proposal to confer on the Duke of York
ten thousand pounds per annum, for this charge of his own father's
person, was also carried by a still larger majority--two hundred and
forty-seven against one hundred and thirty-seven. In the debate, Denman
and Brougham opposed the vote, and Canning supported it. In the House
of Peers Lords Grey, Lansdowne, and other Whig peers opposed the vote
of the ten thousand pounds to the Duke of York. And truly, in private
life, it would not have seemed very filial conduct for a man, already
possessing a large income, to require a great annual payment for
discharging the simple duty of seeing that his aged father, a gentleman
also of ample means, was well looked after.

A great portion of the present Session was occupied with discussing
the return to cash payments, which, by the Act of Parliament, ought to
take place on the 5th of July of this year. It appears that no less
than fifty debates and conversations in both Houses took place on this
important subject during the Session. Very soon after the meeting of
Parliament a secret committee of each House was appointed to inquire
into the state of the Bank. These committees were, however, so managed,
by delivering to the members lists of suitable persons for such
committees, that scarcely any but Ministerial men were voted, though
these votes were given by ballot. In the Commons this result was so
evident that the Opposition declined to vote at all. The first reports
of the committees went rather to close more strictly than to open the
issue of gold by the Bank. It had been paying in gold its notes issued
previous to January, 1817. This payment it was proposed to stop, as,
at present, evidently injurious to the interests of the country. Mr.
Peel, on moving for a Bill for this purpose, stated that the gold at
the present price was fast finding its way abroad, and was as rapidly
absorbed in re-minting a gold coinage for France. It appeared that
during the first half of 1818 gold to the value of no less than one
hundred and twenty-eight million francs had been coined at the French
mint, of which three-fourths were derived from the gold coinage of
England. A Bill was accordingly passed to stop payment altogether
in gold till the necessary preparations were made by a fresh Bill.
Still, the condition of the Bank was represented as flourishing. Its
liabilities were stated in January, 1819, as amounting to thirty-three
million eight hundred and ninety-four thousand five hundred and eighty
pounds; its assets, including the debt due from Government, fifty-three
million seven hundred and eighty-three thousand seven hundred pounds.
The total Bank surplus appeared to be nineteen million eight hundred
and eighty-nine thousand one hundred and twenty pounds; and its
surplus, independent of the Government debt, and therefore available
for current use, was five million two hundred and two thousand
three hundred and twenty pounds. The committees adopted the scheme
broached by Mr. Ricardo in his "Proposals for an Economical and Secure
Currency," published in 1816. This was that the Bank, in the first
instance, should not pay for its notes in gold coin, but in ingots of
a certain weight, its fineness being attested by a stamp; and this
degree of purity should be regulated from time to time till the gold
descended to the Mint price of three pounds seventeen shillings and
tenpence-halfpenny per ounce. When the Mint gold at length reached this
rate of value, then the payment in coin was to be begun. Resolutions to
this effect were moved by the Earl of Harrowby on the 21st of May, and
they received the approval, not only of the Ministerial side, but of
the leading Opposition members, Lords Grenville, Lansdowne, and King.

In the House of Commons similar resolutions were moved on the 24th
by Mr. Robert Peel, who, on this occasion, made the first of those
candid admissions of new views which he afterwards repeated on the
question of Catholic Emancipation, and finally on the abolition of the
Corn Laws. This eminent statesman, though beginning his career in the
ranks of Conservatism, had a mind capable of sacrificing prejudice to
truth, though it was certain to procure him much obloquy and opposition
from his former colleagues. He now frankly admitted that the evidence
produced before the secret committee of the Commons, of which he had
been a member, had greatly changed his views regarding the currency
since in 1811 he opposed the resolutions of Mr. Horner, the chairman
of the Bullion Committee. He now believed the doctrines of Mr. Horner
to be mainly sound, and to represent the true nature of our monetary
system; and, whilst making this confession, he had only to regret
that he was compelled by his convictions to vote in opposition to the
opinions of his venerated father. Several modifications were proposed
during the debate, but there appeared so much unanimity in the House
that no alterations were made, and the resolutions passed without a
division. The resolutions were to this effect:--That the restrictions
on cash payments should continue till the 1st of May, 1822; that,
meanwhile, the House should make provision for the gradual payment of
ten millions of the fourteen millions due from the Government to the
Bank; that, from the 1st of February, 1820, the Bank should take up its
notes in gold ingots, stamped and assayed in quantities of not less
than sixty ounces, and at a rate of eighty-one shillings per ounce.
After the 1st of October of the same year the rate of gold should be
reduced to seventy-nine shillings and sixpence per ounce; and again
on the 1st of May, 1821, the price should be reduced to seventy-seven
shillings and tenpence halfpenny per ounce; and at this rate of gold,
on the 1st of May, 1822, the Bank should finally commence paying in
the gold coin of the realm. Bills to this effect were introduced into
both Houses by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Peel, and were
readily passed; and such was the flourishing condition of the Bank
that it did not wait for the full operation of the Act, but commenced
paying in coin to any amount on the 1st of May, 1821.

[Illustration: THE MINT, LONDON.]

The select committee of the Commons appointed at the instance of Lord
Castlereagh, to inquire into the state of the national income and
expenditure, now presented its report on the 3rd of June, and it was
agreed to. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated on its authority
that, since 1815, taxation had been reduced eighteen million pounds
per annum; that in 1816 the revenue of Great Britain and Ireland had
been consolidated, and that, at that time, the interest of the Debt
of Ireland, including the Sinking Fund provided for its reduction,
exceeded the entire revenue of that part of the United Kingdom by
one million nine hundred thousand pounds. He then announced that
supplies for the present year would be required to the amount of
twenty million five hundred thousand pounds; that the existing revenue
would only furnish seven million pounds towards this; and that it
would be necessary to have recourse to the Sinking Fund to make up
the deficiency of thirteen million five hundred thousand pounds. This
Sinking Fund was fifteen million five hundred thousand pounds, so that
it would leave only two million pounds; but as it was necessary to have
a tolerable surplus in hand to meet exigencies, it was proposed to
raise this reserve fund to five million pounds by fresh taxes to the
amount of three million pounds.

On this basis Mr. Vansittart, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on
the 9th of June, produced his Budget. Including the interest on the
Debt, the whole annual expenditure amounted to seventy-six million,
seventy-four thousand pounds--an ominous peace expenditure. Instead,
therefore, of the supplies, aided by the draft from the Sinking Fund,
leaving a surplus of two million pounds, a fresh loan of twelve million
pounds--besides the three million pounds of new taxes on malt, tobacco,
coffee, cocoa, tea, British spirits, pepper, and foreign wool was
needed. By the hocus-pocus of Exchequer accounts this was made to look
like a reduction of the Debt instead of an increase of it; but the
country saw with dismay that three years after the peace the incubus
of past war was still adding to its burden. Mr. Tierney, on the 18th,
moved for a committee to inquire into the state of the nation, but
this was negatived by three hundred and fifty-seven votes against one
hundred and seventy-eight; and a motion of Sir Henry Parnell on the 1st
of July for extensive retrenchments was got rid of in the same manner.

[Illustration: SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY.]

But amid the discouragements of monetary legislation, which showed that
it would require a determined contest to compel Ministers to retrench,
there were symptoms of a spirit of legal and social reform amongst
Parliamentary men generally which augured the approach of better times.
Mr. Sturges Bourne obtained the passing of his long-advocated Poor Law
Bill; but Bills for regulating settlements, and for preventing the
misapplication of the poor rates, were thrown out. A Bill was passed
to regulate the treatment of children in cotton factories, and to
limit the hours of their employment. Mr. Brougham's Act for inquiry
into the charitable foundations of England was extended, with the
support of Government, so as to apply to educational as well as to
all kinds of charities, except such as had special visitors, or were
maintained by private subscriptions. Sir James Mackintosh also took up
the humane track of labour occupied so nobly by the late Sir Samuel
Romilly. On the 2nd of March he moved for the appointment of a select
committee to take into consideration the subject of capital punishment
as regarded felonies. This was eminently needed, for the penal laws
during the reign of George III. were truly Draconian. Notwithstanding
a strong opposition by Ministers, the motion was carried, amid much
cheering, and on the 6th of July Sir James Mackintosh introduced the
report, which was ordered to be printed. Government, as if to wipe
out their disgrace in resisting so humane a measure, now proposed an
inquiry into the condition of gaols and other places of confinement,
and into the best method of employing and reforming delinquents during
their imprisonment. Some reforms were made in Scottish law. The old
rights of trial by battle, and of appeals of murder, felony, or mayhem,
were abolished as rendered unnecessary by the full exercise of the
institution of jury, and as belonging only to a barbarous age. The
severity of the Scottish law against duels was mitigated, that law
pronouncing forfeiture of all movable property, and banishment against
all persons sending, or even carrying, a challenge to fight a duel. The
principle of that law was sound, but its severity was its own defeat.
A more questionable Bill was one carried, after much opposition,
called the Foreign Enlistment Bill, which was intended to check the
aid of Englishmen in assisting the Spanish South American colonists in
throwing off the oppressive government of the mother country. Numbers
of Englishmen were engaged on the side of independence, and this Bill
was vainly intended to put an end to that generous aid.

The Scottish burgh question was brought forward again this Session.
The magistrates of the burgh of Aberdeen having been elected, in 1817,
in the same corrupt manner as those of Montrose had been in 1816,
the Court of Session had declared the election illegal. The burgh of
Montrose was found to have been disfranchised; but this was not the
case with Aberdeen, and the magistrates applied to Government to grant
a warrant for a new election, or rather a re-election of themselves.
This the Government, in the face of the decision of the Court of
Session, as well as of a numerously signed petition from the burgesses
praying that the election should be by open poll, issued. On the 1st of
April Lord Archibald Hamilton moved an address to the Prince Regent,
praying for a copy of this warrant. It was strenuously resisted by
Ministers, but the motion was lost by only a small majority. On the
6th of May Lord Archibald Hamilton renewed his motion in another
form--namely, that the petitions which had been presented from Scottish
burghs on the subject of Reform should be submitted to a committee of
inquiry. He showed that out of sixty-six royal burghs thirty-nine had
voted for Reform; that these thirty-nine contained a population of four
hundred and twenty thousand souls, whilst the remaining twenty-seven
contained only sixty thousand. The preponderance was so great that, in
spite of the opposition of Ministers, the House took another view of
the matter, and Lord Archibald's motion was carried, though only by one
hundred and forty-nine votes against one hundred and forty-four.

The question of Catholic Emancipation was brought forward on the 3rd of
May, by Grattan: it was the last time that he did so, but he had the
satisfaction of seeing that the question was rapidly advancing, for it
was lost by only two votes. A fortnight afterwards Lord Donoughmore
introduced a similar motion, in the hope of surmounting this small
difference, but, after a long debate, he found the majority increased
against it by thirty-nine votes. The closing contest of the Session
was for Parliamentary Reform. Sir Francis Burdett brought on his
annual motion, on the 1st of July, for the eighteenth time, but was
defeated by one hundred and fifty-three votes against fifty-eight. He
was seconded by Mr. George Lamb, younger brother of Lord Melbourne,
who, however, did not go the length of annual parliaments and universal
suffrage. Even at that day, Joseph Hume was for moderate reform, and
Lord John Russell was alarmed at anything further than Triennial
Parliaments, and the transferring the franchise from certain corrupt
boroughs to others not yet represented. Such were the feeble ideas of
Reform amongst its self-constituted leaders. Parliament was prorogued,
on the 13th of July, by the Prince Regent in person.

During this first Session of the new Parliament Ministers had carried
matters with a high hand, imagining that they had a majority which
would enable them to resist popular opinion, as they had done since the
conclusion of the war. But the progress of the Session did not warrant
this conclusion. They were defeated in several very important contests,
and before the Session came to an end were made to feel that they had
greatly declined in public confidence. In the severe debate of the
18th of May, on the motion of Mr. Tierney for a Committee of Inquiry
into the state of the nation, they had a majority of more than two to
one. But this was very different on the 3rd of June, when they only
carried their Foreign Enlistment Bill by a majority of thirteen. On the
question of the resumption of cash payments, the conversion of Mr. Peel
to the principles of Horner was a rude shock to the Cabinet, and shrewd
men prognosticated that, the entire system of Mr. Vansittart being thus
overturned, he must retire. Then came not merely partial conversions,
or near approaches to defeat, but actual defeats. Such were those on
Sir James Mackintosh's motion for inquiry into the criminal laws, and
on Lord Archibald Hamilton's for Scottish burgh Reform. The question
of Catholic Emancipation had approached to a crisis, and a majority
of only two against it was, in truth, a real defeat. The consequence
was that the conviction of the insecurity of Ministers was not only
shared by men of impartial judgment, but by themselves. Towards the
end of the Session Lord Liverpool himself was found writing to a
friend, that unless the measure for the return to cash payments raised
the confidence of the public in them, they must soon go out:--"I am
quite satisfied that, if we cannot carry what has been proposed, it is
far better for the country that we should cease to be a government.
After the defeats we have already experienced during this Session,
our remaining in office is a positive evil. It confounds all ideas of
government in the minds of men. It disgraces us personally, and renders
us less capable every day of being of any real service to the country,
either now or hereafter. If, therefore, things are to remain as they
are, I am quite sure that there is no advantage, in any way, in our
being the persons to carry on the public service. A strong and decisive
effort can alone redeem our character and credit, and is as necessary
for the country as it is for ourselves."

This appeal did something to strengthen them, but not permanently. The
fact that Parliament might terminate any day from the death of the
king did much to keep members in remembrance of their constituents;
but the great cause of Ministerial decay of popularity was that the
circumstance and spirit of the times demanded more liberal legislation
than such men as Liverpool, Sidmouth, and Eldon could comprehend,
much less originate. The manufacturing districts were especially in
a depressed condition. The efforts which had been made to force a
trade had failed. The excessive exportation of manufactured goods had
resulted exactly as Brougham had prognosticated: the foreign markets
had been glutted before the people were capable of buying, and the
fall in prices had been ruinous. The equally great importation of
raw material to continue the supply of fabrics for which the demand
was inadequate, had made matters worse. The bankruptcies during the
first half of this year were double the average number, credit was
severely shaken, and numbers of workmen were thrown out of employment
or reduced to very low wages. Wheat, though not so high as a year
or two ago, averaged eighty shillings per quarter. The consequence
was a renewed political action, and meetings were called by the
workmen in various parts of the manufacturing districts to consider
both their unsatisfactory position and the governmental as well as
commercial causes of it. The Corn Laws were justly denounced as one
potent cause of their sufferings, and the popular leaders of Reform
were called upon to assist them in getting rid of it. So early as the
18th of January a meeting of this character was held at Manchester.
Application had been made to the borough-reeve to summon a meeting to
petition Parliament for this object, but he declined, the Manchester
authorities of that day standing strangely aloof from the people in
their endeavours for relief from this enactment, which was as inimical
to their own interests as manufacturers, as it was to the comfort of
their work-people.

Refused in this quarter, the people proceeded to hold a meeting without
such sanction, and invited Mr. "Orator" Hunt to go down and take the
chair. Perhaps they could not have selected a more unsafe guide on the
occasion, for personal vanity was Hunt's besetting sin. Hunt, instead
of encouraging the very constitutional object of the meeting--to
petition Parliament for the repeal of the obnoxious law--treated
the petitioning that House as ridiculous, and persuaded the excited
people to put their sentiments into the form of a remonstrance to the
Prince Regent. The meeting then dispersed quietly; but Hunt found
occasion to keep himself in the public eye there a little longer. Some
officers of the 7th Hussars, who were posted at Manchester, treated
him rudely as he appeared at the theatre, asserting that when "God
Save the King" was called for, he hissed. Whether he did so or not,
the conduct of the officers answered his purpose of making political
capital; he wrote to the Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of York, and
then sent his letter to the newspapers. Still more, he wrote to Samuel
Bamford to support him in a scheme which was particularly calculated to
produce riot and bloodshed, and in this case Bamford did not exercise
his usual good sense. At Hunt's suggestion--to select a dozen stout
fellows, and appear on the evening of the following Monday in the
pit of the theatre, armed with stout cudgels, to inflict a summary
chastisement on the officers in case of a second demonstration of
their feelings--Bamford appeared at the time appointed with ten stout,
picked fellows, with knotty cudgels, marching along the streets to
the theatre. The object was immediately perceived by the people, who
crowded to the door of the theatre, completely filling the space in
front. But the manager was too prudent to open his theatre in such
circumstances. He announced that there would be no performance that
evening. Hunt was, therefore, disappointed of a catastrophe in the
theatre; but he drove up in a carriage, mounted the box, and addressed
the crowd in very exciting tones, declaring that the magistrates
desired nothing so much as an opportunity of letting loose the bloody
butchers of Waterloo upon them--meaning the 7th Hussars. It was not his
fault that all went off quietly.

In May the gingham-weavers of Carlisle and that neighbourhood held a
similar gathering, and in June meetings were held on Hunslet Common,
near Leeds, at Glasgow, Ashton-under-Lyne, and other places. The
meeting at Glasgow, on the 16th of June, was held on the Green, and
amounted to thirty or forty thousand people. They complained of the
low wages for cotton-weaving, and proposed a petition to the Prince
Regent, praying that he would enable them to get over to Canada,
promising that all such as received that favour should repay the
outlay by yearly instalments. But the bulk of the assembly protested
against emigration, asserting that the remedy for their distresses
lay in annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and the consequent
reduction of taxation; and they proposed that they should march up to
London in a body, and present their petition to the Prince Regent in
person. At Ashton the chair was taken by the Rev. Joseph Harrison,
and the strange creature called Dr. Healey, of whom Bamford gives an
extraordinary account in his "Life of a Radical," made a most wild and
seditious harangue. At a great meeting at Stockport, on the 28th of the
same month, a very different personage presided. This was Sir Charles
Wolseley, of Wolseley Park, in Staffordshire. Sir Charles said that
he had been engaged in the outbreak of the French Revolution, and had
assisted in the taking of the Bastille, and that he would spend his
last drop of blood, if it were necessary, in destroying the Bastilles
of his own country. The acquisition of such an advocate of Reform was
not likely to be received with apathy. Sir Charles was invited to
preside at a similar meeting at New Hall, near Birmingham, on the 12th
of July. At this meeting he was elected "legislatorial attorney and
representative" for that town. This was a circumstance that excited
the alarm of Government. They immediately issued warrants for the
apprehension both of Sir Charles and of Dr. Harrison for seditious
expressions used at the Stockport meeting. Sir Charles was arrested at
his own house, at Wolseley Park; and Harrison was taken on the platform
of a public meeting, at Smithfield, in London, on the 21st of July,
at which Hunt was presiding. On conveying Harrison to Stockport, the
constable who arrested him was attacked by the mob, and a pistol was
fired at him, the ball of which lodged in his body.

Circumstances appeared now to be growing serious. Meetings were
held in defiance of the strict measures of Government throughout
the manufacturing districts; and at Blackburn it was announced at
such a gathering, on the 5th of July, that the women had also formed
themselves into "Sister Reform Associations," and these called on their
own sex everywhere to imitate their example, so as to co-operate with
the men, and to instil into the minds of their children a hatred of
tyrannical rulers. The men, at the same time, made another advance in
the Reform agitation; this was drilling-a movement which gave great
alarm to the magistrates of Lancashire, who wrote from various quarters
to apprise Government of it. It was a circumstance that might well
excite suspicion that something more than Reform was intended. But
when it came to be explained by the parties themselves, it turned out
to mean nothing more than that the Reformers in the neighbourhood of
Manchester were intending to hold a great meeting in order to elect a
representative, as the people of Birmingham had done, and that they
wished to assemble in the utmost order and quiet. But the very means
employed by them to avoid confusion, and enable them to meet and
disperse with decorum, were just those most calculated to excite the
fears of a magistracy and Ministry already suspicious.

The great meeting had been intended to take place on the 9th of August;
and on the 31st of July an advertisement appeared in the _Manchester
Observer_ calling on the inhabitants to meet on the 9th in the area
near St. Peter's Church for the purpose of electing a representative
to Parliament, as well as for adopting Major Cartwright's plan of
Parliamentary Reform. This immediately drew from the magistrates
a notice that such a meeting would be illegal, and that those who
attended it would do so at their peril. The working men on this
announced that the meeting would not take place, and a requisition was
presented to the borough-reeve and constables, requesting leave to hold
such a meeting. It was refused; and on its refusal the people proceeded
with their original design, only appointing the 16th as the day of
meeting, with Hunt in the chair.

[Illustration: THE PETERLOO MASSACRE: HUSSARS CHARGING THE PEOPLE.
(_See p._ 151.)]

This was taking a bold step in defiance of the authorities, and orderly
and peaceable conduct was, more than ever, necessary. On the morning
of the day proposed there was little appearance of any stir amongst the
artisans of the town, and it does not seem that they took any or much
part in the assembly, but that it was made up of the parties marching
in from the country and towns around. During the forenoon of this day,
Monday, the 16th of August, large bodies came marching in from every
quarter, so that by twelve o'clock it was calculated that eighty or a
hundred thousand such people were congregated in and around the open
space designated. Some of them had disregarded the injunctions of the
general committee, and had gone extensively armed with sticks. Bamford
soon heard that his eccentric friend, called "the quacking" Dr. Healey,
of whom his narrative gives some ludicrous recitals, had headed the
band from Lees and Saddleworth, with a black flag borne behind him,
on which stared out in great white letters, "Equal Representation or
Death" on the one side, and on the other, "Love," with a heart and
two clasped hands--but all white on their black ground, looking most
sepulchral and hideous. Presently loud shouts indicated that Hunt was
approaching, who came, preceded by a band of music, seated in an open
barouche, with a number of gentlemen, and on the box a woman, who,
it appeared, had been hoisted up there by the crowd, as the carriage
passed through it.

The platform for the chairman and speakers consisted of a couple of
waggons boarded over, and Hunt and his friends had some difficulty in
reaching it through the dense crowd, the attendant bands continuing to
play "God Save the King," and "Rule Britannia," till they were safely
placed on the platform, when the music ceased, and Hunt, having been
called to the chair, took off his white hat, and was commencing his
address, when there was a strange movement in the throng, and a cry,
"The soldiers are upon us!" and this was the fact. The magistrates
had met in great numbers on the previous Saturday, and had determined
to seize the ringleaders; but instead of doing this as they might
have done, at their several localities when drilling, or on their
way to the town, they left this to be done after these vast numbers
were assembled, and by the aid of the soldiers, which was certain
to produce serious consequences. We have the statements of these
magistrates themselves, as laid before Parliament, and of Sir William
Jolliffe, M.P., lieutenant of the 15th Hussars, and personally engaged
on the occasion. The reason assigned by them was, that they waited
to see "what the complexion of the meeting might be;" but, if this
was the case, they might as well have waited till some disorder took
place, which they did not, but sent the soldiers into the crowd,
whilst peacefully and in an orderly manner standing to listen to the
chairman. Had they waited to the end, they would undoubtedly have
seen the immense crowd disappear as quietly as it had come. But the
magistrates were clearly excited by their fears. They had assembled a
great constabulary and military force. Two hundred special constables
had been sworn in; six troops of the 15th Hussars lying in the barracks
were held in readiness; a troop of Horse Artillery with two guns; the
greater part of the 31st Regiment of Infantry; several companies of
the 88th Regiment; the Cheshire Yeomanry, nearly four hundred men, who
had ridden in that very morning; and about forty Manchester Yeomanry,
chiefly master manufacturers. These were troops enough to storm a town,
much more to defend it from an unarmed multitude. The whole of this
force, except the Manchester Yeomanry, was put under the command of
Colonel L'Estrange, of the 31st Regiment, in the absence of Sir John
Byng, the general of the district, but who had his headquarters at
Pontefract, and who, it appeared, had received no information of these
military preparations, or of the imagined need of them.

We have the accounts of what took place from both sides--from the
magistrates and the people. Mr Hulton, the chairman of the bench of
magistrates, made the following statements in evidence, on the trial of
Hunt, at York. He said that the warrants for the apprehension of the
leaders of this movement were not given to Nadin, the chief constable,
till after the meeting had assembled, and that he immediately declared
that it was impossible for him to execute them without the protection
of the military; that orders were at once issued to the commander of
the Manchester Yeomanry, and to Colonel L'Estrange, to come to the
house where the magistrates sat. The yeomanry arrived first, coming
at a quick trot, and so soon as the people saw them they set up a
great shout. The yeomanry advanced with drawn swords, and drew up in
line before the inn where the magistrates were. They were ordered
to advance with the chief constable to the hustings, and support
him in executing the warrants. They attempted to do this, but were
soon separated one from another in the dense mob, and brought to a
stand. In this condition, Sir William Jolliffe also giving evidence,
said that he then, for the first time, saw the Manchester troop of
yeomanry. They were scattered, singly or in small groups, all over
the field, literally hemmed in and wedged into the mob, so that they
were powerless either to make an impression, or to escape; and it
required only a glance to discover their helpless condition, and the
necessity of the hussars being brought to their rescue. The hussars
now coming up, were, accordingly, ordered to ride in and disperse the
mob. The word "Forward" was given, and the charge was sounded, and
the troop dashed in amongst the unarmed crowd. Such a crowd never yet
stood a charge of horse. There was a general attempt to fly, but their
own numbers prevented them, and a scene of terrible confusion ensued.
"People, yeomen, constables," says Sir William Jolliffe, one of these
hussars, "in their confused attempts to escape, ran one over another,
so that by the time we had arrived at the midst of the field, the
fugitives were literally piled up to a considerable elevation above the
level of the ground."

Surely, both magistrates and soldiers might now have been satisfied.
A defenceless multitude have no means of resistance, and, doing their
best to get away, might have been left to do so without further
molestation, which would be equally brutal in the magistrates, and
cowardly in the soldiers. But neither of these parties seems to
have thought so on this unhappy occasion. The magistrates issued
no orders to desist, and the soldiers, by the confession of one of
their officers, went on striking with the flats of their swords at
the impeded people, who were thrown down in their vain efforts to get
away, and piled in struggling heaps on the field. Mr. Hulton confessed
that he walked away from the window after he had let loose the
horse-soldiers on the people. "He would rather not see any advance of
the military." He was, in fact, so tender-hearted that he did not mind
the people--men, women, and children, met to exercise their political
rights--being trodden down under the iron hoofs of horses, and cut down
by the sword, so long as he did not see it.

Hunt, and about a dozen of his friends, were seized on the platform.
Bamford and some others, who had escaped, were afterwards taken. The
streets were then cleared by the infantry. Such was the celebrated
Manchester massacre, in which the actual wounds inflicted by the
soldiers do not appear to have been many. About seventy people were
carried to the infirmaries, or went there, to have their wounds
dressed--a considerable number for severe cuts and fractured limbs; and
six lives were lost, including a special constable run over by the
cavalry, and a Manchester Yeoman, who was struck from his horse by a
brickbat, aimed by a man whom he was pursuing.

The Ministers and the Prince Regent, indeed, fully approved of the
conduct of these magistrates, and that was to be expected, for
neither of these parties ever evinced much sympathy for the people,
and consequently received very little regard in return. There was
a disposition to rule by the high hand in both the Prince and the
Cabinet, which eventually brought them into extreme odium, and warned
them that very different times were approaching. On the reassembling
of Parliament Lord Sidmouth made the most candid statement of the
full and entire approbation of himself and his colleagues of this
cruel and dastardly transaction. He said that the news of the event
reached town on the Tuesday night; and that it was followed on the
Wednesday by two gentlemen from Manchester, one of them a magistrate,
to give the Government the most minute particulars regarding it; that a
Cabinet Council was immediately summoned, at which the two Manchester
gentlemen attended, and entered into the fullest details of all that
had taken place; and that the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General,
then present, gave it as their opinion that the proceedings were
perfectly justified by the necessity of the case. The statement of
all particulars was then dispatched to the Prince Regent, who was
yachting off Christchurch, and, on the 19th, the Prince replied, by the
hand of Sir Benjamin Bloomfield, expressing his "high approbation and
commendation of the conduct of the magistrates and civil authorities
at Manchester, as well as of the officers and troops, both regular
and yeoman cavalry, whose firmness and effectual support of the
civil power preserved the peace of the town on that most critical
occasion." To most people this appeared to be giving commendation, not
for preserving, but for disturbing the peace of the town; but Lord
Sidmouth, having received this sanction, addressed letters, on the
21st, to the Lords-Lieutenant of Lancashire and Cheshire, the Earls
of Derby and Stamford, requesting them to convey to the magistrates
of the two counties, who were present at Manchester on the 16th, "the
great satisfaction derived by his Royal Highness from their prompt,
decisive, and efficient measures for the preservation of the public
tranquillity." Hunt and his confederates were charged with high
treason; but, on the circumstances being examined, they were found not
to bear out this charge, and Hunt and his friends were indicted only
for a treasonable conspiracy; and true bills to the extent of this
mitigated charge were proved against Hunt and nine others at the summer
assizes for the county of Lancaster.

Great meetings were held in various towns and counties to condemn
the whole proceedings, and addresses were sent up and presented to
the Prince Regent which were, in fact, censures of his own conduct,
and were not, therefore, received in a becoming manner. To one from
the Common Council of London he replied that he received it with
regret, and that those who drew it up knew little or nothing of the
circumstances which preceded or attended the Manchester meeting.
The fact was, that they knew these a great deal better than he did.
Similar addresses were sent up from Westminster, York, Norwich,
Bristol, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and many other towns.
A meeting of the county of York was calculated at twenty thousand
persons, and amongst them was the Earl Fitzwilliam, Lord-Lieutenant
of the West Riding, who had also signed the requisition to the
high-sheriff. For this conduct he was summarily dismissed from
his lord-lieutenancy. Scarcely less offence was given by the Duke
of Hamilton, Lord-Lieutenant of the county of Lanark, who sent a
subscription of fifty pounds to the committee for the relief of
the Manchester sufferers, expressing, at the same time, his severe
censure of the outrage committed on the 16th of August. Of course,
the Ministerial party in town and country did all in their power to
counteract this strong and general expression of disapprobation. In
Scotland and the North of England the squirearchy got up associations
for raising troops of yeomanry, as in direct approval of the savage
conduct of the Manchester Yeomanry. In the immediate neighbourhood of
the scene of outrage the conflict of opinion between the two parties
ran high. Numbers of the Manchester Yeomanry were indicted for cutting
and maiming in St. Peter's Field, with intent to kill; but these
bills were thrown out by the grand jury at the Lancaster assizes. An
inquest at Oldham, on the body of one of the men killed, was also the
scene of a fierce and regular conflict for nine days, that was put an
end to by an order from the Court of King's Bench. But even men who
were accustomed to support Ministers generally were startled by their
conduct on this occasion. Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley and Ward, in
one of his letters written from Paris at the time, but not published
till a later date, says:--"What do reasonable people think of the
Manchester business? I am inclined to suspect that the magistrates
were in too great a hurry, and that their loyal zeal, and the _nova
gloria in armis_ tempted the yeomanry to too liberal a use of the
sabre--in short, that their conduct has given some colour of reason to
the complaints and anger of the Jacobins. The approbation of Government
was probably given as the supposed price of support from the Tories in
that part of the country."

But the Government was, at that juncture, very far from being a wise
Government. Parliament was called together on the 23rd of November, and
opened by the Prince Regent in person. In his Speech he spoke of the
unsettled state of the country, and recommended measures of repression.
The Addresses were in the same tone, and they were commented upon
with great warmth by the Opposition, and amendments moved. Zealous
debates took place in both Houses, especially in the Commons, where
the discussion continued two evenings, and till five o'clock on the
third morning. The Addresses, however, were carried in the Lords by
one hundred and fifty-nine to thirty-four, and in the Commons by three
hundred and eighty-one to one hundred and fifty. The Prince Regent
sent down a mass of papers to both Houses relating to the condition
of the disturbed districts, and a host of Bills, founded on these,
were introduced. In the Lords, on the 29th of November, the Lord
Chancellor Eldon introduced one in keeping with his alarms, namely,
"An Act to prevent delay in the administration of justice in cases of
misdemeanour." This was followed by three others, introduced by Lord
Sidmouth; one to prevent the training of persons to the use of arms,
and to the practice of military evolutions and exercises, another to
prevent and punish blasphemous and pernicious libels. Amongst others,
Hone was again at work, and ridiculing the despotically-spirited
Ministers in his "Political House that Jack Built." The third was to
authorise justices of the peace, in certain disturbed counties, to
seize and detain arms collected and kept for purposes dangerous to the
public peace. These were to continue in force till 1822. Not thinking
he had yet done enough, on the 17th of December Lord Sidmouth brought
into the Peers another Bill more effectually to prevent seditious
meetings and assemblies, which he proposed should continue in force
five years. In the Commons, in addition to all this, on the 3rd,
Lord Castlereagh had introduced a Bill for imposing stamp duties and
other regulations on newspapers, to prevent blasphemous and seditious
libels, as if Sidmouth's Bill on that subject had not fettered the
press sufficiently. All these Bills were passed, notwithstanding the
strongest remonstrances by the Opposition as so many infringements of
the Constitution, and they became known as Sidmouth's and Castlereagh's
Six Acts.

[Illustration: VIEW OF CATO STREET, LONDON, SHOWING THE STABLE AT WHICH
THE CONSPIRATORS WERE CAPTURED. A, LOFT; B, STABLE-DOOR. (_From a print
published in_ 1820.)]

These enactments, unaccompanied by any others the object of which
was to relieve the distress of the people, only tended still more to
exasperate the feelings of the working classes. In fact, nothing had
been so obvious as the effect of the proceedings of Government of late
in disturbing that peace which they professed themselves so desirous to
preserve. They, in truth, were the real agitators. The passing of the
Six Acts only made the popular resentment the deeper, and whilst this
tended to render the more prudent Reformers cautious, it stimulated the
lowest and most unprincipled of them to actual and deadly conspiracy.
The general conspiracy believed in by Ministers never existed, but
a conspiracy was actually on foot in London, which again was found
to have been, if not originally excited, yet actively stimulated, by
the agents of Government. The details of this transaction, and of the
concluding scene of the Manchester outrage, namely, the trial of Hunt
and his associates, necessarily lead us about two months beyond the
death of George III., which took place on the 29th of January, 1820.
In November, 1819, whilst Government were framing their Six Acts, the
more completely to coerce the people, they were again sending amongst
them incendiaries to urge them to an open breach of the laws in order
to furnish justifications for their despotic policy. The leading
miscreant of this class was a man named Edwards, who kept a small shop
at Eton for the sale of plaster casts. Some of the emissaries appeared
at Middleton, the place of Bamford's abode, but he was in prison
awaiting his trial with Hunt and the rest, and the people tempted were
too cautious to listen to these agents of Government. But in London
these agents found more combustible materials, and succeeded in leading
into the snare some who had been long ready for any folly or crime.
Chief amongst these was Thistlewood, who had been a lieutenant in the
army, a man who had, or conceived that he had, suffered injustice at
the hands of Ministers, and who had wrought up his temper to the
perpetration of some desperate deed. Bamford when in London, in 1816,
had found Thistlewood mixed up with the Spenceans, and to be met with
any day at their places of resort--the "Cock," in Grafton Street, the
"Mulberry Tree," in Moorfields, the "Nag's Head," Carnaby Market, No.
8, Lumber Street, Borough, and a public-house in Spa Fields, called
"Merlin's Cave." At these places they might be found, amidst clouds
of tobacco-smoke and the fumes of beer, discussing remedies for the
miserable condition of the people. At the latter place Thistlewood
was often to be found with the Watsons, Preston, and Castles, who was
employed to betray them. From this spot they issued for their mad
attempt on the Tower on the 2nd of December of that year. Thistlewood
was one of those seized on that occasion, but was acquitted on his
trial. Not warned by this, he no sooner got abroad than he sent a
challenge to Lord Sidmouth, for which he was arrested, and sentenced
to a year's imprisonment. He issued from gaol still more embittered
against Sidmouth and his colleagues, and resolved on striking some
mortal blow at them. He did not lack comrades of a like fiery and
abandoned stamp, and they determined on a scheme for cutting off the
whole Cabinet together. The detestable deed was to be perpetrated in
the autumn of 1819, a time when the public mind, especially that of
the working classes, was so embittered against the Government. They
did not, however, succeed in their intentions, and it was at this
crisis of unwilling delay that the man Edwards became privy to their
plans. In November he carried the important, and, as he hoped, to
him profitable secret to Sir Herbert Taylor, who was attached to the
establishment of the king at Windsor, and by him he was introduced to
Lord Sidmouth. This minister and his colleagues, with that fondness for
the employment of spies, and for fomenting sedition instead of nipping
it in the bud, immediately engaged Edwards, on good pay, to lead
forward the conspirators into overt action. It was not enough for them
that, by adding another witness or two to Edwards, they would be able
to produce the most complete proof of the treason of these men--they
rather luxuriated in the nursing of this plot, and thus ripening it
into something bloody and horrible; and in this they succeeded.

The Christmas holidays necessarily postponed the plans of the
conspirators by the Ministers going out of town, and the deaths of
the king and of the Duke of Kent produced further impediments by
preventing the regular Cabinet meetings. At one moment the plan
appeared to be in jeopardy from the Ministers being in danger of
dismissal for their refusal to procure the new king a divorce; but
all these hindrances only the more enabled Edwards to ply his arts,
and stimulate his victims to their destruction. So thoroughly had he
brought them to this point, that, on the 19th of February, they came
to the resolution to assassinate the Ministers each at his own house,
as they could not get them all together; but at this moment Edwards
brought them word that the Ministers were going to have a Cabinet
dinner the next day. To make sure, they sent out for a newspaper, and
finding that it was so, Thistlewood remarked that as there had not been
a Cabinet dinner for a long time, there would be fourteen or sixteen
there, and it would be a fine haul to murder them all together. The
dinner was to be at the house of Lord Harrowby, and it was planned that
one of the conspirators should call with a note, and then the rest
should rush in and put the Ministers all to death, and bring away the
heads of Sidmouth and Castlereagh in bags provided for that purpose.
They were then to fire the cavalry barracks by throwing fire-balls into
the straw-sheds, and the people rising, as they hoped, on the spread of
the news, they were to take the Bank and the Tower.

The Ministers being duly informed of all, the preparations for the
dinner were carried on ostensibly as though nothing was suspected. On
the 23rd of February, when the evening had arrived, carriages began
to collect about the house of Lord Harrowby, and the scouts who were
sent out to see that there were no soldiers or police stationed there,
reported all right. But the carriages were driving to the house of
the Archbishop of York, which adjoined Lord Harrowby's, and this had
deceived the conspirators. The Ministers had remained at home to dine,
and then had assembled at Lord Liverpool's to await the news of the
result. The police, conducted by the spies, meanwhile reached the
rendezvous of the conspirators, which was a stable in Cato Street,
near the Edgware Road. The soldiers had orders to be in readiness, and
surround the place immediately, and assist in securing the desperadoes.
But it seems that the soldiers were not ready at the moment, and on the
police entering the stable they found that the conspirators were in the
hayloft over it. They were proceeding up the ladder to the loft, and
Smithers, one of the police, had just entered it, when Thistlewood,
seeing that they were betrayed, stabbed the man to the heart, blew out
the light, and made his escape. There was a confused firing of pistols
in the dark, and the soldiers coming up, nine of the conspirators were
secured, with a quantity of arms and ammunition; but fourteen were said
to have succeeded in escaping.

The next morning London was thrown into consternation by the
announcement of this conspiracy, and by a reward of one thousand pounds
being offered in the _Gazette_ for the apprehension of Thistlewood.
He was captured before eight o'clock that morning, whilst in bed, at
the house of a comrade, in Moorfields. But his arrest did not diminish
the wild alarms which not only seized the capital but the country.
This was immediately believed to be only the centre of that universal
conspiracy of which Government had taken so much pains to propagate
an impression. People everywhere were arming for the defence of their
own neighbourhoods, and magistrates and yeomanry were turning out by
night to keep watch against a surprise, whilst people in town took
great care to lock and barricade their houses against the invisible
foe. Thistlewood and nine others were put upon their trial on the 13th
of April, and, after a trial of three days, he and eight of them were
pronounced guilty, and himself and four of the most desperate were
condemned to death; the others were sentenced to transportation for
life; but one man, who was proved to have been amongst them without
being aware of their object, was pardoned. Thistlewood and the four
others were executed on the 1st of May. The next day Alderman Wood
moved in the House of Commons for an inquiry into the conduct of
Edwards, but it was rejected by a large majority. On the 19th he
again returned to the subject, and supported his motion by producing
depositions from many persons brought before him as a magistrate,
demonstrating, in the plainest manner, that Edwards had recommended
to them the murder of Ministers and the destruction of Parliament,
had furnished plans for these objects, and had done all in his power
to seduce needy men into these measures. He proved, also, from the
same depositions, that Edwards himself had been living for six weeks
in great affluence in the house of a schoolmaster in St. George's
Street, Hanover Square, who was not aware of the occupation of Edwards
till the wretch himself informed him of it. Alderman Wood called on
Parliament to act on this unquestionable evidence, and purge itself of
any sanction of such disgraceful transactions. But Ministers again
resisted all inquiry, and their friends openly defended them in the use
of such means, even ridiculing Alderman Wood, and those who supported
his motion, for supposing that Lord Sidmouth would proceed against
Edwards through any depositions furnished by magistrates. The motion
was, of course, thrown out.

Before these discussions took place, an attempt had been made by
similar means to lead the people of Scotland into insurrection.
Emissaries appeared in the towns and villages informing the people
that there were preparations made for a general rising, and they were
ordered to cease all work and betake themselves to certain places of
rendezvous. On the morning of Sunday, the 2nd of April, the walls of
Glasgow were found placarded everywhere by a proclamation, ordering all
persons to cease labour and turn out for a general revolution. The next
morning the magistrates called out the military, and they were drawn up
in the streets in readiness for the appearance of an insurrection, but
none took place. The people were all in wonder, and assembled to see
what would happen; but there appeared not the slightest disposition to
make any disorder, and some of the cotton mills were at work as though
nothing was expected to take place. But still, the mischief had not
altogether failed. Some fifty poor ignorant men had been decoyed out of
Glasgow to near Kilsyth, on the assurance that four or five thousand
men would there join them, and proceed to take the Carron Ironworks and
thus supply themselves with artillery. These poor dupes were met on the
road, on some high ground on Bonnymuir, by a detachment of armed men
sent out against them, and, after some resistance, during which some
of them were wounded, nineteen were made prisoners and the rest fled.
Other arrests were made in different parts of Scotland, and they were
tried in the following July and August; but so little interest was felt
in this attempt, or in the details of what was called "the Battle of
Bonnymuir," that three only were punished and the rest discharged.

There remain only the trials of Hunt and his associates in the meeting
at Manchester to close the events which arose out of circumstances
originating under the reign of George III. These took place at York
spring assizes, whither they had been prudently removed out of the
district where both parties were too much inflamed for a fair verdict
to be expected. During the time that they lay in prison the conduct of
Hunt had greatly disgusted his humble associates. He showed so much
love of himself that Bamford says he began to think that he could never
have really loved his country. The Government had found it necessary
a second time to lower its charge against the Manchester prisoners.
At first it was high treason, then it subsided to treasonable
conspiracy, and now, at last, it was merely "for unlawful assembling
for the purpose of moving and inciting to hatred and contempt of the
Government." Of this they were all convicted, and were confined in
different gaols for various periods, and were called upon to give
substantial security for good behaviour in future before being set at
liberty. Hunt was imprisoned for three years in Ilchester gaol. It is
only justice to him to state that though, during this imprisonment, he
was continually sending to the newspapers complaints of ill treatment,
he was instrumental in making known to the public some flagrant
malpractices going on in the gaol, and which, through these exposures,
were afterwards corrected.

[Illustration: SURPRISE OF THE CATO STREET CONSPIRATORS. (_See p._
155.)]

The trial of Sir Charles Wolseley and Dr. Harrison for their speeches
at the meeting for Reform at Stockport in June, 1819, terminated also
in their conviction and imprisonment for eighteen months, as well as
the giving of security for their future good behaviour on liberation.

With these inglorious events closed the long reign of George
III. Indeed, he had passed away before they were brought to
their conclusion. He died on the 29th of January, 1820, in the
eighty-second year of his age, and the sixtieth of his reign. Only
six days previously had died his fourth son, the Duke of Kent, in his
fifty-third year. But the duke had not departed without leaving an
heir to the Throne in the Princess Victoria, who was born on the 24th
of May, 1819. Could the old king have been made sensible of these
events, there were others which showed that his line, which of late
had appeared likely to die out in one generation, notwithstanding his
numerous family, was again giving signs of perpetuation. On the 26th of
March, 1819, a son had also been born to the Duke of Cambridge, and a
son to the Duke of Cumberland on May 27th of the same year, afterwards
King of Hanover.

[Illustration: A VILLAGE HOLIDAY OF THE OLDEN TIME.

(FROM THE PAINTING BY F. GOODALL, R.A., IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF
BRITISH ART.)]




CHAPTER IV.

PROGRESS OF THE NATION DURING THE REIGN OF GEORGE III.

    Growth of Material Wealth--Condition of the Working Classes--The
    Charity Schools--Lethargy of the Church--Proposal to abolish
    Subscription to the Articles--A Bill for the further Relief of
    Dissenters--The Test and Corporation Acts--The Efforts of Beaufoy
    and Lord Stanhope--Attempts to relieve the Quakers--Further Effort
    of Lord Stanhope--The Claims of the Roman Catholics--Failure
    of the Efforts to obtain Catholic Emancipation--Lay Patronage
    in Scotland--The Scottish Episcopalians--Illustrious
    Dissenters--Religion in Wales and Ireland--Literature--The
    Novelists: Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne--Minor
    and later Novelists--Scott--Historians: Hume, Robertson, and
    Gibbon--Minor Historians--Miscellaneous Literature--Criticism,
    Theology, Biography, and Science--Periodical Literature--The Drama
    and the Dramatists--Poetry: Collins, Shenstone, and Gray--Goldsmith
    and Churchill--Minor Poets--Percy's "Reliques," and Scott's "Border
    Minstrelsy"--Chatterton and Ossian--Johnson and Darwin--Crabbe and
    Cowper--Poetasters and Gifford--The Shakespeare Forgeries--Minor
    Satires--Burns--The Lake School: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and
    Southey--Scott, Campbell, Byron, Shelley, and Keats--Poets
    at the close of the Period--Improvement of Agricultural
    Science--Arthur Young--Drainage and Roots--Improvements in
    Road-making: Telford and Macadam--Brindley's and Telford's
    Canals--Bridges and Harbours--Iron Railways--Application
    of the Steam-Engine to Railways and Boats--Improvements in
    Machinery--Wedgwood--Manufacture of Glass--Collieries--Use of Coal
    in Iron-works--Improvements in various Manufactures--Scientific
    Discoveries--Music--Architecture--Painting--Sculpture--Engraving--Coins
    and Coinage--Manners and Customs.


The progress of Great Britain in commerce during the reign of George
III. had been extraordinary. At the beginning of the reign the
number of British vessels of all kinds amounted to only 7,075, with
a tonnage of 457,316 tons; but at the end of the reign the vessels
amounted to 30,000, with a tonnage of upwards of 3,000,000 tons. At
the commencement of the reign the exports were £14,500,000, and the
imports £9,579,159. At the end of the reign the exports had risen to
£43,438,989; and the imports to £30,776,810.

A great proportion of these results had been produced by the rapid
growth of manufactures. The introduction of steam, and the inventions
of the spinning-jenny and other kinds of machinery, had given such a
development to manufactures, that the value of these at the end of the
reign made three-fourths of the whole exports. Agriculture had made
considerable progress, and of this art the king was a zealous patron,
especially of the improvements in the breed of sheep, importing himself
merinos from Spain at great cost. There were also great promoters of
improvements in stock, such as Bakewell, Culley, and others, and the
high price of corn and of all kinds of agricultural produce during
the war acted as stimulants to farming. The value of land also caused
the enclosure of vast tracts, and much planting of trees was done,
especially in Scotland, which had previously been very neglectful in
that respect.

The growth of material wealth during this reign had in no degree
improved the condition of the working class in any proportion to
that of other classes. Landlords had greatly raised their rents,
and farmers, by the high price of corn and other provisions, had
grown comparatively rich, many very rich. The merchants and master
manufacturers had shared liberally in the benefits of a vastly
increased commerce, and the wonderful spread of manufactures; but
the working manufacturers, between the high price of corn and meat,
and the lowness of their wages, were in a miserable condition, and
frequently, as we have seen, were driven to riot and insurrection.
The handloom weavers were swamped by machinery, and those working the
machinery were living in wretched houses, and in a most neglected and
insanitary condition. Before the first Sir Robert Peel introduced his
Bill for reforming the hours and other regulations of cotton mills,
many of these worked night and day, one gang, as it was called,
succeeding another at the spinning-jenny, in hot, ill-ventilated rooms.
Apprentices were purchased of parishes, either children of paupers, or
orphans of such, and these were kept by mill-owners, and worked long
hours, one gang having to quit their beds in the morning for another
gang of these poor unfortunates to turn into them. The agricultural
labourers were little better off. Their habitations were of the worst
description, though squires' kennels on the same estates were equal, in
all sanitary conditions, to tolerable mansions. Their wages remained
only some eight or ten shillings a week--when the wheat which they had
raised was one hundred and thirty shillings per quarter, and a stone
of flour of fourteen pounds cost a gold seven-shilling piece. This
drove them in shoals to the workhouse, and produced a state of things
that is hardly credible. Their mental and moral condition was equally
deplorable. Education, either in town or country, was scarcely known.
There was not a school in all the swarming region of Whitechapel, and
many another equally poor and populous region of London, much less in
country towns and agricultural parishes. It was a settled maxim amongst
the landed gentry, that education, even of the most elementary kind,
would totally destroy the supply of servants; and it was gravely stated
in Parliament that the plot of Thistlewood was owing to the working
classes being able to read.

The charity schools throughout the country were discovered, by the
operation of Henry Brougham's Commission, to be monopolised by the
landlords of the different parishes and the clergy, and the ample
revenues for education embezzled by them. In some such schools there
was not a single scholar; in others, as at Pocklington, in Yorkshire,
the free grammar school, with an endowment of one thousand pounds
a year, had only one scholar. This state of physical and moral
destitution was made the more dreary by the equally low state of
religion. The Dissenters were on the increase, and, chiefly in towns,
were exerting themselves to disperse the Egyptian darkness of this
Georgian era, and Methodism was now making rapid progress amongst
the working classes, both in town and country. But the preachers of
Methodism met with a reception from the country squirearchy and clergy
which has no parallel since the days of Popish persecution. They were
dragged out of the houses where they preached, kicked and buffeted,
hauled through horse-ponds, pelted with mud and stones; and the
clergy and magistracy, so far from restraining, hounded on the mob in
these outrages. The lives of these preachers, and the volumes of the
_Wesleyan Magazine_, abound in recitals of such brutalities, which,
if they had not been recorded there, would not now be credited. What
John Wesley and his brother Charles, and George Whitefield suffered,
especially in Devonshire and Cornwall, reads like a wild romance.

The state of the Church of England was one of the most surprising
deadness and corruption. Vast numbers of the churches had no minister
resident, except a poor curate at a salary of some twenty pounds
per annum, who, therefore, was compelled to do duty in two or three
neighbouring parishes at once, in a manner more like the flying tailor
of Brentford than a Christian minister; and the resident incumbents
were for the most part given up to habits of intoxication, inherited
from the last reign. Some of these ruling pastors held three or four
livings, for the licence as to the plurality of livings was then almost
unbounded.

According to returns made by the bishops in 1807, the number of
incumbents in the eleven thousand one hundred and sixty-four parishes
of England and Wales was only four thousand four hundred and twelve,
or little more than one in every third parish. In 1810 the matter had
a little improved, for the whole number of residents was found to be
five thousand nine hundred and twenty-five. The duty of the kingdom
was chiefly done by curates, and how were these curates paid? Lord
Harrowby stated in the House of Peers, in 1810, that the highest scale
of salary paid by non-residents to their curates, who did all the work,
was fifty, sixty, or at the most seventy pounds a year; but that a far
more usual scale of payment was twenty pounds, or even ten pounds,
per annum; that this was much less than the wages of day labourers,
and that the worst feature of the case was that the non-residents and
pluralists were amongst those who had the richest livings, so that men
drawing eight hundred or even two thousand pounds a year from their
livings were often totally unknown to their parishioners, and that
often "all that they knew of the curate was the sound of his voice in
the reading-desk, or pulpit, once a week, a fortnight, or a month."

The consequence was that the condition of the agricultural population
was as debased morally as it was destitute physically--in the almost
total absence of education, the very funds granted by pious testators
for this end being embezzled by the clergy or squirearchy. Everything
which could brutalise the people was encouraged by the aristocracy
on the plea that it made them good soldiers. When the horrors and
brutalities of almost universal dog-fightings, cock-fightings, bull and
bear-baitings began to attract the attention of philanthropists, and
it was sought by Parliamentary enactment to suppress them, they were
defended by Windham, and others, on the ground that they accustomed
the people to the sight of blood, and made them of the "true British
bull-dog character."

The great struggles going on through the reign of George III. were not
so much for the advancement of religion, as to obtain release from
the impositions and restrictions on both liberty of conscience and
political liberty by the Church of England, and its ally, the State.
With the exception of the reign of Queen Anne, no reign since the
Revolution has taken so high a tone of Toryism as that of George III.
We have had to detail the evidences of that fact; and it is equally
true that, with Toryism in the State, Toryism--or what is called
High Churchism--prevailed coincidently in the Establishment. True,
the Indemnity Acts, the suppression of Convocation, the spread of
Dissent, and especially of Methodism, had in some degree clipped the
talons of the hierarchy, but these very things made it more tenacious
of its still existing powers. At the very opening of the reign the
Church was alarmed by a proposal by one of its own members to abolish
subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles. This question had been a
matter of controversy from the time of Bishop Burnet's "Exposition" of
these Articles; but in 1766 a very able work appeared, entitled "The
Confessional; or, a Full and Free Inquiry into the Right, Utility,
Edification, and Success of Establishing Systematic Confessions of
Faith and Doctrine in Protestant Churches." This was traced to the hand
of Archdeacon Blackburne, of Richmond in Yorkshire. It produced much
excitement and discussion amongst the clergy of the Establishment, as
well as amongst Dissenters, who were entirely shut out of one of the
national universities by these subscriptions, and their education at
the other hampered and impeded. An association was formed amongst the
established clergy, favourable to Blackburne's views, and in 1771, at
its request, he drew up "Proposals for Application to Parliament for
Relief in the Matter of Subscription." The association, from its place
of meeting called the "The 'Feathers' Tavern Association," determined
to address Parliament on the subject, and drew up a petition, which was
presented to the House of Commons, in February, 1772, by Sir William
Meredith. It was signed by two hundred clergymen, and fifty other
individuals, chiefly lawyers and physicians. A keen debate ensued, but
the motion for taking the subject into consideration was negatived by
two hundred and seventeen against seventy-one. Sir William Meredith,
notwithstanding, again introduced the subject in February of the
following year, only to be defeated by a majority of one hundred and
fifty-nine against sixty-seven; and a third attempt, the year after,
was met by such an overwhelming number of "Noes" that he declined
to divide the House. In all these debates, Burke, who now was grown
excessively Conservative, supported subscription with all his power.

The discussion of the question, though it was so summarily dismissed
as it regarded the Church, did not prevent a certain number of the
Dissenters from coming forward to endeavour to relieve themselves
of the yoke of these Articles. In the Toleration Act, passed after
the Revolution, it had been stated that this toleration was conceded
to those only who were willing to subscribe these Articles, with
the exception of the first clause of the 20th, which asserts that
the Church has power to decree rites and ceremonies, and to settle
controversies of faith; the 34th, which relates to the traditions of
the Church; the 35th, relating to the homilies; and the 36th, relating
to the consecration of bishops and ministers. With these exceptions,
the Articles had been little objected to by the Dissenters till the
Presbyterians of England had, for the most part, embraced Unitarianism.
It was chiefly from this class that the movement against these Articles
now took its rise; but not altogether, for the subscription to the
Articles included in the Toleration Act having for some time been
little insisted on, some Dissenters, who had not subscribed them, were
menaced with trouble on that account by officious clergymen. Amongst
these Dr. Doddridge was mentioned as one who had been so disturbed.
It was now thought fit to press the question on Parliament, and in
April, 1772, Sir Henry Houghton moved for leave to bring in a Bill
for that object, under the title of "A Bill for the further Relief of
Dissenters." Sir Roger Newdigate, destined for so many years to be the
champion of Church Toryism, led the way in opposition, as one of the
members of the University of Oxford; and he was supported by two or
three men of the same stamp. In this case, however, Burke voted for the
Bill as only reasonable, and it passed by a majority of seventy against
nine. But in the Lords, the Bishops came forward in full strength
against it, and Barrington, Bishop of Llandaff, pointed it out as a
Socinian movement, and quoted, with telling effect, some of the most
objectionable passages from the writings of Dr. Priestley. There were
cries of "Monstrous! Horrible! Shocking!" and, amongst the utterers of
these, the loudest was Lord Chatham. The Bishop of London said that, so
far from the Dissenters generally advocating this measure, he had been
waited on by some of their ministers to inform him that they regarded
it, not as a measure to relieve Dissenters from the Articles of the
Church, but certain persons from the obligations of Christianity. It
was thrown out by a hundred and two against twenty-nine.

In the following Session Sir Henry Houghton brought it forward again,
on the 17th of February. On this occasion a great many Methodist
congregations petitioned against the Bill; for the Methodists, though
separating themselves from the Church, still insisted that they
belonged to it, and held all its tenets, at least of that section of
it which is Arminian. It again passed the Commons, but was rejected
by the Lords. Finding the Lords so determined against the measure, it
was allowed to rest for six years, when circumstances appeared more
favourable, and it was again brought forward, in 1779, by Sir Henry
Houghton, and carried through both Houses, with the introduction of a
clause to this effect, that all who desired to be relieved by the Act
should make the affirmation--"I, A. B., do solemnly declare that I am a
Christian and a Protestant Dissenter, and that I take the Old and New
Testaments, as they are generally received in Protestant countries, for
the rule of my faith and practice."

In this same year, 1779, the Protestant Dissenters of Ireland were
relieved by their Parliament from the operation of the Test and
Corporation Acts, and it was not, therefore, very likely that the
Dissenters of England would rest quietly under them much longer. These
Acts were passed in the 13th of Charles II., and the 25th of the same
monarch, and required that no person should be elected to any civil
or military office under the Crown, including seats in Parliament or
corporations, unless he had taken the sacrament according to the rites
of the Church of England. On the 28th of March, 1787, Mr. Beaufoy,
member for Yarmouth, moved that the House of Commons should resolve
itself into a committee to consider the Test and Corporation Acts.
Mr. Beaufoy represented that these Acts were a heavy grievance, not
only to the Dissenters and to the members of the Established Church
of Scotland, but to many members of the English Church itself, who
regarded the prostitution of the most solemn ordinance of their faith
to a civil test as little less than sacrilegious. In reply, it was
contended that the Indemnity Acts had been passed to protect such as
had omitted to take the sacrament within the time specified; but Mr.
Beaufoy and his seconder, Sir Henry Houghton, who had carried the Bill
relieving Dissenters from subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles,
showed that these measures were not always sufficient, and were but a
clumsy substitution for the abolition of the obnoxious Acts.

The question was argued at great length. It was opposed by Lord North
and Pitt, and supported by Fox, and was rejected by one hundred and
seventy-six against ninety-eight. The question was raised again in
1789 and 1790, and in both cases was defeated. On the latter occasion
Fox introduced the motion, and Mr. Beaufoy, who usually took the lead
in it, seconded it. Fox alluded to the very Dissenters on whom Bishop
Barrington had thrown so much odium. He acknowledged the hostility of
such men as Drs. Priestley and Price to the Church, and to what had
taken place across the Channel against the national Church there; but
he treated these as warnings to the English hierarchy not to keep too
tight a grasp on the obstructions which they had thrown in the way of
Dissenters, and contended that the Church's safety depended in allowing
a just participation in civil rights, and thus disarming popular
resentment. The motion was opposed by Pitt, Burke, Wilberforce, Sir
William Dolben, and others. Burke also referred to the destruction of
the French Church, and contended that it was not a time to give way to
demands for surrender of what he called the safeguards of the English
Church. Mr. William Smith, of Norwich, who continued for many years the
staunch advocate of the Dissenters, strongly supported the motion; but,
on the other hand, a considerable number of members who had voted for
the repeal of these Acts had since been warned by their Church-going
constituents to tack about, and did so. The motion, therefore, was
rejected by two hundred and ninety-four against one hundred and five,
and the Dissenters were so convinced of the uselessness of attempting
to procure the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts under George
III., that the question was never again agitated during this reign.
They remained in force till 1828.

But a brave and liberal member of the peerage, Earl Stanhope, did not
flinch from endeavouring to get repealed a number of these disgraceful
evidences of Church bigotry, which still cumbered the Statute book from
long past periods. In May, 1789, a few days after Mr. Beaufoy's second
defeat on the question of the Test and Corporation Acts, Lord Stanhope
proposed "a Bill for relieving members of the Church of England from
sundry penalties and disabilities to which, by the laws now in force,
they may be liable, and for extending freedom in matters of religion
to all persons--Papists only excepted--and for other purposes therein
mentioned." His Lordship had given notice of his intention to introduce
such a Bill in the previous February, as Mr. William Smith had done in
the Commons, when what was called the Uniformity Clause in the Regency
Bill was discussed, contending that this clause, which prohibited
the Regent from giving the Royal Assent to the repeal of the Act for
Uniformity passed in the reign of Charles II., might prevent the repeal
of a preceding Act, of a very bigoted character, of a previous date.
The Bishops, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at their head, opposed
his intention, contending that this was not a proper time for such a
discussion. Lord Stanhope now detailed the names, dates, and characters
of the Acts which he had in view. They were these:--The Act of 1
Elizabeth, ordering every person to go to church, and imposing a fine
of twenty pounds--a very large sum then--on any one above the age of
sixteen absenting himself or herself from church for a month; and in
case of non-payment, ordering the imprisonment of the offender till the
fine were paid, or the offender conformed. In case of twelve months'
absence, the offender was to be bound in a bond of two hundred pounds,
with two sureties, for his compliance in future. By the 23 Elizabeth
these penalties were made still more rigorous, and by the 35th of her
reign, all persons who absented themselves for a month were liable not
only to the twenty pounds a month, but that money might be refused,
if tendered, and the offender be deprived of two-thirds of his lands,
tenements, and hereditaments, instead of the twenty pounds. By the 3
James I. these abominable powers were extended, and every person was
made amenable for every visitor, servant, and servant of visitors to
his or her house, and should be compelled to pay £10 per month for the
non-attendance at church of each of them; and over and above all these
penalties, the ecclesiastical courts might as fully exercise their
jurisdiction over these offenders as if no such special Acts existed.

[Illustration: CHARLES, THIRD EARL STANHOPE.]

Nor did these terms contain anything like the extent of tyranny imposed
on the conscience of the nation by these monarchs. By the 29 Elizabeth
it was provided that what right or property any person might dispose
of, or settle on any of his family, should still be liable to these
penalties if the proprietor and disposer of them neglected to go to
church. So that a son might be deprived of lands or other property
settled upon him at his marriage, or at any other time, if his father
ceased to attend church, though he himself went punctually; and by
the 21 James I. the informers were stimulated by great rewards to
lay complaints against all whom they could discover offending. And,
moreover, any person was to be considered an absentee from church, and
liable to all the penalties, who did not remain in church during the
whole time of the service; and, also, not only on Sundays, "but upon
all the other days ordained and used to be kept as holidays." All these
odious enactments were left in force by the Toleration Act, except that
they did not compel every one to go to church, but to some licensed
place of worship.

Next came the enactments regarding fasting. By 5 Elizabeth every
person who ate flesh on a fish day was liable to a penalty of three
pounds; and, in case of non-payment, to three months' imprisonment.
It was added that this eating of fish was not from any superstitious
notion, but to encourage the fisheries; but by the 2 and 3 Edward VI.
the power of inflicting these fish and flesh penalties was invested
in the two Archbishops, as though the offence of eating flesh on fish
days was an ecclesiastical offence. Lord Stanhope showed that the
powers and penalties of excommunication were still in full force; that
whoever was excommunicated had no legal power of recovering any debt,
or payment for anything that he might sell; that excommunication and
its penalties were made valid by the 5 Elizabeth and the 29 Charles
II.; that by the 30 Charles II. every peer, or member of the House of
Peers, peer of Scotland, or Ireland, or member of the House of Commons,
who should go to Court without having made the declaration against
transubstantiation, and the invocation of saints therein contained,
should be disabled from holding any office, civil or military, from
making a proxy in the House of Lords, or from sueing or using any
action in law or equity; from being guardian, trustee, or administrator
of any will; and should be deemed "a Popish recusant convict." His
Lordship observed that probably the whole Protestant bench of bishops
were at that moment in this predicament, and that he had a right to
clear the House of them, and proceed with his Bill in their absence.
He next quoted the 1st of James I., which decreed that any woman, or
any person whatever under twenty-one years of age, except sailors,
ship-boys, or apprentices, or factors of merchants, who should go over
sea without a licence from the king, or six of his Privy Council,
should forfeit all his or her goods, lands, and moneys whatever; and
whoever should send such person without such licence should forfeit
one hundred pounds; and every officer of a port, and every shipowner,
master of a ship, and all his mariners who should allow such person
to go, or should take him or her, should forfeit everything they
possessed, one half to the king, and the other half to the person
sueing.

To all this his Lordship had to add various specimens of the Canons.
By the 3rd, every one asserting that the Church of England was not
a true apostolical church should be excommunicated. The 4th and 5th
excommunicated all who declared that there was anything contrary to
sound Scripture in the form of worship of the Church of England, or
anything superstitious or erroneous in the Thirty-Nine Articles.
The 65th enjoined all ordinaries to see that all offenders, under
the different Acts here enumerated, should be cited and punished
according to statute, or excommunicated. The 72nd forbade, under pain
of excommunication, all ministers, without licence of the bishop, to
attempt, upon any pretence whatever, to cast out any devil or devils,
under pain of deposition from the ministry. The 73rd made it a subject
of excommunication that any priest or minister should meet with other
persons in any private house or elsewhere to consult upon any canon,
etc., which may tend to impeach or deprave the doctrine, the Book of
Common Prayer, or any part of the discipline and government of the
Church of England; and by the 115th, all churchwardens are enjoined
to make presentments of offenders in any of these particulars; and
all judges, magistrates, etc., are bound to encourage, and not to
discourage, all such presentments. Lord Stanhope observed that the
Court of King's Bench, in 1737, had decided that these Canons, not
having ever received the sanction of Parliament, were not binding on
the laity; and he contended that the ratification of them by James I.,
not being authorised by the original statute, the 25th of Henry VIII.,
made them as little binding on the clergy. He had not, therefore,
included the Canons in his Bill. He took care, too, to except Catholics
from the benefit of the Bill; neither was the Bill to repeal any part
of the Test and Corporation Acts, nor the 12th and 13th of William
III., "for the better securing the rights and liberties of the
subject." He finally showed that these fierce and persecuting Acts
were not become utterly obsolete; they were ever and anon revived, and
might, any of them, be acted upon at any moment. It might reasonably
have been supposed that the bishops would have supported the Bill
unanimously; that they would have been glad to have all such evidences
of the odious means by which their Church had been forced on the
people, swept out of the Statute-book and forgotten. No such thing. The
Archbishop of Canterbury declared, if Dissenters were allowed to defend
their principles, the atheist and the theist might be allowed to defend
theirs. But Bishop Horsley, then of St. David's, was the chief speaker
against the repeal of these precious laws. He declared that this repeal
would level every bulwark of the Church; that "the Christian religion
would not remain in any shape, nor, indeed, natural religion!" It is
needless to say that the Bill was rejected; it could not attain even to
a second reading.

Undaunted by this display of prelatical bigotry, Lord Stanhope
immediately gave notice of a Bill to prevent a tyrannical exercise of
severity towards Quakers, whose principles did not permit them to pay
tithes, church-rates, or Easter offerings; this he did on the 3rd of
July of the same year. By the 7 and 8 William III. two justices of
peace could order a distress on a Quaker for tithes under the value
of ten pounds; and by 1 George I. this power was extended to the
non-payment of Easter and other dues; but his Lordship showed that of
late the clergy had preferred to resort to an Act of Henry VIII., a
time when Quakers did not exist, which empowered the clergy, by warrant
from two justices of peace, to seize the persons of the defaulters and
throw them into prison, where, unless they paid the uttermost farthing,
they might remain for life. Thus the clergy of the eighteenth century
in England were not satisfied with the humane enactments of William
III. or George I., by which they could easily and fully obtain their
demands, but they thirsted for a little vengeance, a little of the old
enjoyment of imprisoning and tormenting their neighbours, and therefore
went back to the days of the brutal Henry VIII. for the means. They
had, two months before, thrown a Quaker of Worcester into gaol for
the non-payment of dues, so called, amounting to five shillings,
and there was every prospect that he might lie there for life. At
Coventry six Quakers had lately been prosecuted by the clergyman for
Easter offerings of the amount of fourpence each; and this sum of
two shillings amongst them had, in the ecclesiastical court, been
swelled to three hundred pounds. For this three hundred pounds they
were cast into prison, and might have lain there for life, but being
highly respected by their townsmen, these had subscribed the money and
let them out. But this, his Lordship observed, would prove a ruinous
kindness to the Quakers, for it would whet the avarice of the clergy
and proctors to such a degree that the people of that persuasion would
everywhere be hunted down without mercy for small sums, which might be
recovered at once by the simple process of distraint. He declared that
he would have all clerical demands satisfied to the utmost, but not by
such means, worthy only of the dark ages; and he therefore, in this
Bill, proposed the repeal of the obnoxious Act of 27 Henry VIII. But
the glutting of their vengeance was too precious to the clergy of this
period, and the Bill was rejected without a division.

The benevolent exertions of Lord Stanhope on behalf of the Society of
Friends were, in 1796--that is, six years later--revived in the House
of Commons by Mr. Serjeant Adair. He stated that seven of the people
called Quakers were prisoners in the gaol at York for not paying
tithes, and unless some alteration in the laws on that subject took
place, they might lie there till they died. In fact, one of these
Friends, named Joseph Brown, did die in the prison, and his death is
the subject of a poem by James Montgomery. Mr. Serjeant Adair moved,
on the 26th of April, for leave to bring in a Bill to extend the
provisions of the Act 7 and 8 William III., by which tithes could be
recovered by distraint when amounting to ten pounds, to tithes of
any amount. Wilberforce, Pitt, Dolben, and others, usually opposed
to concessions, spoke in favour of the Bill. Sir Philip Francis
only opposed it on the ground that the petitioners probably did not
entertain any serious objection to paying tithes, but only wanted to
look like martyrs. The Bill went on swimmingly till it was about going
into committee, on the 10th of May, when Francis rose again. A new
light had burst upon him. He said that he had learnt that the Bill did
not proceed from the suffering individuals, but from the yearly meeting
of the Society itself--as if that were any solid objection, and as if
a measure ought not to come with more weight from a whole suffering
community than from a few individuals! The Bill readily passed the
Commons, but no sooner did it appear in the Lords than the Bishops
fell foul of it. The Archbishop of Canterbury saw danger to the Church
in it, and moved that it be read that day three months, and this was
carried. Thus the Bill was lost for that Session. Adair brought in a
fresh Bill for the same object, into the new Parliament, in October,
but this was thrown out.

[Illustration:

     _Man and woman of middle class      Parson
     Lady and gentleman               Labourer and wife_

COSTUMES AT THE BEGINNING OF GEORGE III.'S REIGN.]

But the question of the restrictions upon Dissenters was again taken
up by Lord Stanhope, in 1811. On the 21st of March he presented to the
House of Lords a short Bill "For the better securing the liberty of
conscience." It had the same fate as his former ones. Ministers seemed
rather inclined to abridge the liberty of conscience, for immediately
afterwards, namely, on the 9th of May, Lord Sidmouth brought in a
Bill to limit the granting of licences to preach, asserting that this
licence was made use of by ignorant and unfit persons, because having
such a licence exempted them from serving in the militia, on juries,
etc. The Bill excited great alarm amongst the Dissenters, and Lord
Stanhope and Lord Grey, on the 17th of the month, when Lord Sidmouth
moved for the second reading of the Bill, prayed for some time to
be allowed for the expression of public opinion. The second reading
was, accordingly, deferred till the 21st, by which time a flock of
petitions came up against it, one of which was signed by four thousand
persons. Lord Erskine said that these petitions were not a tenth part
of what would be presented, if time were afforded for the purpose;
and he ridiculed the idea of persons obtaining exemption from serving
in the militia by merely taking out licences to preach. Lord Grey
confirmed this, saying that it was impossible for persons to obtain
such licences, except they were ministers of separate congregations.
This was secured by an Act passed in 1802, and still more, the party
applying for such licence was restricted from following any trade,
except that of keeping a school. These regulations, he stated, were
most minutely adhered to, both in the general and local militia, and he
challenged Lord Sidmouth to show him a single instance, since the Act
of 1802, where exemption had been improperly obtained by a Dissenter.
Lord Grey proved from actual returns that the whole number of persons
who had been licensed during the last forty-eight years had only been
three thousand six hundred and seventy-eight, or about seventy-seven
annually on an average, and that the highest number reached in any one
year had been only about one hundred and sixty. He contended that these
facts demonstrated the non-necessity of the Bill. It was lost.

In the following June Lord Stanhope again came forward with a Bill
to remove some of these enactments, and he showed that the literal
fulfilment of several of them was now impossible; that as to compelling
every man to go to church, by returns lately made to that House it was
shown that there were four millions more people in England than all
the churches of the Establishment could contain. With respect to the
Church enforcing uniformity, he said that the variations between the
Book of Common Prayer printed at Oxford and that printed at Cambridge
amounted to above four thousand. His Bill was again thrown out by
thirty-one against ten; but his end was gained. He had brought the
injustice towards the Dissenters so frequently forward, and it was
now so glaring, and the Dissenters themselves were become so numerous
and influential, that the question could be no longer blinked. On the
majority being pronounced against the Bill, Lord Holland rose and asked
whether, then, there was to be nothing done to remove the disabilities
under which Dissenters laboured? If that were the case, he should be
under the necessity of bringing forward a measure on that subject
himself. This compelled Ministers to promise that something should be
done; and, on the 10th of the same month, Lord Castlereagh proposed to
bring in a Bill to repeal certain Acts, and to amend others respecting
persons teaching or preaching in certain religious assemblies. This
Act, when explained, went to repeal the 13 and 14 Charles II., which
imposed penalties on Quakers and others who should refuse to take
oaths; the 16 of Charles II., known as the Five Mile Act, which
prohibited any preacher who refused to take the non-resistance oath
coming within five miles of any corporation where he had preached
since the Act of Oblivion, under a penalty of fifty pounds; and the
17, which also imposed fine and imprisonment on them for attempting to
teach a school unless they went to church and subscribed a declaration
of conformity. It also repealed the 22 Charles II., commonly called
the Conventicle Act. Instead of those old restraints, his Act simply
required the registration of all places of worship in the bishop's or
archdeacon's court; that they must not be locked, bolted, or barred
during divine service, and that the preachers must be licensed
according to the 19 George III. These conditions being complied with,
all persons officiating in, or resorting to such places of worship,
became entitled to all the benefits of the Toleration Act, and the
disturbance of their assemblies became a punishable offence. This Bill
passed both Houses, and became known as the Statute of 52 George III.
It was a great step in the progress of religious freedom; and Mr.
William Smith, the leader of the Dissenting interests in the House of
Commons, expressed his heartfelt gratification at this proof of the
increasing liberality of the times.

But whilst some little freedom from restrictions for Dissenters was
thus forced from the Church, a stout battle was going on, and continued
to go on through the whole reign, for giving to the Roman Catholics
the common privileges of citizens. On account of their faith they
were excluded from all civil offices, including seats in Parliament.
We shall see that some slight concessions of both civil and military
privilege were, in the course of this contest, made to them; but to
the end of this reign, and, indeed, until 1829, the full claims of the
Catholics continued to be resisted. We can only cursorily note the main
facts of this long-protracted struggle. In the early part of the reign
a degree of relief was afforded which promised well for the cause of
the Catholics; but these promises were not fulfilled. In May, 1778,
Sir George Savile brought in a Bill to relieve the Catholics from the
provisions of the Act of 1699 for preventing the growth of Popery.
By this Act Catholic priests were not allowed to enter England, and,
if found there, were at the mercy of informers; Roman Catholics were
forbidden to educate their own children, or to have them educated
by Papists, under penalty of perpetual imprisonment; and they were
not allowed to purchase land, or hold it by descent or bequest; but
the next of kin who was a Protestant might take it. Sir George's Act
passed both Houses, and by it all Roman Catholics were restored to the
privileges of performing divine service, if priests, and of holding
land, and educating children, on taking an oath of allegiance, of
abjuration of the Pretender, and rejection of the doctrine that it
was lawful to murder heretics, was right to keep no faith with them,
and that the Pope or any foreign prince had any temporal or civil
jurisdiction within these realms. The consequence of this degree of
indulgence to the Catholics was the famous Gordon Riots in London
and similar ones in Edinburgh, which had the effect of frightening
the Government out of further concessions. A similar Bill was passed
in Ireland in 1782. The Bill of 1778, however, was confirmed and
considerably extended by a Bill brought in by Mr. Mitford, afterwards
Lord Redesdale, in 1791, and, after a long discussion, was passed by
both Houses in June of that year. This Bill legalised Roman Catholic
places of worship, provided they were registered and the doors were
not locked during service; it recognised the right of Catholics to
keep schools, except in Oxford and Cambridge, and provided that no
Protestant children were admitted. It permitted Catholic barristers
and attorneys to practise on taking the new oath; and it removed
the penalties on peers for coming into the presence of the king; in
fact, it left little disability upon Catholics except that of not
being eligible for places in Parliament, or any other places under
Government, unless they took the old oaths.

In the following Session Fox introduced a Bill to grant some further
privileges to the Catholics, but it was rejected; but in 1793 the
Catholics of Scotland were admitted, by an Act introduced by Mr. Robert
Dundas, the Lord Advocate, to the same privileges as the Irish and
English Catholics. The question appeared to rest till 1799, when there
seems to have been a proposition on the part of the English Government
to make an independent provision for the Catholic clergy of Ireland,
on condition that they, on their part, should enter into certain
engagements. There was a meeting of Roman Catholic prelates in Dublin
at the commencement of that year on the subject, at which they agreed
to accept the proposal. Pitt was favourable to the Catholic claims,
though the Irish Parliament previous to the Union would not hear of
them. He had caused promises of Catholic Emancipation to be circulated
in Ireland in order to induce the Irish to accept the Union; and when
he found that the king's immovable resistance to this measure would
not allow him to make good his word, he resigned office. Nothing was
done in it during the time that he continued out, chiefly, it is said,
through his influence; and when he returned to office in May, 1804, he
did so without any mention of the Catholics. In truth, he appears to
have given them up for the sake of enjoying power again; for, when,
on the 9th of March, 1805, the question was raised by Lord Grenville
in the House of Peers, and, on the 13th, by Fox in the Commons, Pitt
opposed the motion on the ground that the reasons which had occasioned
him to quit office still operated against this measure, and that it
was impossible for him to support it. It was negatived by three hundred
and thirty-six against one hundred and twenty-four.

Both Pitt and Fox died in 1806, and a circumstance occurred in the
following year which showed the inveterate obstinacy of the king
regarding the Catholics. Lord Howick, Secretary for Foreign Affairs,
obtained leave to bring in a Bill to enable Catholics to hold the
higher offices in the army and navy; but the king soon let him know
that he should not ratify any such Bill, and he agreed to withdraw
it. But this did not satisfy George; he demanded from the Ministers a
written engagement to propose no further concessions to the Catholics,
and as they declined to do this, he dismissed them, and placed the Duke
of Portland at the head of a new Cabinet.

This was sufficient warning to Cabinets not to meddle with this tabooed
subject; but Grattan continued, year after year, to bring the question
forward, though often defeated by great majorities. In his speech in
1808 Grattan introduced the idea of giving his Majesty a veto on the
appointment of Catholic bishops. It appears that this proposition had
the approval of the Irish Catholic bishops, but the Irish priests made
a determined stand against it. In 1810 and 1811 the motion was thrown
out by strong majorities.

The continued resistance of the English Government meanwhile was
rousing the quick blood of Ireland. The old Catholic Convention of
1793 was revived, and from year to year met and passed increasingly
strong resolutions in Dublin. In 1810 its meetings, and the agitation
it occasioned throughout the kingdom, became very conspicuous. A
private letter was circulated all over the country, recommending the
appointment of committees everywhere in order to the preparation of
a monster petition. It was resolved that as soon as the Convention
met, it should sit in permanence, so as to keep up an incessant action
throughout the country. The Government took alarm, and Mr. Wellesley
Pole, Secretary of State for Ireland, issued a letter to the sheriffs
and chief magistrates throughout Ireland, ordering them to arrest
all persons concerned in sending up delegates to this Convention. No
sooner was this known in England than Lord Moira in the Lords, and Mr.
Ponsonby in the Commons, adverted to the subject, and called for a copy
of all correspondence by Government upon it. The demand was resisted in
both Houses. On the 4th of April Lord Stanhope moved a resolution that
the letter of Mr. Wellesley Pole was a violation of the law, being,
in fact, a prohibition of his Majesty's subjects to assemble for the
purpose of petitioning Parliament. This was negatived by twenty-one
votes against six.

In Ireland the magistrates acted on the circular, and on the 23rd of
February, 1811, two magistrates proceeded to disperse the Catholic
committee in Dublin. They were told by the committee that they were
sitting simply for the purpose of petitioning Parliament, and they did
not venture to interrupt it. The movement went on all over Ireland,
the committees were numerously attended, and, notwithstanding a
proclamation from Dublin Castle commanding the magistrates everywhere
to disperse all such gatherings, in Dublin the general committee,
numbering nearly three hundred persons, met in Fishamble Street on the
19th of October. Police were sent to disperse them, but on arriving
they had already signed the petition, and were coming away amid a vast
concourse of spectators. Several persons were arrested and tried, but
the juries returned verdicts of "Not Guilty."

On the 23rd of December the committee met again in Fishamble Street,
and resolved to address the Prince Regent on the invasion of their
right to petition, appointing a general committee to meet again
in Dublin on the 28th of February, 1812. In January, and at the
commencement of February, Earl Fitzwilliam introduced the consideration
of the state of Ireland, and Lord Morpeth proposed the same subject to
the Commons, but both motions were rejected.

In January, 1812, Government made another attempt to punish the
Catholic delegates, and they obtained a verdict against one of them,
Thomas Kirwan; but such was the public feeling, that they did no more
than fine him one mark, and discharge him. They also abandoned other
contemplated prosecutions. The Catholic committee met, according to
appointment, on the 28th of February, addressed the Prince Regent,
and then separated. The usual motions for Catholic Emancipation were
introduced into both Houses of Parliament, and by both were rejected.
It was the settled policy of this Ministry not to listen to the
subject, though the Marquis Wellesley, Canning, and others now admitted
that the matter must be conceded. The assassination of Mr. Perceval,
on the 11th of May, it was hoped, would break up that Ministry, but it
was continued, with Lord Liverpool at its head. Though Lord Wellesley
this year brought forward the motion in the Lords, and Canning in the
Commons, both Houses rejected it, but the Lords by a majority of only
one. The question continued to be annually agitated in Parliament
during this reign, from the year 1814, with less apparent success than
before, Ireland was in a very dislocated state with the Orangemen and
Ribbonmen, and other illegal associations and contentions between
Catholics and Protestants, and this acted very detrimentally on the
question in England. Only one little victory was obtained in favour of
the Catholics. This was, in 1813, the granting to Catholics in England
of the benefit of the Act passed in Ireland, the 33 George III.,
repealing the 21 Charles II. And thus the Catholics were left, after
all their exertions, at the death of the old king.

The movement going forward in the Established Church of Scotland during
this reign related almost exclusively to the subject of patronage.
This church, though drawing its origin from Switzerland, a thoroughly
Republican country, and rejecting bishops, took good care to vest the
right of presenting ministers to parishes in the clergy. The Government
insisted on this right continuing in lay patrons; but for some time
after the Revolution the people asserted their right to choose their
own pastors, and continued to carry it. But in 1698 the General
Assembly took the opportunity, when it had been accused by the English
Church of throwing the office of choosing ministers amongst the people,
to repudiate all such notion on their part. They declared unanimously
that "they allowed no power in the people, but only in the pastors of
the Church, to appoint and ordain to such offices."

The Act of 1712 restored lay patronage, and then the strife began, but
not between the people and the lay pastors, but between the clergy and
the lay patrons. There grew up two parties in the General Assembly,
styled the moderates, and the more advanced, or popular party. The
moderates were those who were ready to concede to the demands of
Government and lay patronage under a gentle protest; the more popular
party, as it was called, was for transferring the right of presentation
to the presbytery. The Act of William III., in 1690, gave the original
and exclusive nomination to the heritors, land-owners, and elders.
The person nominated was to be proposed to the congregation, who
might approve or disapprove. But to what did this right amount? The
congregation could not absolutely reject; and if they disapproved, the
right passed on to the presbytery, whose decision was final. By this
arrangement, either the landowners and elders remained the presenters,
or, after a vain show of conferring the choice upon the people, the
appointment fell to the clergy, or presbytery. From 1690 to 1712, Sir
Henry Moncrieff says, "there does not appear the least vestige of a
doctrine, so much contended for at a later period, of a divine right in
the people individually or collectively, to elect the parish minister."
This opinion was fully maintained by the law of William III., in
1690, and confirmed by that of Anne, in 1712. Sir Henry Moncrieff, in
confirmation of this doctrine that the people never had a right to
elect their ministers in the Scottish Church, quotes the "First Book
of Discipline," of 1567, which placed the election of pastors in the
people at large; but this error, he says, was rectified by the "Second
Book of Discipline," in 1581. By this book the congregation could only
consent--the presbyters must finally determine. This contains the law
of the Church of Scotland, and the great schism which took place in the
Scottish Church, in 1843--known as the Disruption--arose merely from
the resistance to lay patronage, but with the intention of transferring
that patronage to the clergy, not the people.

[Illustration: ST. JOHN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH.
(_From a Photograph by A. A. Inglis._)]

In 1792 a measure of relief was passed for the Episcopalians of
Scotland. These had fallen into disgrace for their refusal to swear
allegiance to the House of Hanover. The conduct of many of them during
the rebellion of 1745 had increased the rigour of Government against
them, and an Act was passed, the 19 George II., ordering the shutting
up of all Episcopalian chapels where the minister had not taken the
oath of allegiance, and where he did not pray for the king and royal
family. Any clergyman of that church violating these regulations
was liable to six months' imprisonment for the first offence, and
transportation to one of the American plantations for the second, with
perpetual imprisonment did he dare to return thence. No minister was
to be held qualified to officiate except he had received letters of
orders from an English or Irish bishop of the Protestant Episcopalian
Church. All persons frequenting the chapels of such unqualified persons
were liable to a penalty of five pounds for the first offence, and two
years' imprisonment for the second. But now, the Pretender being dead,
and his brother, Cardinal York, being held on account of his clerical
character to have forfeited his claim to the Crown, the Scottish
Episcopalians came and took the necessary oaths; this Bill was passed
removing their disabilities, and the aristocracy of Scotland soon, for
the most part, became members of the church when it ceased to be in
disgrace.

[Illustration: ROWLAND HILL PREACHING TO THE COLLIERS OF KINGSWOOD.
(_See p._ 170.)]

The various triumphs in the direction of liberty of conscience evidence
a sense of civil right in the community, which forced itself on the
Government, rather than a sense of religion. But religion, too, was in
steady growth. The Dissenters had greatly increased during this period,
and amongst them the names of some of their ministers had acquired
a general reputation. Robert Hall, of Leicester, and afterwards of
Bristol, threw a new lustre on the Baptist community. He was the son of
a Baptist minister, was at first educated by Dr. Ryland, the learned
Baptist pastor of Northampton, and afterwards took his degree of M.A.
at King's College, Aberdeen. He commenced his ministerial career in
Bristol, and subsequently resided as minister at Leicester for twenty
years. On the death of his old tutor, Dr. Ryland, he became the
president of the Baptist Academy at Bristol, and pastor of Broadmead
Chapel, in that town. Robert Hall was not inferior to any of the clergy
of the Establishment in learning or eloquence. He was for eleven years
the Baptist minister in Cambridge before removing to Leicester. In
Cambridge he succeeded to a man nearly as remarkable, the celebrated
Robert Robinson. At this university town he attracted the notice of
some of the leading Established clergy and professors, and of the
world at large, by his "Vindication of the Freedom of the Press,"
and his splendid sermon "On Modern Infidelity." Dr. Parr has left a
testimony to the merits of Robert Hall in his will, which does honour
to his liberality:--"Mr. Hall has, like Jeremy Taylor, the eloquence
of an orator, the fancy of a poet, the subtlety of a schoolman, the
profoundness of a philosopher, and the piety of a saint." To the same
body belonged the celebrated author of "Essays on the Formation of
Character," John Foster, also of Bristol.

Amongst the followers of Whitefield became conspicuous Rowland Hill,
Matthew Wilks, and William Huntington. Of the followers of Whitefield,
Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, became the patron, as she had been of
Whitefield himself, whom she made her chaplain. This remarkable woman
founded schools and colleges for the preachers; and so completely
did she identify herself with this sect that it became styled "Lady
Huntingdon's Society." Perhaps the most celebrated of these preachers,
after Whitefield, was Rowland Hill, who was a younger son of Sir
Rowland Hill, of Hawkstone, in Shropshire. He was educated at Cambridge
for the Church of England, but preferred following Whitefield, and
for many years went about preaching in the open air, like Whitefield,
in different parts of the country, and particularly amongst the
colliers of Kingswood. In 1783 his chapel, called the Surrey Chapel,
being built, he settled in London, and continued his ministry in the
metropolis till his death in 1833, at the age of eighty-eight. Rowland
Hill was as much celebrated for his humour and eccentricity, which he
carried into his preachings, as for his talents. He was also an author
of various productions, the most popular of which were his "Village
Dialogues."

Perhaps a still more remarkable man of the same denomination was
William Huntington, originally a coalheaver, struggling with severe
poverty; yet, believing himself called to the ministry, he boldly
followed his conceived duty, through much discouragement and
persecution. He has left an autobiography, in which his perfect faith
in and reliance on God are justified by the most remarkable supply of
all his wants, and support in a widely extended and useful ministry.
After the death of his first wife he married the wealthy widow of Sir
James Sanderson, a London alderman, and passed his latter years in
affluence.

Amongst the Independents the names of John Clayton and William Beugo
Collyer, and amongst the Unitarians Dr. Priestley, Theophilus Lindsey,
and Thomas Belsham are conspicuous.

But the most remarkable growth of religion was through the
instrumentality of the Wesleyan Methodists. These spread over all the
country, through town and village, into places where the ministers
of the Establishment had fallen into a spiritual sleep from want of
rivalry. In Wales they found a great and almost unoccupied field. In
Cornwall, where Wesley had been abused and pelted with stones, they
became universal, and still continue to astonish the visitor to that
county by their extraordinary numbers, almost every Cornish miner
being of that sect. Throughout England the spread of Methodism has been
a most influential cause of the revival of activity and discipline in
the Established Church itself; for it soon became evident that the
Church must exert itself, or the body of the people, especially in
the country and in manufacturing districts, would be absorbed by the
Wesleyan interest.

In Wales, such was the neglect of religion by the Establishment,
that, previous to 1804, there was scarcely a clergyman of the Church
of England in the principality who was a native, or could preach in
Welsh. The capability of a minister to make himself understood by
his parishioners had been totally disregarded by those who had the
presentation to livings; the exercise of patronage had alone been cared
for; the souls of people went for nothing. About that time the Rev. Mr.
Charles was engaged as curate in a Welsh parish. He found not a single
Bible in the parish, and on extending his inquiries he scarcely found
a Bible in Wales. He made this fact known to the public, in an appeal
for Welsh Bibles, and for this appeal and the attendant exposure of
the clerical neglect he was dismissed from his cure, and could find no
bishop who would license him to preach in any other parish. But his
truly Christian act had excited the attention of the religious public,
and had the effect of establishing the British and Foreign Bible
Society in 1804.

In Ireland the bulk of the population had been left to the Catholic
pastors, who were maintained by their flocks, the property of the
Catholic Church having been long transferred by Act of Parliament to
the Church of England, or, as it was called, the sister Church of
Ireland. The number of parishes in Ireland had been originally only
two thousand four hundred and thirty-six, though the population at
that time was half that of England; but in 1807 Mr. Wickham stated
that, in 1803, these had been consolidated, and reduced to one thousand
one hundred and eighty-three. In some of these parishes in the south
of Ireland, Mr. Fitzgerald stated that the incomes amounted to one
thousand pounds, to one thousand five hundred pounds, and even to
three thousand pounds a year; yet that in a considerable number of
these highly endowed parishes there was no church whatever. In others
there were churches but no Protestant pastors, because there were no
Protestants. The provision for religious instruction went wholly, in
these cases, to support non-resident, and often very irreligious,
clergymen. In fact, no truly religious clergyman ever could hold such
a living. The livings were, in fact, looked upon as sinecures to be
conferred by Ministers on their relatives or Parliamentary supporters.
It was stated that out of one thousand one hundred and eighty-three
benefices in Ireland, two hundred and thirty-three were wholly without
churches; and Mr. Fitzgerald said, "that where parishes had been
consolidated, the services rendered to the people by their clergyman
had been diminished in proportion as his income had been augmented;
for no place of religious worship was provided within the reach of
the inhabitants; nor could such parishioners obtain baptism for their
children, or the other rites of the Church; and the consequence was
that the Protestant inhabitants, in such places, had disappeared."

Measures to alter this disgraceful state of things were repeatedly
introduced, but as steadily rejected. The collection of tithes seemed
to occupy the chief attention of the Established clergy of Ireland,
even where they rendered no spiritual services, and eventually led
to a state of irritation and of dire conflict between the Protestant
incumbent and the Catholic population which did not cease till after
the death of George III. The clergyman called in the soldiery to assist
him in the forcible levying of tithes, and the bloodshed and frightful
plunder of the poor huts of the Irish in this _bellum ecclesiasticum_
became the scandal of all Christendom ere it was ended by the Act of a
later reign, which transferred the collection of tithes to the landlord
in the shape of rent.

In literature, and the amount of genius in every branch of it, as well
as in mechanical skill, few ages ever transcended that of George III.
Though he and his Ministers did their best to repress liberty, they
could not restrain the liberty of the mind, and it burst forth on all
sides with almost unexampled power. In fact, throughout Europe, during
this period, a great revolution in taste took place. The old French
influence and French models, which had prevailed in most countries
since the days of Louis XIV., were now abandoned, and there was a
return to nature and originality. "The Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry," collected by Percy, the Bishop of Dromore, and the publication
of the old Scottish ballads by Walter Scott, snapped the spell which
had bound the intellect since the days of Pope, and opened the sealed
eyes of wondering scholars; and they saw, as it were, "a new heaven
and a new earth" before them. They once more felt the fresh breath of
the air and ocean, smelt the rich odour of the heath and the forest,
and the oracles of the heart were reopened, as they listened again to
the whispers of the eternal winds. Once more, as of old to prophets
and prophetic kings, there was "a sound of going in the tops of the
trees." In Great Britain, Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey,
Byron, Shelley--in Germany, Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, Richter--in
Scandinavia, Tegner, Oehlenschläger, Stagnelius--with a world of lesser
lights around them, stood in the glowing beams of a new morning,
casting around them the wondrous wealth of a poetry as fresh as it was
overflowing. As in poetry, so in prose invention. The novel and romance
came forth in totally new forms, and with a life and scope such as they
had never yet attained. From Fielding and Sterne to Godwin and Scott,
the list of great writers in this department shed a new glory on the
English name. In works of all other kinds the same renewal of mind was
conspicuous; history took a prominent place, and science entered on new
fields.

Before the conclusion of the reign of George II. a new school of
fiction had appeared. De Foe had, besides his "Robinson Crusoe,"
opened up the inexhaustible field of incident and character existing
in actual life in his "Colonel Jack," "Moll Flanders," "Roxana," and
other novels, and Fielding and Richardson extended it. Fielding, too,
died six years before the beginning of this reign, and Richardson in
the first year of it. But their works were in full circulation, and
extended their influence far into this period. They have, therefore,
been left to be noticed here in connection with the class of writers
to whom they gave origin, and to whom they properly belong. Richardson
(_b._ 1689; _d._ 1761) seems to have originated the true novel of real
life in his "Pamela," which was the history of a servant, written with
that verisimilitude that belongs to biography. This was commenced in
1740, and brought to a conclusion in 1741. The extra-ordinary sensation
which it created was sufficient proof that the author had struck
into the very heart of nature, and not only knew where the seat of
human passion lay, but had the highest command over it. It was not,
in fact, from books and education, but from native insight and acute
observation, that he drew his power. He was born in Derbyshire, and
received his education at a common day-school. He was then apprenticed
as a printer in London, and established himself as a master in that
business, which he continued to pursue with great success. His "Pamela"
ran through five editions in the first year. In 1748 appeared his
"Clarissa Harlowe," and wonderfully extended his reputation, which
reached its full blaze in his "Sir Charles Grandison," in 1754. In all
these works he showed himself a perfect analyst of the human heart, and
detector of the greatest niceties of character. Though he could have
known little or nothing of aristocratic life, yet, trusting to the sure
guidance of nature, he drew ladies and gentlemen, and made them act
and converse as the first ladies and gentlemen of the age would have
been proud to act and speak. A more finished gentleman than Sir Charles
Grandison, or correcter lady than Miss Byron, was never delineated.
The only thing was, that, not being deeply versed in the debaucheries
and vulgarisms of the so-called high life of the time, he drew it as
much purer and better than it was. It is in the pages of Fielding and
Smollett that we must seek for the darker and more real character of
the age. The fault of Richardson was his prolixity. He develops his
plot, and draws all his characters, and works out his narrative with
the minutest strokes. It is this which prevents him from being read
now. Who could wade through a novel of nine volumes? Yet these were
devoured by the readers of that time with an avidity that not even
the novels of Sir Walter Scott were waited for in the height of his
popularity.

Fielding (_b._ 1707; _d._ 1754) began his career by an attempt,
in "Joseph Andrews," to caricature the "Pamela" of Richardson. He
represented Joseph as Pamela's brother; but he had not proceeded far
when he became too much interested in his own creation to make a
mere parody of him. This novel he produced in 1742, the year after
the completion of "Pamela." The following year he gave to the world
"Jonathan Wild;" in 1749, "Tom Jones;" and in 1751, but three years
before his death, at the age of only forty-seven, "Amelia." But,
besides a novelist, Fielding was a dramatic writer, a political writer,
and the editor of four successive periodicals--_The Champion_, _The
True Patriot_, _The Jacobite Journal_, and _The Covent Garden Journal_.
Fielding, unlike Richardson, was educated at Eton, and afterwards at
Leyden. He had fortune, but he dissipated it; and had the opportunity
of seeing both high and low life, by his rank as a gentleman and his
office as a police-magistrate. His novels are masterly productions.
His squire Western and parson Adams, and his other characters are
genuine originals; and they are made to act and talk with a raciness
of humour and a flow of wit that might even yet render them popular,
if their occasional grossness did not repel the reader of this age.
It is, indeed, the misfortune of Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett, that
they lived in so coarse and debauched an epoch; their very fidelity now
renders them repulsive. Richardson and Fielding were the Dickens and
Thackeray of their day. In Fielding, the colder nature and the more
satiric tone make the resemblance to Thackeray the more striking.

Tobias Smollett (_b._ 1721; _d._ 1771), before he appeared as a
novelist, following in the track of Fielding rather than in that of
Richardson, had figured as poet, dramatist, and satirist. Originally
a surgeon from Dumbartonshire, and afterwards surgeon's mate on board
of a man-of-war, he had then lived as an author in London. Thus he had
seen great variety of life and character, and, having a model given
him, he threw his productions forth in rapid succession. His first
novel was "Roderick Random," which appeared in 1748, the same year as
Richardson's "Clarissa," and a year preceding perhaps the greatest of
Fielding's works, "Tom Jones." Then came, in rapid sequence, "Peregrine
Pickle," "Count Fathom," "Sir Launcelot Greaves," and "Humphrey
Clinker." Whilst writing these he was busy translating "Don Quixote"--a
work after his own heart--travelling and writing travels, editing _The
Briton_, and continuing Hume's "History of England." In his novels
Smollett displayed a deep knowledge of character, and a humour still
broader and coarser than that of Fielding. In Smollett the infusion of
indecency may be said to have reached its height. In fact, there is
no more striking evidence of the vast progress made in England since
the commencement of the reign of George III., in refinement of manners
and delicacy of sentiment, than the contrast between the coarseness
and obscenity of those early writers and the novelists of the present
day. The picture which they offer of the rude vice, the low tastes,
the debauched habits, the general drunkenness, and the ribaldry and
profanity of language in those holding the position of gentlemen and
even of ladies, strikes us now with amazement and almost with loathing.

[Illustration:

    JANE AUSTEN. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.
    SAMUEL RICHARDSON.
    LAURENCE STERNE. TOBIAS SMOLLETT.
]

The next novelist who appeared was of a very different school.
Richardson was an elaborate anatomist of character; Fielding and
Smollett were master painters of life and manners, and threw in strong
dashes of wit and humour; but they had little sentiment. In Laurence
Sterne (_b._ 1713; _d._ 1768) came forth a sentimentalist, who, whilst
he melted his readers by touches of pathos, could scarcely conceal
from them that he was laughing at them in his sleeve. The mixture of
feeling, wit, _double entendre_, and humour of the most subtle and
refined kind, and that in a clergyman, produced the oddest, and yet
the most vivid, impressions on the reader. The effect was surprise,
pleasure, wonder, and no little misgiving; but the novelty and charm
of this original style were so great that they carried all before
them, but not without the most violent censures from the press on his
indecencies, especially considering his position as a clergyman. Sterne
was the grandson of that Richard Sterne, a native of Mansfield, in
Nottinghamshire, who was chaplain to Archbishop Laud, and attended him
on the scaffold. Laurence Sterne was the son of a lieutenant in the
army, and was born at Clonmel, in Ireland, his grandfather having then
become Archbishop of York. Sterne, therefore, on taking orders, was
on the way of preferment, and received the rectory of Stillington and
the perpetual curacy of Coxwold, both in Yorkshire. There he wrote not
only sermons, but satire, particularly his "History of a Watchcoat."
But it was his novel of "Tristram Shandy" which brought him into
sudden popularity. After this, his "Sentimental Journey" completed
his reputation; and his Maria and her lamb, his uncle Toby, Corporal
Trim, Yorick, Doctor Slop, the widow Wadman, and his lesser characters,
usurped for a long period the tears and laughter of the nation.

But it was not till 1766 that the public became possessed of what
may be called the first domestic novel, in the "Vicar of Wakefield"
of Oliver Goldsmith (_b._ 1728; _d._ 1774). The works of Richardson,
Fielding, and Smollett had been rather novels of general life than
of the home life of England, but this work was a narrative of such
every-day kind as might occur in any little nook in the country. It
was a picture of those chequered scenes that the lowliest existence
presents: the simple, pious pastor, in the midst of his family, easily
imposed on and led into difficulties; the heartless rake, bringing
disgrace and sorrow where all had been sunshine before; the struggles
and the triumphs of worth, which had no wealth or high rank to emblazon
it; and all mingled and quickened by a humour so genial and unstudied
that it worked on the heart like the charms of nature herself. No work
ever so deeply influenced the literary mind of England. The productions
which it has originated are legion, and yet it stands _sui generis_
amongst them all. The question may seem to lack sequence, yet we may
ask whether there would have been a "Pickwick" if there had not been a
"Vicar of Wakefield?"

It is said that when Johnson called on Goldsmith to see what could be
done to raise money to pay the latter's landlady, who threatened him
with imprisonment, Goldsmith handed the doctor the MS. of a new novel
that might be worth something! This was the "Vicar of Wakefield."
Johnson recognised its merits instantly, and at once sold it to a
bookseller for £60, with which Goldsmith's rent was paid.

What a totally different species of composition was the "Vicar" to the
tale of "Rasselas," published by his friend Dr. Samuel Johnson (_b._
1709; _d._ 1784), the great lexicographer, seven years before! This was
conceived in the romantic and allegoric spirit of the time--"The Ten
Days of Seged," "The Vision of Mirza," and the like. It was laid in the
south, but amid Eastern manners, and didactic in spirit and ornate in
style. It was measured, and graceful, and dull--too scholastic to seize
on the heart and the imagination. On a nature like Goldsmith's it could
make no impression, and therefore leave no trace. The one was like a
scene amid palm trees, and fountains, and sporting gazelles; the other
like a genuine English common, on which robust children were tumbling
and shouting, amid blooming gorse, near the sunny brook, with the lark
carolling above them. There is no country in Europe, scarcely in the
world, where letters are known, which has not its translation of the
"Vicar of Wakefield." Even in England, "Rasselas" is almost forgotten.

Now followed a period in which many works were produced which were
extremely popular in their day, but of which few now retain public
appreciation. Amongst these none reached the same estimation as "Henry,
Earl of Moreland: or, The Fool of Quality," by Henry Brooke. It was
designed to show the folly and the artificial _morale_ of the age, by
presenting Henry as the model of direct and natural sentiments, for the
indulgence of which he was thought a fool by the fashionable world. The
early part of the work is admirable, and the boyhood of Henry is the
obvious prototype of Day's "History of Sandford and Merton;" but as
it advances it becomes utterly extravagant. Miss Frances Brooke, too,
was the author of "Julia Mandeville" and other novels. Mrs. Charlotte
Smith, long remembered for her harmonious sonnets, was the author of
numerous novels, as "The Old Manor House," "Celestina," "Marchmont,"
etc.; there were also Mrs. Hannah More with her "Cœlebs in Search of a
Wife;" Mrs. Hamilton with her "Agrippina;" Bage with his "Hermstrong:
or, Man as he is Not;" "Monk" Lewis with his "Tales of Wonder" and
his "Monk;" and Horace Walpole with his melodramatic romance of "The
Castle of Otranto." But far beyond Walpole rose Mrs. Ann Radcliffe,
the very queen of horror and wonder, in her strange, exciting tales of
"The Sicilian Romance," "The Romance of the Forest," "The Mysteries
of Udolpho," "The Italian," etc. No writer ever carried the powers of
mystery, wonder, and suspense, to the same height, or so bewitched her
age by them.

Far greater, however, as the wielder of human sympathies by the recital
of wrongs and oppression, was William Godwin in his "Caleb Williams"
and "St. Leon." "Caleb Williams" is a model for narrative: lively,
clear, simple yet strong, moving in a rapid career--in fine contrast to
the slow, wire-drawn progress of the later three-volume novel--till it
winds up in an intensity of sensation. Then came Miss Burney, better
known as Madame D'Arblay, with her "Evelina," "Cecilia," and "Camilla,"
returning again to the details of social life. Afterwards came Dr. John
Moore with "Zeluco," etc.; Mrs. Inchbald with her charming "Simple
Story;" Mrs. Opie with "The Father and Daughter" in 1801, followed by
various other novels; and in the same year Miss Edgeworth commenced her
splendid career with "Belinda," and in the next year "Castle Rackrent."
To this period also belongs Lady Morgan with her "Wild Irish Girl,"
though she continued to live and write long after this reign.

Amongst the novelists of the later period of the reign we may name
Horace Smith, author of "Brambletye House," etc.; Leigh Hunt, the
poet, author of "Sir Ralph Esher;" Peacock, author of "Headlong Hall;"
Beckford, author of the wild Eastern tale of "Vathek;" Hamilton, author
of "Cyril Thornton," etc.; Maturin, author of "Melmoth the Wanderer,"
etc.; Mrs. Brunton, author of "Discipline," "Self-Control," etc.; and
Miss Ferrier, author of "Marriage" and other novels of a high order.
Jane Austen (_b._ 1775; _d._ 1817), author of "Pride and Prejudice,"
"Mansfield Park," "Sense and Sensibility," etc., all distinguished by
the nicest sense of character, was far above any of these, and ranks
with the foremost of our writers of fiction.

But far above all rose, at this period, the already popular romantic
poet, Walter Scott. Before him, in Scotland, Henry Mackenzie had
occupied for a long time the foreground as a writer of fiction,
in "The Man of Feeling," "Julia de Roubigné," etc., but in a very
different class of invention. As Walter Scott (_b._ 1771; _d._ 1832)
had opened up the romance of the Scottish Highlands in his poems, so
he now burst forth, on the same ground, in historic romance, with a
vigour, splendour, and wonderful fertility of imagination and resource
of knowledge which far exceeded everything in the history of literature
since the days of Shakespeare. We need not attempt to characterise the
voluminous series of what are called the "Waverley Novels," which, in
their ample range, occupied almost every country of Europe and every
climate, from the bleak rocks of Orkney to the glowing plains of Syria
and India; they are familiar to all readers, and closed this period
with a splendour from the mingled blaze of invention, poetry, and
science, which no succeeding age is likely to surpass.

In history, as in fiction, a new school of writers arose during this
period, at the head of which stood Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. David
Hume (_b._ 1711; _d._ 1776) had already acquired a great reputation
by his "Philosophical Essays concerning the Human Understanding," his
"Inquiry into the Principles of Morals," and his "Natural History of
Religion." In these metaphysical works he had indulged his extreme
sceptical tendency, and in the "Essay on Miracles" believed that he had
exploded the Christian religion. His works on this subject did not,
at first, gain much attention; but in a while were seized on by the
deistical and atheistical philosophers in Britain and on the Continent,
and have furnished them with their principal weapons. The first
two volumes of history met for a time with the same cold reception
as his metaphysics. He commenced with that favourite period with
historians--the reigns of James I. and Charles I.--because then began
the great struggle for the destruction of the Constitution, followed
by the still more interesting epoch of its battle for and triumph over
its enemies. Hume had all the Tory prejudices of the Scottish Jacobite,
and the reigns of James I. and Charles I. were extremely to his taste,
but as little to that of the English public. Hence the dead silence
with which it was received. But when there had been time to read the
second volume, containing the Commonwealth and the reigns of Charles
II. and James II., the storm broke out. In these he had run counter
to all the received political ideas of the age. But this excitement
raised both volumes into notice, and he then went back, and, in 1759,
published two more volumes, containing the reigns of the Tudors; and,
going back again, in 1762 he completed his history by bringing it down
from the invasion of Julius Cæsar to the accession of Henry VII. It was
afterwards, as has been mentioned, continued by Smollett.

[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON READING THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE "VICAR OF
WAKEFIELD." (_See p._ 174.)]

The history of Hume was much over-estimated in his own time, in spite
of the despotic notions which abound in it. It was held up as a
marvel of eloquence and acuteness. But after times always correct the
enthusiasm of contemporaries, and Hume's history has been found not
in every case trustworthy. When we now, indeed, take up Hume, we are
surprised to find it a very plain, clear narrative of events, with many
oversights and perversions, and nothing more. We wonder where are the
transcendent beauties which threw our readers of the eighteenth century
into raptures for which language scarcely gave expression. Whoever will
read the correspondence of contemporaries with Hume, will find him
eulogised rather as a demi-god than a man, and his works described in
extravagant strains of praise.

The "History of Scotland, during the Reigns of Queen Mary and James
VI.," by Dr. Robertson, was published in 1759, the year of the
appearance of Hume's "History of the House of Tudor." It was at once
popular; and Hume, writing to him, attributed this to the deference
which he had paid to established opinions, the true source of the
popularity of many works. This was followed, in 1769, by his "History
of Charles V.," and, in 1777, by his "History of America." Robertson's
chief characteristic is a sonorous and rather florid style, which
extremely pleased his age, but wearies this. His histories drew great
attention to the subjects of them at that period; but time has shown
that they are extremely superficial, and they have not held their place.

[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON. (_After the Portrait by Sir Joshua
Reynolds._)]

"The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Gibbon,
began to appear in 1776, a few months before the death of Hume, and was
not completed till 1788. It consisted of six ponderous quarto volumes,
and now often occupies double that number of octavos. It is a monument
of enormous labour and research, filling the long, waste, dark space
between ancient and modern history. It traces the history of Rome from
its Imperial splendour; through its severance into East and West;
through its decadence under its luxurious and effeminate emperors;
through the ravages of the invading hordes of the North, to the period
when the nations of Europe began, in the dawn of a new morning, to rise
from the depth of barbarism into life, form, and power. The faults
of this great work are, that it is written, like Hume's "History of
England," in the sceptical spirit of the period; and that it marches
on, in one high-sounding, pompous style, with a monotonous step, over
every kind of subject. The same space and attention are bestowed on the
insignificance of the feeblest emperors, and the least important times,
as on the greatest and most eventful. It is a work which all should
read, but a large part of it will be waded through rather as a duty
than a pleasure. Still, Gibbon holds his own indispensable position; no
other man has yet risen to occupy it better.

Besides these leading histories, this reign produced many others of
great value. Amongst these appeared, in 1763, a "History of England,"
by a lady, Catherine Macaulay, from James I. to the accession of
the House of Hanover; which was followed by another series, from
the Revolution to her own time. Mrs. Macaulay was a thorough-going
Republican; had gone to America expressly to see and converse with
Washington, and her history presented the very opposite opinions and
phase of events to those of Hume. Lord Lyttelton wrote a "History
of Henry II.," in by no means a popular style; and the book is
now forgotten. In 1776 there was published the first volume of
Lord Hailes's valuable "Annals of Scotland," of which Dr. Johnson
entertained so high an opinion. Besides these may be named Macpherson's
"History of Great Britain from the Restoration;" Stuart's "History
of the Reformation in Scotland," and "History of Scotland from the
Reformation to the Death of Queen Mary;" Whitaker's "History of
Manchester;" Warner's "History of Ireland;" Leland's "History of
Ireland;" Grainger's "Biographical History of England;" Ferguson's
"History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic;"
Watson's "History of Philip II. of Spain;" Orme's "History of the
British Nation in Hindostan;" Anderson's "Annals of Commerce." In
1784 Mitford published his "History of Ancient Greece," and two years
later Gillies published another "History of Greece." In 1789 Pinkerton
published a "History of the House of Stuart down to Queen Mary." In
1790 Boswell published his "Life of Johnson," the most interesting
biography ever written; in 1796 Roscoe his "Life of Lorenzo de'
Medici," and, in 1805, the "Life and Pontificate of Leo X."

The miscellaneous literature of this reign was immense, consisting of
travels, biographies, essays on all subjects, and treatises in every
department of science and letters. Prominent amongst these are the
"Letters of Junius," who, in the early part of the reign, kept the
leading statesmen, judges, and the king himself, in terror by the
relentlessness of his scarifying criticisms. These letters, which
are the perfection of political writing, have been ascribed to many
authors, but most generally to Sir Philip Francis; though it is hard
to speak on the subject with certainty. The writings of Dr. Johnson
furnish many items to this department. His "Dictionary of the English
Language" (1755) was a gigantic labour; his "Lives of the Poets,"
his "Tour to the Western Isles," would of themselves have made a
reputation, had he never written his poetry, his periodical essays,
or edited Shakespeare. Burke, too, besides his Speeches, added largely
to general literature. He wrote his "Inquiry into the Origin of the
Sublime and Beautiful;" assisted in the composition of the _Annual
Register_ for several years; and, in 1790, published his most famous
work, "Reflections on the French Revolution." Besides these he wrote
political letters and essays. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu produced her
celebrated Letters about the middle of the century, and many other
women were popular writers at this period: Sophia and Harriett Lee,
Anna Maria Williams, Mrs. Lennox, Mrs. Catherine Talbot, Elizabeth
Carter, the translator of Epictetus, Mrs. Montagu, an essayist on
Shakespeare, Mrs. Chapone, author of "Letters on the Improvement of
the Mind," Mrs. Barbauld, and Mrs. Charlotte Smith. In theology,
metaphysics, and mental philosophy, the earlier portion of the reign
was rich. In rapid succession appeared Reid's "Inquiry into the Human
Mind," Campbell's "Answer to Hume on Miracles," Beattie's "Essay on
Truth," Wallace's "Essay on the Numbers of Mankind," and Stuart's
"Enquiry into the Principles of Political Economy." But nine years
after Stuart's work appeared another on the same subject, which
raised that department of inquiry into one of the most prominent and
influential sciences of the age. This was the famous treatise "On the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," by Adam Smith (1776),
which produced a real revolution in the doctrines of the production and
accumulation of wealth. In teaching the advantages of free trade and
the division of labour it has rendered incalculable services to mankind.

Besides those already mentioned as distinguished in various branches
of literature, there was a host of others whom we can only name. In
theology there were Warburton, South, Horsley, Jortin, Madan, Gerard,
Blair, Geddes, Lardner, Priestley; in criticism and philology, Harris,
Monboddo, Kames, Blair, Sir William Jones, Walpole; in antiquarian
research, Hawkins, Burney, Chandler, Barrington, Stevens, Pegge,
Farmer, Vallancey, Grose, Gough; in belles-lettres and general
literature, Chesterfield, Hawkesworth, Brown, Jenyns, Bryant, Hurd,
Melmoth, Potter, Francklin, etc.; in mathematical and physical science,
Black, the discoverer of latent heat, Cavendish, the discoverer of
the composition of water, Priestley, Herschel, Maskelyne, Horsley,
Vince, Maseres, James Hutton, author of "The Huttonian Theory of the
Earth," Charles Hutton, Cullen Brown, the founder of the Brownian
theory of medicine, John and William Hunter, the anatomists, Pennant,
the zoologist, etc.; discoverers of new lands, plants, and animals,
Commodore Byron, Captains Wallis, Cook, Carteret, Flinders, etc., Dr.
Solander, Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. Green.

Amongst these, or in the period immediately succeeding them, some
individuals demand a particular notice. Benjamin Franklin, though
an American citizen, ought perhaps to be mentioned, as so immensely
influencing science by his discoveries in electricity; and Sir William
Jones, for his great additions to our knowledge of Indian and Persian
literature and theology. There was a large number of translations made
by Pye, Twining, Gillies, Francis, Murphy, Parr, Tyrwhitt, Wakefield,
etc. By one or other of these the works of Aristotle, Tacitus, Horace,
Cæsar, Virgil, Lucretius, etc., were wholly or partly introduced to
us. Monboddo's "Origin and Progress of Language," and Horne Tooke's
"Diversions of Purley" made a great sensation; Paine's "Rights of Man"
and "Age of Reason" a still greater, and called out elaborate answers.
Richard Porson was equally distinguished for his classical knowledge
and his drunkenness. Mary Wollstonecraft published her "Rights of
Woman," as a necessary addendum to Paine's "Rights of Man." There were
also editions of Shakespeare issued by Dr. Johnson, Steevens, Capell,
Hanmer, Malone, and Reed. Warton, Ritson, Pinkerton, Macpherson, and
Ellis revived our older poetry by new editions. The controversy on the
poetry of Ossian ran high during this period. In theology and morals,
the works of Dr. Paley and Bishops Watson, Horsley, and Porteus, were
most prominent. In speculative philosophy, Malthus, by his "Essay on
the Principle of Population," carried to greater lengths the notions of
Wallace on the numbers of mankind.

In the later period of the reign some of our chief poets appeared also
as prose writers in biography, criticism, and general literature:
Southey, as biographer and critic; Campbell and Moore, Leigh Hunt
and Charles Lamb, in the same field; so also Hazlitt, Sydney Smith,
Jeffrey, Playfair, Stewart, Brown, Mackintosh, and Bentham--the last in
the philosophy of law. In physical science, Sir Humphry Davy, Leslie,
Dalton, the author of the atomic theory, and Wollaston, distinguished
themselves.

Periodical writing grew in this reign into a leading organ of opinion
and intelligence. The two chief periodicals, according to our present
idea of them, were the _Gentleman's Magazine_ and the _Monthly Review_.
These were both started prior to the accession of George III. The
_Gentleman's Magazine_ was started by Cave, the publisher, in 1731; and
the _Monthly Review_ commenced in 1749. The former was a depository of
a great variety of matters, antiquarian, topographical, critical, and
miscellaneous, and has retained that character to the present hour. The
_Monthly Review_ was exclusively devoted to criticism. But in the early
portion of the reign a periodical literature of a totally different
character prevailed--the periodical essayist--formed on the model of
the _Spectator_, _Guardian_, and _Tatler_ of a prior period. Chief
amongst these figured Ambrose Philips's _Freethinker_; the _Museum_,
supported by Walpole, the Wartons, Akenside, etc.; the _Rambler_, by
Dr. Johnson; the _Adventurer_, by Hawkesworth; the _World_, in which
wrote chiefly aristocrats, as Lords Lyttelton, Chesterfield, Bath,
Cork, Horace Walpole, etc.; the _Connoisseur_, chiefly supplied by
George Colman and Bonnel Thornton; the _Old Maid_, conducted by Mrs.
Frances Brooke; the _Idler_, by Johnson; the _Babbler_, by Hugh Kelly;
the _Citizen of the World_, by Goldsmith; the _Mirror_, chiefly written
by Mackenzie, the author of the "Man of Feeling;" and the _Lounger_,
also chiefly conducted by Mackenzie. This class of productions,
appearing each once or twice a week, afforded the public the amusement
and instruction now furnished by the daily newspapers, weekly reviews,
and monthly magazines. Towards the end of the reign arose a new species
of review, the object of which was, under the guise of literature,
to serve opposing parties in politics. The first of these was the
_Edinburgh Review_, the organ of the Whigs, started in 1802, in which
Brougham, Jeffrey, and Sydney Smith were the chief writers. This,
professing to be liberal, launched forth the most illiberal criticisms
imaginable. There was scarcely a great poet of the time--Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Southey, Byron, James Montgomery, Leigh Hunt, Shelley,
Keats--whom it did not, but vainly, endeavour to crush. To combat
the influence of this Whig organ, in 1809 came forth the _Quarterly
Review_, the great organ of the Tories, to which Scott, Southey, Wilson
Croker, Gifford, etc., were the chief contributors. In 1817 this was
followed by another Conservative journal, not quarterly, but monthly in
its issue, conducted chiefly by Professor Wilson and Lockhart, namely,
_Blackwood's Magazine_, in which the monthly magazines of to-day find
their prototype, but with a more decided political bias than these
generally possess.

In the department of the Drama the fertility was immense. Tragedy,
comedy, and farce maintained a swelling stream during the whole reign.
In the earlier portion of it the chief writers of this class were
Goldsmith, Garrick, Foote, Macklin, Murphy, Cumberland, Colman the
elder, Mrs. Cowley, and Sheridan. Several of these dramatists--as
Garrick, Macklin, and Foote--were, at the same time, actors. The most
eminent of them as writers were Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Colman. Horace
Walpole wrote the "Mysterious Mother," a tragedy, which, however,
was never acted; Goldsmith his two comedies, "The Good-Natured Man"
and "She Stoops to Conquer," which were extremely popular; Garrick,
the farces of "The Lying Valet" and "Miss in her Teens." He was said
also to have been a partner with Colman in writing "The Clandestine
Marriage;" but Colman denied this, saying that Garrick wrote the first
two acts, and brought them to him, desiring him to put them together,
and that he did put them together, for he put them together into
the fire, and re-wrote the whole. Another farce, "High Life below
Stairs," attributed to Garrick, was, it seems, written by the Rev.
James Townley, assisted by Dr. Hoadly, the author of "The Suspicious
Husband." Garrick was the great actor of his time, but, as a dramatic
writer, his merit is insignificant. Foote was the chief writer of the
comic before Colman. His productions amount to upwards of twenty, the
most of them farces; and amongst them are "The Minor," "The Liar," and
"The Mayor of Garrat." Foote was the wit and punster of the age. His
satiric keenness was the terror of his time, and he dared to think of
trying it even on the great essayist, Dr. Johnson, by introducing him
upon the stage; but Johnson sent him word that he would be in one of
the stage-boxes with a good, knotty cudgel, and Foote thought it best
to let him alone.

Macklin was the author of "The Man of the World," a most successful
comedy, as well as others of much merit. He remained on the stage till
he was a hundred years old, and lived to a hundred and seven. George
Colman had distinguished himself by the translation of Terence's plays
and Horace's "Art of Poetry" before he commenced as a dramatist. His
vein was comic, and his comedies and farces amount to nearly thirty,
the best being "The Clandestine Marriage," already mentioned, "Polly
Honeycomb," and "The Jealous Wife." Arthur Murphy was a native of
Cork, and was brought up a merchant, but his bent was to the drama,
and he quitted his business and went to London, where he wrote two
successful farces, "The Apprentice" and "The Upholsterer." He next
wrote "The Orphan of China," a tragedy. He then studied for the bar,
but had not much practice, and returned to writing for the stage.
"The Grecian Daughter," "All in the Wrong," "The Way to keep Him,"
and "The Citizen," were very successful, and raised him to wealth and
distinction. Not satisfied with being a popular writer, he desired to
act as well as write, like Garrick and Macklin, but failed. Besides
his dramatic productions, he translated Tacitus and Sallust, and
wrote the life of Garrick. Richard Cumberland, also an Irishman,
was a very voluminous as well as miscellaneous writer. His comedy
of "The West Indian" made him at once popular, and he wrote a great
number of productions for the stage, amongst the best of which were
"The Fashionable Lover," "The Jew," "The Wheel of Fortune," etc. He
was employed by Government as an envoy to Lisbon and Madrid, and by
it refused the payment of his expenses. This reduced him to sell his
hereditary property, but he retired to Tunbridge Wells, and continued
to write plays, novels, essays, criticisms, etc., till nearly eighty
years of age.

There was a number of lady dramatists of this period. Mrs. Cowley
wrote "The Runaway," "The Belle's Stratagem," "More Ways than One,"
etc.; Mrs. Brooke, Miss Marshall, Mrs. Lennox, and Miss Sophia Lee,
all wrote successful plays; Mrs. Sheridan, the author of the Eastern
story, "Nourjahad," was the writer of the successful comedies of "The
Discovery" and "The Dupe." But the chief dramatist of this period was
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, her son (_b._ 1751; _d._ 1816). He was
equally distinguished as a politician, an orator, and a critic. Like
Murphy, Macklin, and Cumberland, he was an Irishman. His dramas placed
him at the head of all the writers for the stage of his time. They
abounded with humour, wit, the smartest action, and knowledge of life
and human nature. His splendid comedy of "The Rivals," written when
he was not twenty-five, did not at first augur much success; but "The
Duenna," which appeared the same year, carried with it at once the
highest public favour; and his "School for Scandal," acted in 1777,
raised his reputation to the utmost. He also wrote the farces of "The
Critic," "The Trip to Scarborough," and "St. Patrick's Day." All these
were issued before 1780, and after that he was too much involved in
political affairs to renew this style of writing. Amongst his other
labours for the theatre was the adaptation of "Pizarro," one of
Kotzebue's numerous plays. Sheridan first appeared before the world as
the translator of "Aristænetus."

[Illustration: DAVID GARRICK AS RICHARD III. (_After Hogarth._)]

Comedy and farce occupied the middle portion of the reign, but
neither of them rose to the height of Sheridan. In tragedy, Murphy's
"Arminius," Godwin's "Antonio," and Madame D'Arblay's "Edwy and
Elgiva," were the best. Amongst the comedies, Holcroft's "Road to
Ruin," Morton's "Speed the Plough," Mrs. Inchbald's "Wives as they
Were, and Maids as they Are," and Colman's "Sylvester Daggerwood," were
the most popular.

In the latest period scarcely any acting dramas were produced.
Amongst the unacted tragedies, or such as were acted with no great
success--being better fitted for private study--were Coleridge's
"Remorse" and "Zapolya;" Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" and "The
Cenci;" Byron's "Cain," "Manfred," "Sardanapalus," etc.; Maturin's
"Bertram," "Manuel," and "Fredolpho;" Joanna Baillie's "Plays on the
Passions," "The Family Legend"--the last acted with some success at
Edinburgh, through the influence of Sir Walter Scott, in 1810--Charles
Lamb's "John Woodvill," Milman's "Fazio," and Walter Savage Landor's
"Count Julian," "Andrea of Hungary," "Giovanni of Naples," "Fra
Rupert," "The Siege of Ancona," etc., all masterly dramas, constituting
a blaze of dramatic genius which, had it been adapted to the stage,
would have given it a new grandeur at the close of this reign.

The new spring in poetry broke forth as brilliantly in this reign as
that in prose. In the earlier portion of it, indeed, this was not so
visible. The school of Pope seemed still to retain its influence. This
school had produced a host of imitators, but little real genius since
Pope's time. Almost the only exception to this mediocrity was Collins,
whose odes were full of fire and genius. He died just before this
period, and Gray, Shenstone, and Goldsmith opened it with many of the
exterior characteristics of that school. But, in truth, notwithstanding
the mere fashion of their compositions, there were in them unmistakable
evidences of new life. Shenstone was the least vigorous and original
of the three, but his "Schoolmistress" possessed a natural charm that
still gains it admirers. He belongs, however, rather to the past
period than this, for he died but three years after the accession of
George III., and had ceased to write some time before. Gray's "Elegy
in a Country Churchyard" showed that he had deep feeling and a nice
observation of nature; and his "Long Story" that he possessed real
humour--a quality abounding in his prose, but, except in this piece,
little visible in his poetry. His odes are extremely vigorous, but
somewhat formal. His "Bard," his "Ode on Eton College," and his "Fatal
Sisters," are all full of beauty, but somewhat stilted. In the "Fatal
Sisters" he introduced a subject from the "Scandinavian Edda" to the
English reader, but in a most un-Scandinavian dress.

Goldsmith was in his poetry, as in his prose, simple, genuine, and
natural. His "Deserted Village" and "Traveller" were in the metre of
Pope, but they were full of the most exquisite touches of pathos,
of truth, and liberty; they were new in spirit, though old in form.
Charles Churchill, the satirist, was full of flagellant power. He has
been said to have formed himself on Dryden; but it is more probable
that his models were Lucian and Juvenal. He was a bold and merciless
chastiser of the follies of the times. He commenced, in the "Rosciad,"
with the players, by which he stirred a nest of hornets. Undauntedly he
pursued his course, attacking, in "The Ghost," the then all-powerful
Dr. Johnson, who ruled like a despot over both literary men and their
opinions. These satires, strong and somewhat coarse, were followed by
"The Prophecy of Famine," an "Epistle to Hogarth," "The Conference,"
"The Duellist," "The Author," "Gotham," "The Candidate," "The Times,"
etc. In these Churchill not only lashed the corruptions of the age,
but the false principles of nations. He condemned the seizure of other
countries by so-called Christian powers, on the plea of discovery.
It was only to be lamented that Churchill, who was a clergyman, in
censuring his neighbour's vices did not abandon his own.

Amongst other authors of the time, then very popular, but now
little read, were Armstrong, author of "The Art of Preserving
Health;" Akenside, of "The Pleasures of Imagination;" Wilkie, of
"The Epigoniad;" and Glover, of the epic of "Leonidas." Falconer's
"Shipwreck" and Beattie's "Minstrel" are poems much more animate
with the vitality of grace and feeling. Then there were Anstey, with
his "Bath Guide," half descriptive and half satiric; Stephenson's
"Crazy Tales;" Mason's "Isis," a satire on the University of Oxford,
and his tragedies of "Elfrida" and "Caractacus," which, with other
poems by the same author, enjoyed a popularity that waned before more
truly living things. Then there were the brothers Joseph and Thomas
Warton. Both of these deserve to be mentioned amongst our first-rate
prose writers--Joseph for his excellent "Essay on the Genius and
Writings of Pope," and Thomas for his "History of English Poetry,"
and this is merely a fragment, coming down only to the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. But that which, at this period, produced a thorough reform
of our poetry was the publication of "The Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry," by Bishop Percy. These specimens of poetry went back beyond
the introduction of the French model into England--to the times when
Chaucer, and still earlier poets, wrote from the instincts of nature,
and not from scholastical or fashionable patterns. In particular, the
old ballads, such as "Chevy Chace," "The Babes in the Wood," and the
like, brought back the public taste from the artificial to the natural.
The simple voice of truth, pathos, and honest sentiment was at once
felt by every heart, and the reign of mere ornate words was over.
After the Reliques came "The Border Minstrelsy" of Scott and completed
the revolution. These ancient ballads, in both Percy and Scott, were
found, in many instances, to be founded on precisely the same facts as
those of the Swedes and Danes, collected seventy years before, thus
showing that they were originally brought into Great Britain by the
Scandinavians--a proof of their high antiquity. A similar return to
nature was going on in Germany and the North of Europe, showing that
the very collection of Percy's "Reliques" originated in some general
cause, and that cause, no doubt, was the universal weariness of the
artificial style which had so long prevailed in literature.

About this time two publications occurred, which produced long and
violent controversies--those of the pretended "Poems of Rowley," by
Chatterton, and "Ossian's Poems," by Macpherson. Chatterton, who was
the articled clerk of an attorney at Bristol, a mere youth, pretended
that he had discovered Rowley's poems in the muniment room of the
Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. These poems, written on yellow
parchment, and in a most antiquated style, by a boy of sixteen, were
palmed upon the world as the genuine productions of one Thomas Rowley,
and took in many well-known authors and literary antiquaries, very
wise in their own conceit. As the productions of a boy of that age
these poems are marvellous, and nothing besides which Chatterton, in
his short, neglected life, produced approached them in merit. This,
too, was the case with Macpherson, who professed to have collected the
poems of Ossian, an old bard of Morven, in the Highlands, and simply
translated them into English. He was warmly accused of having written
them himself; but as Chatterton, so Macpherson, steadily denied the
authorship of the poems thus introduced, and as in Chatterton's case,
so in Macpherson's, no other compositions of the professed collector
ever bore any relation to these in merit. There can now be very little
doubt that Macpherson founded his Ossianic poems on real originals to
some extent; but that Chatterton, if he received Rowley's poems from
Rowley, did so by inspiration.

For some time after the revival of true poetry the old forms still hung
about what in spirit was new. The last of the old school of any note
may be said to have been Dr. Johnson and Dr. Darwin. Johnson was too
thoroughly drilled into the dry, didactic fashion of the artificial
past, he was too bigotedly self-willed to be capable of participating
in the renovation. In fact, he never was more than a good versifier,
one of that class who can win prizes for University themes on the
true line and square system of metrical composition. His "London," a
mere paraphrase of the third book of "Juvenal," and "The Vanity of
Human Wishes" are precisely of that stamp. Johnson lived at the time
of Chatterton's appearance, but he completely ignored him, and he
ridiculed the simplicity of the poems introduced by Bishop Percy by
absurd parodies on them, as--

    I put my hat upon my head,
      And walked into the Strand;
    And there I met another man,
      With his hat in his hand.

And,

    If the man who turnips cries,
    Cries not when his father dies,
    'Tis a sign that he had rather
    Have a turnip than his father.

As for the poems of Ossian, he made a violent attack upon them in his
"Tour to the Western Isles."

Dr. Erasmus Darwin assumed the hopeless task of chaining poetry to the
car of science. He was a physician of Derby, and, like Sir Richard
Blackmore, "rhymed to the rumbling of his own coach wheels;" for we are
told that he wrote his verses as he drove about to his patients. His
great poem is the "Botanic Garden," in which he celebrates the loves
of the plants, and his "Economy of Vegetation," in which he introduces
all sorts of mechanical inventions. Amongst the rest he announces the
triumphs of steam in sonorous rhymes--

    Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam! afar
    Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car.

And he celebrates the compass in equally imposing heroics--

    Hail, adamantine steel! magnetic lord!
    King of the prow, the ploughshare, and the sword!
    True to the pole, by thee the pilot guides
    His steady helm amid the struggling tides;
    Braves, with broad sail, the immeasurable sea;
    Cleaves the dark air, and asks no star but thee!

This style of verse was thought very magnificent by Anna Seward, of
Lichfield, who was intimate with Darwin when he lived there in his
earlier career, and who herself was a poetess of some pretension. Miss
Seward, however, showed better judgment in being amongst the first to
point out the rising fame of Southey and Scott. The verse of Darwin
brought Pope's metre to the highest pitch of magniloquence; and the use
of the cæsura gives it a perfectly Darwinian peculiarity.

The poets who most retained the robes of the past, without disguising
the divine form within, were the Rev. George Crabbe and Cowper. The
poetry of Crabbe, all written in the metre of Pope, is, nevertheless,
instinct with the very soul of nature. It chooses the simplest, and
often the least apparently lofty or agreeable topics, but it diffuses
through these, and at the same time draws from them, a spirit and life
that are essentially poetry. Nothing at the time that it appeared
could look less like poetry. The description of a library, the dirty
alleys, the pothouses, the sailors, and monotonous sea-shores in and
about a maritime borough, struck the readers of the assumed sublime
with astonishment and dismay. "Can this be poetry?" they asked. But
those who had poetry in themselves--those in whom the heart of nature
was strong, replied, "Yes, the truest poetry." Nature smiles as the
rude torch flickers past, and shows its varied forms in its truest
shape. In his "Tales of the Hall" Crabbe entered on scenes which are
commonly deemed more elevated; he came forward into the rural village,
the rectory, and the manor-house; but everywhere he carried the same
clear, faithful, analytical spirit, and read the most solemn lessons
from the histories and the souls of men. Crabbe has been styled the
Rembrandt of English poetic painting; but he is not merely a painter of
the outward, he is the prober of the inward at the same time, who, with
a hand that never trembles, depicts sternly the base nature, and drops
soothing balm on the broken heart.

William Cowper (_b._ 1731; _d._ 1800) combined in his verse the
polish of Pope with the freedom and force of Churchill. He possessed
the satirical strength of Churchill with a more gentle and Christian
spirit. In Cowper broke forth the strongest, clearest sense that
had distinguished any writer in prose or verse for generations. He
painted nature like a lover, but with the truth of a great artist,
and he flagellated the vices of society in the very highest quarters
with unshrinking boldness; at the same time, with equal intrepidity,
he advanced the assertions of a perfect faith in the religion of the
Gospel, in the face of the hardest scepticism of the age.

It is a curious fact, that whilst Cowper was haunted by the most
agonising terrors of a nervous temperament, even to despair, his
poetry breathes the most consolatory tone. Whilst his mind was often
wandering in insanity, there is no composition so sane and so sound in
intellectual substance as his. Though seldom indulging in high flights
of imagination, yet his verse frequently rises into a richness and
nobility of voice nearly equal to the prophetic. The "Lines on his
Mother's Picture" exhibit the deep feeling of Cowper, and the ballad of
"John Gilpin" the genuine mirth which often bubbled up in a heart so
racked and tried with melancholy.

Contemporary with Cowper was Mrs. Tighe, the author of "Psyche," an
allegorical poem, in which the beauty of the sentiment made acceptable
that almost exploded form of composition. But there was at this period
a number of writers who had much more false than true sentiment.
The euphuism of the reign of Queen Elizabeth broke forth in another
fashion. A kind of poetical club was formed at Batheaston, the
residence of Lady Miller, near Bath. She and her guests, amongst whom
was Miss Seward, wrote verses, which they published under the title of
"Poetical Amusements." A still more flaunting school set themselves
up amongst the English at Florence, one of whom, a Mr. Robert Merry,
dubbed himself "Della Crusca," whence the clique became known as the
"Della Cruscan School." Amongst the members of it figured Mrs. Piozzi,
the widow of Thrale the brewer, Boswell, Johnson's biographer, Mary
Robinson, the younger Colman, and Holcroft, the dramatist, with others
of less name. They addressed verses to each other in the most florid
and extravagant style under the names of "Rosa Matilda," "Laura Maria,"
"Orlando," and the like. The fashion was infectious; and not only were
the periodicals flooded by such silly mutual flatteries, but volumes
were published full of them. Gifford, the editor of the _Quarterly
Review_, and translator of Juvenal, attacked this frenzy in a satire
called the "Baviad," and continued the attack in the "Mæviad," which,
however, was more particularly a censure on the degraded condition
of the drama. This put an end to the nuisance, and Gifford won great
fame by it; though, on referring to his two celebrated satires, we are
surprised at their dulness, and are led to imagine that it was their
heaviness which crushed these moths of literature. Gifford had himself
a great fame in his day, which was chiefly based on his formidable
position as editor of the _Quarterly Review_.

But whilst Gifford was thus demolishing an outbreak of bad taste, a
much more remarkable evidence that those who lay claim to good taste
frequently have it not was given by the appearance of several new plays
and other documents attributed to Shakespeare. The chief of these was
"Kynge Varrtygerne," a tragedy, edited by Samuel Ireland. Numbers
of persons of high name and pretension, as Dr. Parr, Boswell, Pye,
the laureate, Chalmers, the editor of an issue of "British Poets,"
Pinkerton, a writer of all sorts of things, etc., became enthusiastic
believers and admirers of these pretended discoveries. They turned out
to be impudent forgeries by the son of the editor, named William Henry
Ireland, and are in reality such trash that they are a melancholy proof
of how little value, from some learned persons, is the adoration of
Shakespeare. Malone, in an "Inquiry" into the authenticity of these
writings, in 1796, completely exposed their spuriousness. Pinkerton,
one of their most zealous advocates, himself perpetrated a similar
forgery of a volume of Scottish poems, issued as ancient ones. He
enjoyed the particular patronage of Horace Walpole.

[Illustration: EXTERIOR OF THE COTTAGE AT ALLOWAY IN WHICH BURNS WAS
BORN.]

A number of satires and other poems appeared at this time which
deserve only a mere mention. These are "The Pursuits of Literature,"
by Thomas James Mathias; "Anticipation," by Richard Tickell, being an
anticipation of the king's Speech, and the debates of Parliament; "An
Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers," by Mason, under the assumed
name of Malcolm Macgregor; "The Rolliad," also a political satire,
in 1785. To this succeeded "Probationary Odes," from the same party.
These were eclipsed by the publications of Dr. John Wolcot, under the
name of Peter Pindar, who for twenty years kept the public laughing
by his witty and reckless effusions, in which the king especially
was most unmercifully ridiculed. Wolcot had the merit of discovering
Opie, the painter, as a sawyer in the neighbourhood of Truro, and
pushing him forward by his praises. Of the Royal Academicians he was
a relentless enemy, and to them addressed several odes, of the most
caustic and damaging kind. Later on came the inimitable poems of the
"Anti-Jacobin," written by Canning, Hookham Frere, and others, among
which it is sufficient to recall the "Needy Knife-grinder," and the
satires on the Addington Administration. But now there came a voice
from Scotland that filled with envy the crowd of second-rate poets
of London, and marked the dawn of a new era. A simple but sturdy
peasant--with no education but such as is extended to every child
in every rural parish of Scotland; "following the plough along the
mountain side," laboriously sowing and reaping and foddering neat;
instead of haunting drawing-rooms in bob-tailed coat and kid gloves,
dancing on the barn-floor, or hob-nobbing with his rustic chums at the
next pot-house--set up a song of youth, of passion, of liberty and
equality, so clear, so sonorous, so ringing with the clarion tones
of genius and truth, that all Britain, north and south, stood still
in wonder, and the most brazen vendor of empty words and impudent
pretensions to intellectual power owned the voice of the master, and
was for a moment still. This master of song was Robert Burns (_b._
1759; _d._ 1796). Need we say more? Need we speak of the exquisite
beauty of the "Cotter's Saturday Night"?--of the fun of "Tam o'
Shanter"?--of the satiric drollery of his laughter at antiquarian and
other pretenders?--of the scathing sarcasms on sectarian cant in "Holy
Willie's Prayer," and a dozen other things?--of the spirit of love and
the spirit of liberty welling up in his heart in a hundred living
songs?--of the law of man's independence and dignity stamped on the
page of eternal memory in the few words--"A man's a man for a' that"?
Are not these things written in the book of human consciousness, all
the world over? Do not his fellow-countrymen sing them and shout them
in every climate under heaven? At the time when they appeared the poems
of Robert Burns clearly showed that true poetry was not altogether
extinct, and effectually put an end to that fatal rage of imitation of
the artificial school of Johnson and Pope which then prevailed.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF BURNS'S COTTAGE AT ALLOWAY.

(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson & Co._)]

Then came the Lake school, so called because the poets lived more
or less amongst the lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland; but
which would have been more correctly called the natural school, in
contradistinction to the artificial school which they superseded. The
chief of these were Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. Wordsworth
and Coleridge had travelled in Germany, when few Englishmen travelled
there, and all of them had more or less imbibed that spirit of
intense love of natural beauty and of mental philosophy which
prevails in Germany. In Southey this evaporated in ballads of the
wild and wonderful, with a strong tinge of Teutonic _diablerie_. In
Wordsworth and Coleridge these elements sank deeper, and brought forth
more lasting fruits. But there was another cause which went greatly
to the formation of Wordsworth's poetic system. He was thoroughly
indoctrinated by his early friends, Charles Lloyd and Thomas Wilkinson,
members of the Society of Friends, with their theory of worship and
psychology. They taught him that the spirit of God breathes through
all nature, and that we have only to listen and receive. This system
was enunciated in some of his lyrical poems, but it is the entire
foundation of his great work, the "Excursion." In his earliest poems
William Wordsworth (_b._ 1770; _d._ 1850) wrote according to the manner
of the time, and there is nothing remarkable in them; but in his
"Lyrical Ballads," the first of which appeared in 1798, there was an
entire change. They were of the utmost simplicity of language, and some
of them on subjects so homely that they excited the most unmeasured
ridicule of the critics. In particular, the _Edinburgh Review_
distinguished itself by its excessive contempt of them. The same fate
awaited his successive publications, including his great work, the
"Excursion;" and the tide of scorn was only turned by a series of
laudatory criticisms by Professor Wilson, in _Blackwood's Magazine_,
after which the same critics became very eulogistic.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF BURNS'S COTTAGE AT ALLOWAY.

(_From a photograph by G. W. Wilson & Co._)]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (_b._ 1772; _d._ 1834) published his earliest
poems in association with his friends, Wordsworth, Charles Lloyd,
and Charles Lamb. But his contributions, especially of the "Ancient
Mariner," soon pointed them out as belonging to a genius very
different. In his compositions there is a wide variety, some of them
being striking from their wild and mysterious nature, some for their
elevation of both spirit and language, and others for their deep
tone of feeling. His "Geneviève," his "Christabel," his "Ancient
Mariner," and his "Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni," are themselves the
sufficient testimonies of a great master. In some of his blank verse
compositions the tone is as independently bold as the sentiments are
philosophical and humane. Besides his own poetry, Coleridge translated
part of Schiller's "Wallenstein," and was the author of several prose
works of a high philosophical character. Southey was as different
from Coleridge in the nature of his poetical productions as Coleridge
was from Wordsworth. In his earliest poems he displayed a strong
resentment against the abuses of society; he condemned war in his poem
on "Blenheim," and expressed himself unsparingly on the treatment of
the poor. His "Botany Bay Eclogues" are particularly in this vein. But
he changed all that, and became one of the most zealous defenders of
things as they are. His smaller poems are, after all, the best things
which he wrote; his great epics of "Madoc," "Roderick, the Last of the
Goths," "The Curse of Kehama," and "Thalaba," now finding few readers.
Yet there are parts of them that must always charm.

Since the appearance of the Waverley Novels the poetry of Scott has
been somewhat depreciated, but his metrical romances, if not of the
highest class of poetry, are always fresh, from their buoyancy and
the scenery in which they are laid. They are redolent of the mountain
heather and summer dews; and the description of the sending of the
"fiery cross" over the hills, and the battle in "Marmion," as well as
other portions, are instinct with genuine poetic vigour. Campbell, who
won an early reputation by his "Pleasures of Hope," is more esteemed
now for his heroic ballads "Hohenlinden," "The Battle of the Baltic,"
and his "Mariners of England;" Moore, for his "Irish Melodies," than
for his "Lalla Rookh;" Byron, for his "Childe Harold," rather than
for his earlier love tales of the East, or his later dramatic poems.
Amongst the very highest of the poets of that period stands Percy
Bysshe Shelley (_b._ 1792; _d._ 1822), the real poet of spiritual
music, of social reformation, and of the independence of man. Never did
a soul inspired by a more ardent love of his fellow-creatures receive
such a bitter portion of unkindness and repudiation. John Keats, of a
still more delicate and shrinking temperament, also received, in return
for strains of the purest harmony, a sharp judgment, in no degree,
however, equal to the severity of that dealt out to Shelley. In his
"Ode to a Grecian Urn," and his "Lamia," Keats left us examples of
beauty of conception and felicity of expression not surpassed since
the days of Shakespeare. In his "Hyperion" he gave equal proof of the
strength and grandeur to which he would have attained.

The distinguished poets still thronging the close of this period
would require voluminous space to particularise their works: the
vigorous and classic Savage Landor; the graceful, genial Leigh Hunt;
Charles Lamb, quaint and piquant; Rogers, lover equally of art and
nature; John Wilson, tender, but somewhat diffuse; Hogg, the Ettrick
Shepherd, linked in perpetual memory with his "Kilmeny" and the "Bird
of the Wilderness;" Allan Cunningham; MacNeill; Grahame, author of
"The Sabbath;" James Montgomery, amongst the very few successful poets
of religion; Tennant, author of "Anster Fair;" Kirke White, Sotheby,
Maturin, Procter (Barry Cornwall), Milman, Joanna Baillie, Miss
Mitford, Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Howitt, Richard Howitt, Elliott the Corn-Law
Rhymer, whose most beautiful poems had been for twenty years steadily
ignored by the whole English press, till they were accidentally
discovered by Sir John Bowring.

In all those arts which increase the prosperity of a nation England
made the most remarkable progress during this reign. A number of men,
springing chiefly from its working or manufacturing orders, arose, who
introduced inventions and improvements in practical science, which
added, in a most wonderful degree, to the industrial resources of the
country. Agriculture at the commencement of the reign was in a sluggish
and slovenly condition, but the increase of population, and the
augmented price of corn and cattle, led to numerous enclosures of waste
lands, and to improvements both in agricultural implements and in the
breeds of sheep and cattle. During the thirty-three years of the reign
of George II. the number of enclosures averaged only seven per annum,
but in the first twenty-five years of the reign of George III. they
amounted to forty-seven per annum. During that period the number of
enclosures was one thousand one hundred and eighty-six, the number each
year rapidly increasing. The value of the produce also stimulated the
spirit of improvement in tillage as well as enclosure. Many gentlemen,
especially in Northumberland, Kent, Norfolk, and Suffolk, devoted
themselves to agricultural science. They introduced rotation of crops
instead of fallows, and better manuring, and also cultivated various
vegetables on a large scale in the fields which before had generally
been confined to the garden, as turnips, carrots, potatoes, cabbage,
parsnips, etc. Their example began to be followed by the ordinary class
of farmers, and the raising of rents greatly quickened this imitation.
At the opening of the reign the rental of land did not exceed ten
shillings per acre on an average; the rental of the whole kingdom in
1769 being sixteen million pounds, according to Arthur Young, but in
a few years it was nearly doubled. This gentleman, who has left us so
much knowledge of the agricultural state of the kingdom in his "Tours
of Survey," tells us that, northward especially, the old lumbering
ploughs and other clumsy instruments were still in use, instead of the
improved ones, and that there was, therefore, a great waste of labour,
both of man and beast, in consequence. But still improvement was slowly
spreading, and already Bakewell was engaged in those experiments which
introduced, instead of the old large-headed and ill-shaped sheep,
a breed of superior symmetry, which at once consumed less food and
yielded a heavier carcase. It was at first contemptuously said by the
old race of farmers and graziers, that Bakewell's new herd of sheep was
too dear for any one to purchase and too fat for any one to eat. As
he was pursuing his improvements in Leicestershire, Culley prosecuted
similar ones in Northumberland in both sheep and cattle.

Under the management of these enlightened men the disproportionate mass
of bone was reduced, and flesh increased, and the whole figure assumed
a regular and handsome contour. The quality of the meat was as greatly
improved.

Under the operation of the Corn Laws the price of wheat rose to one
hundred and fifty-six shillings a quarter in 1801, and the enclosure of
waste lands kept pace accordingly; and upwards of a million of acres
were enclosed every ten years. From 1800 the amount of enclosure in
ten years was a million and a half of acres. The rapid increase of
population, through the growth of manufactures, and the introduction of
canals, as well as the fact that the people at large began to abandon
the use of oats and rye in bread, and to use wheat, promoted the growth
of that grain immensely. In 1793 Sir John Sinclair established the
Board of Agriculture, which was incorporated, and received an annual
grant from Parliament. The indefatigable Arthur Young was elected its
secretary, and agricultural surveys of the kingdom were made. The
reports of these were published, adding greatly to a comprehension
of the real state of cultivation. In 1784 Young had commenced the
publication of the "Annals of Agriculture," by which invaluable
information was diffused, and new prizes were offered by the Board for
improvements, and great annual sheep-shearings were held at Woburn
and Holkham, by the Duke of Bedford and Mr. Coke, afterwards Lord
Leicester, which tended to stimulate the breed of better sheep. The
king himself had his model farms, and introduced merino sheep from
Spain. It was long, however, before the better modes of ploughing could
be introduced amongst the farmers. The Scots were the first to reduce
the number of the horses which drew the plough, using only two, whilst
in England might still be seen a heavy, clumsy machine drawn by from
four to six horses, doing less work, and that work less perfectly.

On the arrival of peace the fall of agricultural prices ruined great
numbers who had pushed their speculations and land purchases beyond
their legitimate means; but the Corn Laws again buoyed up both
farmers and landlords, and the progress of improvement continued.
Draining strong lands, manuring light ones with lime and marl, and the
introduction of artificial grasses, added incalculably to the produce
of the country. Turnips enabled the farmer to maintain his cattle
and sheep in high condition during the winter, and the introduction
of the Swedish turnip and mangel-wurzel extended this advantage till
rye, rye-grass, sainfoin, and clover became plentiful. Before the end
of the reign rentals had doubled, and lands, even in hilly districts,
where it had been supposed that nothing but oats would grow, and where
the reapers were often obliged to shake the snow from the corn as they
cut it, were seen producing good wheat, and, from the better system of
husbandry, at a much earlier period of autumn.

With the reign of George III. began the real era of civil engineering.
With respect to our highways there had been various Parliamentary
enactments since the Revolution of 1688; but still, at the commencement
of George III.'s reign, the condition of the greater part of our
public roads was so dreadful as now to be almost incredible. Acts of
Parliament continued to be passed for their amendment, but what was
their general state we learn from the invaluable "Tours" of Arthur
Young. He describes one leading from Billericay to Tilbury, in Essex,
as so narrow that a mouse could not pass by any carriage, and so deep
in mud that chalk-waggons were continually sticking fast in them,
till so many were in that predicament that the waggoners put twenty
or thirty of their horses together to pull them out. He describes the
same state of things in almost every part of the country--in Norfolk,
Suffolk, Wiltshire, and Lancashire. Some of them had ruts four feet
deep by measure, and into these ruts huge stones were dropped to enable
waggons to pass at all; and these, in their turn, broke their axles
by the horrible jolting, so that within eighteen miles he saw three
waggons lying in this condition. Notwithstanding, from 1785 to 1800 no
fewer than six hundred and forty-three Acts of Parliament regarding
roads were passed. But scarcely a penny of the money collected at the
toll-bars went to the repair of the roads, but only to pay the interest
of the debt on their original construction. Whatever was raised was
divided amongst the members of the body known as the trustees for
the original fund; and though many Acts of Parliament limited this
interest, means were found for evading the restriction.

[Illustration:

    WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.            PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
                       ROBERT BURNS.
    JOHN KEATS.                    SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
]

In Lancashire and Cheshire the principal roads were paved; but as there
grew a necessity for more rapid transit of mails and stage-coaches, we
find, from a tour by Adam Walker to the Lakes in 1792, that a better
system had been introduced; the paved roads were in many places pulled
up, and the stones broken small; and he describes the roads generally
as good, or wonderfully improved since the "Tours" of Arthur Young.
Except in the county of Derby, the highways were excellent, and broken
stones were laid by the roadsides ready for repairs.

But it was not till the days of Telford and Macadam that the system
of road-making received its chief improvements. The reform in roads
commenced in Scotland. Those which had been cut through the Highlands
after the Rebellions of 1715 and 1745, chiefly under the management
of General Wade, set the example, and showed the advantage of
promoting communication, as well as of enabling the military to scour
the mountains. In 1790 Lord Dare introduced the practice of laying
out roads by the spirit-level, and they were conducted round hills
instead of being carried over them. In 1802 a Board of Commissioners
for Roads and Bridges in Scotland was established, and Thomas Telford
was appointed the engineer. This able man had now a full opportunity
for showing his knowledge of road-making. He laid out the new routes
on easy inclines, shortened and improved the old routes by new and
better cuttings, and threw bridges of an excellent construction over
the streams. Where the bottom was soft or boggy he made it firm by
a substratum of solid stones, and levelled the surface with stones
broken small. Attention was paid to side-drains for carrying away the
water, and little was left for the after-plans of Macadam. Yet Macadam
has monopolised the fame of road-making, and little has been heard of
Telford's improvements, although he was occasionally called in where
Macadam could not succeed, because the latter refused to make the
same solid bottom. This was the case in the Archway Road at Highgate.
Macadam's main principle of road-making was in breaking his material
small, and his second _principle_ might be called the care which he
exercised in seeing his work well done. For these services he received
two grants from Parliament, amounting to ten thousand pounds, and
the offer of knighthood, the latter of which he would not accept for
himself, but accepted it for his eldest son.

Telford, under the commission for Scotland, thoroughly revolutionised
the roads of that country. From Carlisle to the extremity of Caithness,
and from east to west of Scotland, he intersected the whole country
with beautiful roads, threw bridges of admirable construction over
the rivers, and improved many of the harbours, as those of Banff,
Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Fortrose, Cullen, and Kirkwall. The extent of
new road made by him was about one thousand miles, and he threw one
thousand two hundred bridges over rivers, some of them wild mountain
torrents.

The next step in the increase of means of traffic was the construction
of canals. The rivers had previously been rendered more navigable by
removing obstructions, deepening channels, and making good towing-paths
along their banks; but now it was projected to make artificial rivers.
In this scheme, Richard Brindley, under the patronage of the Duke of
Bridgewater, was the great engineer; and his intrepid genius dictated
to him to carry these canals over hills by locks, over rivers by
aqueducts, and through the heart of hills by tunnels. These enterprises
at that moment appeared, to the ordinary run of civil engineers,
as rash experiments, which were sure to prove abortive. As all new
ideas are, these ideas, now so commonplace, were ridiculed by the
wise ones as little short of madness. Mr. Brindley's first great work
was the formation of the Duke of Bridgewater's canal, from Worsley
to Manchester. In this he at once proved all his plans of locks,
tunnels, and aqueducts. He conducted his canal by an aqueduct over the
river Irwell, at an elevation of thirty-nine feet; and those learned
engineers who had laughed at the scheme as "a castle in the air," might
now see boats passing over the river at that height with the greatest
ease, while other boats were being drawn up the Irwell against the
stream and under the aqueduct with five times the labour. At Worsley
the canal was conducted into the very heart of the coal-mine by a
tunnel, with branches, which conducted the boats up to the different
parts of the mine, so that the coal could be loaded on the spot where
it was dug. The immediate effect of this canal was to reduce coals in
Manchester to half the former price; and the canal being extended so
as to connect it with the Mersey, at Runcorn, it reduced the freight
of goods from Manchester to Liverpool to the same extent, from twelve
shillings to six shillings per ton, the land carriage having been forty
shillings. Brindley was next engaged to execute the Grand Trunk Canal,
which united the Trent and Mersey, carrying it through Birmingham,
Chesterfield, and to Nottingham. This was commenced in 1766, and
exhibited further examples of his undaunted skill, and, as he had been
laughed at by the pedants of the profession, he now in his turn laughed
at their puny mediocrity. One of his tunnels, at Harecastle Hill, in
Staffordshire, was two thousand eight hundred and eighty yards long,
twelve feet wide, nine high, and in some parts seventy yards below the
surface of the ground. This tunnel, after half a century's use, was
found too confined for the traffic, and a new one, much wider, was made
by Telford. By this time the art of tunnelling had made great progress,
and whilst Brindley required eleven years to complete his tunnel,
Telford made his much larger one in three. Many causes intervened to
check for a time the progress of canals, so that from 1760 to 1774 only
nineteen Acts were passed for them; but in the two years of 1793 and
1794 no fewer than thirty-six new Bills were introduced to Parliament,
with others for extending and amending rivers, making altogether
forty-seven Acts, the expenditure on the canals of these two years'
projection amounting to five million three hundred thousand pounds. The
work now went on rapidly, and investments in canal shares exhibited
at that day, in miniature, the great fever of railway speculation at
a later period. Lines of canals were made to connect the Thames, the
Tweed, the Severn, and the Mersey; so that the great ports of London,
Liverpool, Hull, and Bristol were connected by them, and put into
communication with nearly all the great inland manufacturing towns. In
1779 a ship-canal was completed from the Forth to the Clyde--a work
proposed as early as the reign of Charles II. This canal, thirty-five
miles in length, had thirty-nine locks, which carried the canal to a
height of one hundred and fifty-six feet above the sea, and it crossed
the river Kelvin by an aqueduct eighty-three feet from the bed of
the river to the top of the masonry. A few years later a much larger
ship-canal united Gloucester to the Severn, and wonderfully increased
the trade and growth of that city.

Telford succeeded to Brindley, with all his boldness and skill, and
with much extended experience. He executed the Ellesmere canal, which
occupied a length of upwards of a hundred miles, connecting the rivers
Severn, Dee, and Mersey. In the construction of this canal Telford
introduced a bold, but successful, novelty. In aqueducts, instead of
puddling their bottoms with clay, which was not proof against the
effects of frost, he cased them with iron, and adopted the same means
when he had to pass through quicksands or mere bog. Some of Telford's
aqueducts were stupendous works. The Chirk aqueduct passed, at seventy
feet above the river, on ten arches of forty feet span, and cost twenty
thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight pounds. The aqueduct over the
Dee passed at a height of one hundred and twenty-one feet above low
water, and consisted of a great trough of cast-iron plates, supported
on eighteen piers, and having a towing-path of cast-iron, supported
on cast-iron pillars. This aqueduct took ten years in building, and
cost, with its embankments, forty-seven thousand pounds. Tunnels much
larger than that at Harecastle Hill were executed. That at Sapperton,
on the Thames and Severn canal, executed by Mr. Whitworth, was nearly
two miles and a half long, ran two hundred and fifty feet below the
summit of the hill, and was large enough for boats of seventy tons
burden. This was completed in 1788. These daring enterprises led to the
design of a tunnel under the Thames, from Gravesend to Tilbury; but
this was abandoned for want of capital. In 1804 a like attempt was made
at Rotherhithe, but stopped from the same cause, and was not completed
till 1843 by Sir Mark Isambard Brunel. Between 1758 and 1801 no fewer
than sixty-five Acts of Parliament were passed for making or extending
canals. At the end of that period canals extended over upwards of three
thousand miles, and had cost upwards of thirteen millions sterling.
In fact, the bulk of canal work was done by this time, though not
some few works of great importance. The Leeds and Liverpool canal,
begun in 1770, but not completed till 1816, opened up connection
with a vast manufacturing district; and the Rochdale, Huddersfield,
and Hull canals gave access for the Baltic traffic into the heart of
Lancashire. The Paddington and Regent's Canals wonderfully promoted the
intercourse between the interior and the metropolis. In the Highlands,
the Caledonian Canal, connecting the string of lakes between Inverness
and the Atlantic, gave passage to ships of large burden. At the end
of this reign the aggregate length of canals in England and Wales was
two thousand one hundred and sixty miles; in Scotland, two hundred and
twelve; in Ireland, two hundred and fifty; total, two thousand six
hundred and twenty-two miles. The attention paid to roads and canals
necessitated the same to bridges; and during this reign many new
structures of this kind were erected, and much improvement attained in
their formation. In 1776 a totally new kind of bridge was commenced at
Coalbrook Dale, and completed in 1779; this was of cast-iron, having a
single arch of one hundred feet span, and containing three hundred and
seventy-eight and a half tons of metal. Telford greatly improved on
this idea, by erecting an iron bridge over the Severn, at Buildwas, in
1796, having an arch of one hundred and thirty feet span.

[Illustration: WATERLOO BRIDGE, LONDON, IN 1890.]

Half the London bridges were built, or rebuilt, during this period.
Waterloo Bridge was begun in 1811, and completed by its designer and
architect, John Rennie, on the 18th of June, 1817, having cost upwards
of a million sterling. It is not only the longest of the Thames
bridges, but was pronounced by Canova the finest bridge in the world,
and is justly universally admired. Rennie built Southwark Bridge, an
iron one, at a cost of eight hundred thousand pounds, and completed
it in 1819, its erection occupying five years. Sir John Rennie, his
son, built the new London Bridge from the designs of his father; but
this was not begun till six years after the death of George III., nor
finished till 1831, at a cost of five hundred and six thousand pounds.

Iron suspension bridges were also introduced towards the end of this
reign. Chain bridges had been erected in China for nearly two thousand
years, and rope bridges in India and South America still earlier. In
England a foot-bridge of iron chains was erected at Middleton, over
the Tees, in the middle of the eighteenth century. In 1816 a bridge of
iron wire was thrown across the Gala Water; and another, on a different
principle, the following year, was erected over the Tweed, at King's
Meadows. But now much greater and more complete works of the kind were
to be executed. Captain (afterwards Sir Samuel) Brown introduced many
improvements into these structures. He substituted iron ropes for
hempen ones, thereby forming cable-chains, like those used in Wales
on quarry tram-roads, and these he applied to suspension bridges. In
1819 he was commissioned to construct an iron suspension bridge over
the Tweed, near Kelso, called the Union Bridge, which he completed in
1820, at a cost of five thousand pounds. In 1827 the first suspension
bridge was thrown over the Thames by Mr. William Tierney Clarke; and in
1818 Telford commenced his great work of throwing a suspension bridge
over the Menai Strait, near Bangor, which he completed in 1825. The
main opening of this stupendous work is five hundred and sixty feet
wide, and one hundred feet above high-water mark. The length of the
roadway of the bridge is one thousand feet. The cost was one hundred
and twenty thousand pounds. This was Telford's _chef-d'œuvre_. But the
same neighbourhood was destined to see a more stupendous structure
span the Strait from the Welsh shore to Anglesey. This was the tubular
railway bridge, connecting the London and Holyhead line, within view
of Telford's elegant suspension bridge. This was erected by Robert
Stephenson, from his own design, greatly improved by suggestions from
William Fairbairn of Manchester. It was completed in October, 1850,
at a cost of six hundred and twenty-five thousand eight hundred and
sixty-five pounds. Further description of this great work is not proper
here, as it belongs to a later date, but it seemed fit to mention it in
passing, as an evidence of the progress of the engineering science in
the reign of Victoria.

[Illustration: MENAI SUSPENSION AND TUBULAR BRIDGES. (_From a
Photograph by Hudson._)]

Great improvements were made during this reign in the harbours,
especially by Telford and Rennie. Telford's harbour work in Scotland we
have already mentioned; Rennie's formations or improvements of harbours
were at Ramsgate, London, Hull, and Sheerness; he also built the Bell
Rock Lighthouse, on the same principle as the Eddystone Lighthouse,
built by Smeaton, a self-taught engineer, just before the accession of
George III.

The mechanical invention, however, destined to produce the most
extraordinary revolution in social life was that of railways, which
during this reign were progressing towards the point where, combined
with the steam-engine, they were to burst forth into an activity and
strength astonishing to the whole world. Tram-roads--that is, roads
with lines of smooth timber for the wheels of waggons to run upon--had
been in use in the Newcastle collieries for a century before. In
1767, at the Coalbrook Dale Iron Works, iron plates were substituted
for wood, and by this simple scheme one horse could, with ease, draw
as much as ten on an ordinary road. In 1776 iron flanges, or upright
edges, were used at the collieries of the Duke of Norfolk, near
Sheffield, and after this time they became common at all collieries,
both above and below ground. In 1801 an iron railway, by a joint-stock
company, was opened from Wandsworth to Croydon. Three years before iron
railways had been introduced to convey the slates from Lord Penrhyn's
quarries, in Carnarvonshire, to the Menai Strait for shipment, and
they were attached to canals for the conveyance of goods to and from
them. At the end of this reign there were two hundred and twenty-five
miles of iron railroads in the neighbourhood of Newcastle-on-Tyne, and
upwards of three hundred miles in the single county of Glamorgan.

Before the termination of the reign there were active preparations for
putting steam-engines on all iron railroads. So early as 1758, Watt,
who afterwards did so much in the construction of steam-engines, had an
idea that locomotive engines might be put on such roads. In 1770 such
an engine was actually made and worked by John Theophilus Cugnot, in
Paris, but he had not discovered sufficient means of controlling it.
In 1802 Messrs. Trevethick and Vivian exhibited such an engine running
along the streets in London. In 1805 the same gentlemen again exhibited
one of their engines working on a tram-road at Merthyr Tydvil, drawing
ten tons of iron at the rate of five miles an hour; and in 1811 Mr.
Blenkinsop was running an engine on the Middleton Colliery, near
Leeds, drawing a hundred tons on a dead level at the rate of three and
a half miles an hour, and going at the rate of ten miles when only
lightly loaded. Blenkinsop had made the wheels of his engines to act
by cogs on indented rails; for there was a strong persuasion at that
period that the friction of plain wheels on plain rails would not be
sufficient to enable the engine to progress with its load. The folly
of this idea had already been shown on all the colliery lines in the
kingdom, and by the engine of Trevethick and Vivian at Merthyr. The
fallacy, however, long prevailed. But during this time Thomas Gray
was labouring to convince the public of the immense advantages to be
derived from steam trains on railways. In five editions of his work,
and by numerous memorials to Ministers, Parliament, lord mayors, etc.,
he showed that railroads must supersede coaches for passengers, and
waggons and canals for goods. He was the first projector of a general
system of railroads, laid down maps for comprehensive general lines for
both England and Ireland, invented turn-tables, and very accurately
calculated the cost of constructing lines. For these services he was
termed a madman, and the _Edinburgh Review_ recommended that he should
be secured in a strait jacket. In his "Life of George Stephenson"
Dr. Smiles takes exception to the statement that Thomas Gray was the
originator of railways, and transfers that term to Stephenson. Let
us be correct; Gray was the projector, Stephenson the constructor of
railways. But it is not to be supposed that Gray had sold five editions
of his work without Stephenson, and perhaps every engineer, having read
and profited by it. Yet, so little had Stephenson any idea of the real
scope and capacity of railways, that it was not till five years after
the running of his engines on such lines, by Dr. Smiles's own showing,
that he ever imagined such a thing as their becoming the general medium
of human transit. He tells us Mr. Edward Pease suggested to him to
put an old long coach on the Darlington and Stockton line, attached
to the luggage trucks, and see if people might not wish to travel by
it. Gray had demonstrated all this long before. He stood in the place
of the architect, Stephenson only of the builder who carries out the
architect's design. Seven years only after the death of George III.
the railway line between Manchester and Liverpool was commenced, and
from its successful opening, on the 15th of September, 1830, dates the
amazing development of the present railway system.

[Illustration: "A HUNDRED YEARS AGO."

FROM THE PAINTING BY GEORGE WRIGHT

By permission of E. W. Savory, Ltd.]

The earliest idea of a steam-engine was that given by the Marquis of
Worcester, in his "Century of Inventions," in 1663, which idea he
obtained from De Caus, and reduced to action in London. The next step
was to Papin's Digester, and then to Savery's so-called "Atmospheric
Engine." This, improved by Newcomen in 1711, was introduced to drain
mines in all parts of the kingdom, but especially in the coal-mines of
the north and midland counties, and the copper mines of Cornwall. By
its means many mines long disused through the accumulation of water
were drained and made workable, and others were sunk much deeper.
Smeaton, in 1769, greatly improved this engine, which, from its rapid
working of a horizontal beam, was called by the miners a "Whimsey,"
as having a whimsical look. Watt, then a student in the University of
Glasgow, commenced a series of experiments upon it, which, between
1759 and 1782, raised the engine to a pitch of perfection which made
it applicable not only to draining water out of mines, but, by the
discovery of the rotatory motion, enabled it to propel any kind of
machinery, spin cotton, grind in mills of all kinds, and propel ships
and carriages. Watt was greatly aided in his efforts by Mr. Matthew
Boulton, and their engines were manufactured at Soho Works, near
Birmingham. They did not, however, enjoy the fruits of their patents
for protecting their inventions without many most unprincipled attempts
to invade their rights by masters of mines and others, by which they
were involved in very harassing law-suits. The first application of the
steam-engine to the machinery of a cotton-mill was at Papplewick, in
Nottinghamshire, in 1785, and the first mill built for the employment
of machinery driven by an engine was in Manchester, in 1789. The first
application of the engine to propel a vessel was at Dalswinton, on the
Clyde, in 1788, the boat being constructed by Patrick Miller, James
Taylor, and William Symington. In the following year these inventors
made a second experiment on the Forth and Clyde Canal at the Carron
Works, with perfect success, the vessel going at the rate of nearly
seven miles an hour. Symington was probably the real machinist in this
firm, and in 1802 he made a tug-boat on the Forth and Clyde Canal,
under the patronage of Lord Dundas, which was worked extremely well by
its engine. In 1807 Fulton followed up these experiments by launching
a steam-boat on the Hudson, in America, after having in vain solicited
the patronage of the British and French Governments for his enterprise.
The proposal of Fulton, submitted to the Academy of Paris, was received
with a burst of laughter, and Napoleon abandoned the project in deep
disgust at having been, as he supposed, made a dupe of by Fulton.
We have pointed out on the preceding page the period of the first
application of the steam-engine to railways.

By the marvellous aids of canals and steam-engines manufacturing power
became most immensely augmented in all directions, but especially in
the spinning and weaving of cotton goods. The machines invented by
Wyatt and Paul in 1733, and improved by Arkwright in 1767, if not
invented anew, without knowledge of Wyatt and Paul's plan of spinning
by rollers--a moot point; the spinning-jenny with seven spindles,
invented by James Hargreaves, a weaver near Blackburn, in 1767; and
the mule-jenny, combining the working of the machines of Arkwright and
Hargreaves, by Samuel Crompton, in 1779, completely superseded spinning
cotton yarn by hand. These machines were first worked by water power,
but steam power was used after the steam-engine had been invented; and
the growth of cotton-spinning became rapid beyond conception, spreading
over all Lancashire and the midland counties in a marvellous manner.
The cotton-mills of Robert Peel, in Lancashire and Staffordshire; of
the Strutts, at Belper, in Derbyshire; of Dale, at New Lanark; of
Robinson, at Papplewick; and Arkwright, at Cromford, which raised these
gentlemen to vast wealth, being only the leviathans amongst swarming
concerns of less dimensions.

To these, in 1785, the Rev. Dr. Edmund Cartwright introduced a loom
for weaving by water or steam power, which soon superseded hand-loom
weaving. In 1803 Mr. H. Horrocks greatly improved this, and from this
germ has grown up the system of weaving cottons, silks, and woollens
by machinery. Add to this the application of similar machinery to
calico-printing, and the like to weaving of lace, invented by Robert
Frost, of Nottingham, or by a working mechanic of that town named
Holmes, which afterwards received many improvements, and we have the
varied means by which the manufacturing power of England was raised
far above that of all the world; and which, reaching other countries
in spite of legislative impediments, soon established similar
manufactures in France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and America.
In Great Britain alone the importation of raw cotton was increased
from 4,764,589 lbs. in 1771 to 151,000,000 lbs. in 1818; and such was
the spread of trade of all kinds from the use of machinery, that our
exports of manufactured goods in 1800, when the European nations were
incapacitated for manufacturing by Napoleon's general embargo, amounted
to £116,000,000.

Almost every other manufacture shared in this surprising impulse
from machinery and the spirit of invention. It was an age of new
creations and of unprecedented energies. In 1763 Josiah Wedgwood, of
the Staffordshire Potteries, commenced that career of improvement
in the biscuit, form, and printing of porcelain which constituted a
new era in the art. At that time the French fine pottery was so much
superior to the English that it was extensively imported. In fact, it
was a period when taste in every department of art was at the lowest
ebb. Wedgwood, being a good chemist, not only improved the body of his
earthenware, but, being a man of classical taste, introduced a grace
and elegance of form before unknown to British pottery. He invented
a new kind of composition so hard and marble-like that it resisted
both fire and acids; and in this he moulded statuettes, cameos, and
medallions from the Greek originals, of great beauty. Sir William
Hamilton having brought over from Italy a quantity of antique vases,
etc., Wedgwood benefited by them to introduce fresh forms and colouring
in his wares, and probably on this account called his pottery-works
Etruria. He had the aid of Mr. Chisholm, a practical chemist, in his
researches into the best composition and colours for his porcelain,
and his improvements laid the foundation of the great pottery trade of
Staffordshire.

Many improvements were made also in the glass manufacture during this
reign, and more would undoubtedly have been made but for the very heavy
duties upon it to help to support the ruinous wars of the period. In
1760, the first year of the reign, crown glass is said to have been
introduced. In 1763 the first glass plates for looking-glasses and
coach-windows were made at Lambeth. In 1779 flint-glass was first made;
and about that time plate-glass. The duties on different kinds of glass
at that date were about one hundred and forty thousand pounds per
annum. So oppressive were those duties that, in 1785, the St. Helens
Plate-glass Company petitioned Parliament, stating that, in consequence
of the weight of taxation, notwithstanding an expenditure of one
hundred thousand pounds, they had not been able to declare a dividend.

The introduction of the steam-engine, railroads, and canals enabled the
coal-miners during this reign to extend the supply of coals enormously.
In 1792 the coal-mines of Durham and Northumberland alone maintained
twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty persons, and employed a
capital of three million one hundred and thirty thousand pounds--a very
small amount of both people and money as compared with the workers and
capital engaged in the trade since the expansion of the manufacturing
and steam systems. The coal-fields of Durham and Northumberland extend
to nearly eight hundred square miles, but the beds in Northumberland,
Durham, Yorkshire, the Midland Counties, South of Scotland, and
Ireland, are still immense and not yet fully explored. Fresh strata are
discovered as steam power enables us to go deeper. In 1817 Sir Humphry
Davy perfected his safety-lamp, which, by means of a simple wire
gauze, enabled the miner to work amid the most explosive gases. These
lamps, however, were not able to protect the colliers from their own
carelessness, and most horrible destruction, from time to time, took
place amongst them from neglect.

With the reign of George III. commenced a series of improvements in the
manufacture of iron, which have led not only to a tenfold production
of that most useful of metals, but to changes in its quality which
before were inconceivable. Towards the end of the reign of George II.
the destruction of the forests in smelting iron-ore was so great as
to threaten their extinction, and with it the manufacture of iron in
Britain. Many manufacturers had already transferred their businesses
to Russia, where wood was abundant and cheap. It was then found that
coke made from coal was a tolerable substitute for charcoal, and, in
1760, the very first year of the reign of George III., the proprietors
of the Carron Works in Scotland began the use of pit-coal. Through
the scientific aid of Smeaton and Watt, they applied water-, and
afterwards steam-power, to increase the blast of their furnaces to make
it steady and continuous, instead of intermitting as from bellows; and
they increased the height of their chimneys. By these means, Dr. John
Roebuck, the founder of these works, became the first to produce pig
iron by the use of coal. This gave great fame to the Carron Works, and
they received large orders from Government for cannon and cannon-balls.
It was some time, however, before enough iron could be produced to meet
the increasing demand for railroads, iron bridges, etc.; and so late as
1781 fifty thousand tons were imported annually from Russia and Sweden.

[Illustration: JAMES WATT. (_After the Portrait by Sir W. Beechey,
R.A._)]

The employment of pit-coal had not reached perfection, and in 1785
the Society of Arts offered a premium for the making of fine bar
iron with pit-coal. This object was accomplished by Mr. Cort, an
iron-founder of Gloucestershire, by exposing the pig iron on the
hearth of a reverberatory furnace to the flame of pit-coal. This
process was improved into what was called _puddling_, in puddling or
reverberatory furnaces. Cort also introduced the drawing out of iron
between cylindrical rollers; but he became ruined in his experiments,
and other iron-masters of more capital came in to reap the profit. Many
years passed before a pension was conferred on some of his children
for his services. In 1755 the whole population of Carron was only
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four; in 1795 the workmen alone
employed in the works were one thousand, the population four thousand,
when the foundry had five blast furnaces, sixteen air furnaces, three
cupola furnaces, and consumed one hundred and thirty-six tons of coals
daily. It supplied to the Government eleven thousand tons annually
of cannon, mortars, shot, shells, etc.; to the East India Company
six thousand tons; and to all customers together twenty-six thousand
tons. The growth of the iron trade in Great Britain, through these
improvements, may be seen from the fact that in 1802 there were one
hundred and sixty-eight blast furnaces, producing two hundred and
twenty thousand tons of iron; in 1820 the annual production of iron
was four hundred thousand tons; in 1845 the production was calculated
at twice that amount--that is, in twenty-five years the production
had doubled itself. In 1771 the use of wire ropes, instead of hempen
ones, was suggested by M. Bougainville, and this was made a fact by
Captain Brown, in 1811. Before this, in 1800, Mr. Mushet, of Glasgow,
discovered the art of converting malleable iron, or iron ore, into cast
steel; and in 1804 Samuel Lucas, of Sheffield, further extended the
benefit by the discovery of a mode of converting any castings from
pig iron at once into malleable iron, or cast steel, so that knives,
forks, snuffers, scythes, and all kinds of articles, were converted
into steel, "without any alterative process whatever between the blast
furnace and the melting-pot." In 1815 it was calculated that two
hundred thousand persons were employed in manufacturing articles of
iron, the annual value of which was ten million pounds.

With the war the manufacture of guns and arms of all kinds was greatly
increased, and several important improvements were made in the
construction of gun-barrels and their breeches. All kinds of cutlery
were improved, but, at the same time, both Government, by contractors,
and foreign countries, by merchants, were imposed on by articles
that had more show than use, to the serious injury of the British
reputation. Knives and razors were sent out of mere iron, and our
pioneers and sappers and miners were often supplied with axes, picks,
and shovels more resembling lead than iron.

Great attention during this reign was devoted to the manufacturing
of clocks and watches. To such eminence had the English manufacture
of watches arrived, that in 1799 it was calculated that the value of
watches and marine chronometers alone manufactured in and around London
amounted to a million of money yearly. In 1762 John Harrison claimed
the reward offered by Act of Parliament for a chronometer which would
ascertain the longitude within sixty, forty, or thirty miles. For the
least accurate of these the reward was ten thousand pounds, for the
next more accurate fifteen thousand pounds, and for the best twenty
thousand pounds. Harrison produced a chronometer which, after two
voyages to the West Indies, entitled him to the highest prize, but a
fresh Act of Parliament was passed, refusing him more than two thousand
five hundred pounds until he had made known the principle of his
invention, and assigned his chronometer for the public use. Even when
these new terms were complied with he was only to receive ten thousand
pounds, and the remainder on the correctness of the chronometer having
been sufficiently tested. Harrison very justly complained of these
new stipulations, and of the delays thus interposed; but in 1767,
nine years before his decease, he obtained the full amount of the
premium. In 1774 a premium of five thousand pounds was offered by Act
of Parliament for a chronometer that should ascertain the longitude
within one degree of a great circle, or sixty geographical miles;
seven thousand five hundred pounds for one that would ascertain the
longitude within two-thirds of that distance; and ten thousand pounds
for one that would ascertain it within half a degree. This called
out the efforts of various competitors--Harrison, Meadge, Kendal,
Coombe, and numbers of others. In 1777 Meadge produced two, which were
submitted to the test of the Astronomer-Royal, Dr. Maskelyne, and
pronounced unfavourably upon; but Meadge petitioned Parliament against
this decision, and, on the report of a committee on his chronometers,
he was awarded a premium of two thousand five hundred pounds.

In 1783 the English carriage-builders, who had before been considered
inferior in elegance to the French makers, began to receive large
orders from Paris itself. In 1759 Walter Taylor and son introduced
machinery for cutting blocks, sheaves, and pins for ships. Saw-mills
were also introduced into Great Britain, in 1767, by Mr. Dingley, of
Limehouse.

In the art of printing, the process of stereotyping (originally
invented by William Ged) was re-invented by Mr. Tulloch, in 1780. In
1801 lithography was introduced into England from Germany, but was not
much used till Mr. Ackermann began to employ it, in 1817. In 1814 steam
was first applied to printing in the _Times_ office.

The art of coining received, like other things, a new facility and
perfection from the application of the steam-engine. Messrs. Boulton
and Watt, at the Soho Works, set up machinery, in 1788, which rolled
out the metal, cut out the blanks, or circular pieces, shook them in
bags to take off the rough edges, and stamped the coins--in higher
perfection than ever before attained--at the rate of from thirty to
forty thousand per hour.

To this prolific reign belongs also the discovery of coal-gas. In 1792
William Murdoch, an engineer, lighted his own house with it in Redruth,
in Cornwall. The same gentleman illuminated the Soho Works of Messrs.
Boulton and Watt with it at the Peace of Amiens, in 1802; and in the
year 1804 some of the cotton mills in Manchester began to use it. In
1807 it was used in Golden Lane, in London; in 1809 Mr. Winsor, a
German, lit up Pall Mall with it; and in 1813 the first chartered gas
company was established in London, and gas soon spread through all the
large towns.

In astronomy, Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781; in 1802
he published, in the "Philosophical Transactions," his catalogue of
five hundred new nebulæ and nebulous stars; and in 1803 announced his
discovery of the motion of double stars round each other. In chemistry,
Sir Humphry Davy, in 1807, extracted their metallic bases from the
fixed alkalies; in 1808 demonstrated the same fact as it regarded
the alkaline earths; in 1811 discovered the true nature of chlorine;
in 1815 invented his safety lamp; and in 1817 (as already mentioned)
brought it to perfection. In 1804 Leslie published discoveries of the
nature and properties of heat; in 1808 Dalton announced his atomic
theory; and in 1814 Wollaston completed its development and proof.

Amongst the fine arts, the first to which we direct attention, that
is, music, was warmly patronised by the Royal Family, and therefore
maintained the status which it had acquired in the last reign, though
it produced no great original genius. Church music continued to be
cultivated, and the anthems of Kent, published in 1773, and those of
Nares, published in 1778, were of much merit. To these we may add the
services and anthems of Doctors Hayes, Dupuis, Arnold, Cooke, Ayrton,
and of Mr. Battishill. The "Shunamite Woman," an oratorio by Arnold,
appeared at a later date, as well as the anthems and services of Dr.
Whitfield.

In the early part of the reign the English operas of Augustine Arne,
"Artaxerxes" and "Love in a Village"--the former principally a
translation from Metastasio--were much admired. For the rest, there
were numbers of lovers and professors of the art, both in sacred,
operatic, and glee music. The Catch Club was formed in 1761, and
zealously supported, as well as the Concerts of Ancient Music in 1776.
Under the patronage of this society, and particularly of his Majesty,
took place the celebrated Handel "Commemoration" in Westminster Abbey,
in May and June of 1784. During the early part of the reign, too,
appeared several distinguished works in this department. At the head
of these stood the "Histories of Music," by Sir John Hawkins and Dr.
Burney; Dibdin's "Musical Tour;" Dr. John Browne's "Dissertation on
Poetry and Music;" the "Letters" of Jackson, of Exeter; and Mason's
"Essays on Church Music." In the later portion of the reign there
was much love of music, but little original composition, except for
the stage, where Arnold, Shield, Storace, and Dibdin produced the
most delightful compositions. Arnold's "Castle of Andalusia," "Inkle
and Yarico," "The Surrender of Calais," and "The Mountaineers;" and
Shield's "Rosina," "The Poor Soldier," "The Woodman," and "The
Farmer," are universally admired. The sea songs of Charles Dibdin are
as imperishable as the British navy, to which they have given a renown
of its own. He wrote about one thousand four hundred songs, thirty
dramatic pieces, "A Musical Tour," and a "History of the Stage," and
was allowed, after all, to die in deep poverty, after charming the
world for half a century. During the latter part of the reign music
was in much esteem, and musical meetings in various parts of the
country--in London, the opera, Ancient Concerts, and performances by
foreign composers, such as Handel's "Messiah," Beethoven's "Mount of
Olives," Mozart's opera of "Don Giovanni," etc.--were flocked to, but
little native genius appeared.

During this reign architecture was in a state of transition, or,
rather, revolution, running through the Palladian, the Roman, the
Greek, and into the Gothic, with a rapidity which denoted the unsettled
ideas on the subject. At the commencement of the reign James Paine
and John Carr were the prevailing architects. Worksop Manor, since
pulled down, and Keddlestone, in Derbyshire, were the work of Paine;
but Robert Adam, an advocate for a Roman style, completed Keddlestone.
Carr built Harewood House, and others of a like character, chiefly
remarkable for Grecian porticos attached to buildings of no style
whatever. The Woods, of Bath, employed a spurious Grecian style in
the Crescent in that city, Queen's Square, the Pounds, etc., which,
however, acquired a certain splendour by their extent and _tout
ensemble_. To these succeeded Robert Taylor, the architect of the Bank
of England and other public buildings, in a manner half Italian, half
Roman. Sir William Chambers, of more purely Italian taste, has left
us Somerset House as a noble specimen of his talent. Robert and James
Adam erected numerous works in the semi-Roman semi-Italian style, as
Caenwood House, at Highgate, Portland Place, and the screen at the
Admiralty. In Portland Place Robert Adam set the example of giving the
space necessary for a great metropolis. James Wyatt, who succeeded
Chambers as Surveyor-General in 1800, destined to leave extensive
traces of his art, commenced his career by the erection of the
Pantheon, London, in the classical style, and then took up the Gothic
style, which had begun to have its admirers, and in which James Essex
had already distinguished himself by his restoration of the lantern of
Ely Cathedral, and in other works at Cambridge. Wyatt was employed to
restore some of the principal colleges at Oxford, and to do the same
work for the cathedral of Salisbury and Windsor Castle. In these he
showed that he had penetrated to a certain extent into the principles
of that order of architecture, but was far from having completely
mastered them. A greater failure was his erection of Fonthill Abbey,
for Beckford, the author of "Vathek," where he made a medley of half
an abbey, half a castle, with a huge central church tower, so little
based on the knowledge of the Gothic architects that in a few years
the tower fell. Wyatt, however, was a man of enterprising genius.
Co-temporary with Wyatt, George Dance made a much less happy attempt in
Gothic in the front of Guildhall, London; but he built Newgate and St.
Luke's Hospital in a very appropriate style. One of the most elegant
erections at this period was the Italian Opera House, by a foreigner,
Novosielsky, in 1789. Nor must we omit here the publication of John
Gwynn's "London and Westminster Improved," in 1766, by which he led
the way to the extensive opening up of narrow streets, and throwing
out of fresh bridges, areas, and thoroughfares, which have been since
realised, or which are still in progress.

[Illustration: _Schoolmaster_ _Lady_ _Parson_ _Gentleman_ _Servant_

COSTUMES AT THE END OF GEORGE III.'S REIGN.]

[Illustration: A VILLAGE MERRYMAKING.

FROM THE PAINTING BY W. P. FRITH, R.A., IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT
MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON.]

Sir John Soane, who had been a pupil of Dance, Holland, and Sir William
Chambers, introduced a more purely Greek style, and his achievements
may be seen in Dulwich Gallery and Trinity Church, Marylebone. The most
eminent disciples of this school were William Wilkins and Sir Robert
Smirke. Wilkins was a servile copyist, and the National Gallery is the
chief monument of his skill, or want of it. Sir Robert Smirke was of a
higher order, and his erection of Covent Garden Theatre, the Mint, the
Post Office, the College of Physicians, the law courts at Gloucester,
Lowther Castle, etc., speak for themselves. Nash, the contemporary
and successor of these architects, has left us abundance of his
Græco-Romano-Italian medleys in the church in Langham Place, Regent's
Park, and Buckingham Palace. The great merit of Nash was, that, like
the brothers Adam, he gave us space, and showed, as in Regent's Park,
what was needed for an immense metropolis. Towards the end of the
reign Gothic architecture was more cultivated, and one of Wyatt's
last works was Ashridge House, in Buckinghamshire, a vast and stately
Gothic pile, imposing in general effect, but far from pure in style.
Still less so was Eaton Hall, in Cheshire, built by William Pordon;
but the real Anglo-Gothic was now receiving the true development of
its principles by the works of James Bentham, Carter, John Britton;
and, finally, Thomas Rickman, in 1816, published his "Attempt to
Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture," which placed these
principles perspicuously before the public.

[Illustration: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. (_After the Portrait by Himself._)]

Under Sir Joshua Reynolds a perfect revolution in the art of painting,
as practised in England, was effected. He threw aside past traditional
fashions, and returned to nature; and his portraits at once excited the
consternation of the painters of the day, and placed him in the very
first rank of artists. In 1768 was established the Royal Academy, and
amongst its foreign members were Benjamin West and Angelica Kauffmann.
West produced all his great works in England, and, however much they
may now be criticised, they showed an advance on past art in England,
and had the merit of introducing modern costume for modern heroes,
as in the "Death of General Wolfe," contrary to the advice of even
Reynolds himself. Barry made a spasmodic attempt to lead the public
back to what he deemed the classical, but in vain; and the successive
appearance of Wilson, Gainsborough, and Opie, in different styles,
but all genuinely English, established the public in its attachment
to the true English school. Wilson, during his lifetime, indeed, was
neglected, and died in poverty; but the next generation made the
_amende_ to his fame, though too late for his own enjoyment of it.
To Paul Sandby we owe the origin of the water-colour school, which
afterwards grew so extensive and so rich in production. Amongst eminent
painters of this portion of the reign we must mention Wright of Derby,
Mortimer, Stubbs and Sawrey, animal painters, and Copley, who, though
an American by birth, produced most of his works in England.

Of water-colour painters who extended the fame of the school were
Payne, Cozens, Glover, Girtin, and Turner; but Turner soon deserted
water for oil. In 1804 the Water-Colour Society was established,
and Turner was not amongst its numbers, having already gone over to
oil-painting; but there were Varley, Barrett, Hills, Rigaud, and
Pocock. Wild and Pugin were exhibitors of architectural drawings at
its exhibitions. Afterwards came Francia, Westall, Uwins, De Wint,
Mackenzie, Copley Fielding, Robson, Prout, Gandy, and Bonington. In
their rear, but extending beyond the reign, appeared a brilliant host.

In general art the names of Fuseli, Northcote, and Stothard stand
eminent, and were the foremost contributors to Alderman Boydell's
celebrated Shakespeare Gallery. There were also Hoppner, Beechey,
Morland; in Scotland, Sir William Allan and Sir Henry Raeburn. In
caricature Gillray was a worthy successor to Hogarth.

In 1805 a great step in British painting was made by the establishment
of the British Institution; and in 1813 this institution opened the
National Gallery. The annual exhibitions soon became enriched by the
consummate works of Hilton, Etty, Haydon, Briggs, Sir Thomas Lawrence
(in elegant portraits), Phillips, Shee, Carpenter, Harlow, Wilkie,
Mulready, Turner, Calcot, Collins, Landseer, Martin, Danby, Howard,
Cooper, Leslie, and Hone. No age in England had produced so illustrious
a constellation of painters, as varied in character as they were
masterly in artistic power.

The art of sculpture, like that of painting, took a new spring in this
reign, but the early part of it was encumbered by the tasteless works
of Wilton, Read, and Taylor. It remained for the genius of Banks,
Nollekens, Bacon, Baily, Behnes, and Chantrey, to place sculpture on
its proper elevation in England.

To the art of engraving Woollett and Strange gave a first-rate
eminence, and were successfully followed by Browne, Byrne, Rosker, and
Major. In mezzotint M. Ardell admirably rendered the portraits of Sir
Joshua Reynolds; and Smith, Green, Thomas, and Watson also excelled in
this class of engraving. In engravings for books Heath and Angus stand
pre-eminent; and Boydell's "Shakespeare" spread the taste, though his
illustrations were chiefly done in the inferior style of dot engraving.
In line engraving the names of Sharp, Sherwin, Fittler, Anker Smith,
Neagle, Lowry, Turrell, Scott, and others, are of high repute. In
landscape engraving no names, in the middle period of the reign, stood
more prominent than those of Middiman, Watt, Angus, Milton, Pouncey,
Peak, and Taylor.

There arose a second school of mezzotint engravers, the chief of whom
were Earlom, Reynolds, Daniell, Sutherland, and Westall. The strange
but intellectual Blake was both painter and his own engraver, in a
style of his own. Towards the end of the reign flourished, chiefly in
architectural illustrations, Le Keux, John and Henry, pupils of Bazire,
Roffe, Ransom, and Scott; in landscape, William and George Cooke,
William and Edward Finden, Byrne, and Pye; in portrait, Charles and
James Heath, John Taylor, Skelton, Burnet, Bromley, Robinson, Warren,
and Lewis.

In wood engraving, Thomas Bewick, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, revived the
art, and threw such fascination into it by the exquisite tail-pieces
in his "Natural History," that his name will always be associated with
this style of engraving.

Of the coinage of this reign little is to be said. It was of the most
contemptible character till Boulton and Watt, as already mentioned,
struck the copper pence in 1797 in a superior style. In 1818 was issued
a gold and silver coinage, which was entrusted to a foreign artist,
Pistrucci, and which was turned out of very unequal merit. Flaxman
would have produced admirable designs, and there was a medallist of
high talent, Thomas Wyon, who would have executed these designs most
ably. In fact, the best part of the silver coinage was produced by
Wyon, from the designs of Pistrucci.

In the early portion of the reign the manners and customs differed
little from those described in the preceding one. There was great
dissipation, and even coarseness of manners, amongst the nobility and
gentry. It was the custom to drink to intoxication at dinners, and
swearing still garnished the language of the wealthy as well as of the
low. Balls, routs, the opera, the theatre, with Vauxhall and Ranelagh,
filled up the time of the fashionable, and gaming was carried to an
extraordinary extent. Amongst our leading statesmen Charles Fox was
famous for this habit. Duelling was equally common, and infidelity
amongst fashionable people was of notorious prevalence. George III.
and his queen did what they could to discourage this looseness of
morals, and to set a different example; but the decorum of the Court
was long in passing into the wealthy classes around it. An affluent
middle class was fast mingling with the old nobility, and this brought
some degree of sobriety and public decency with it. Amongst the lower
classes dog-, cock-, and bull-fights were, during a great part of
the reign, the chief amusements, and the rudest manners continued to
prevail, because there was next to no education. Wesley, Whitefield,
and their followers, were the first to break into this condition of
heathenism. Robberies and murders abounded both in town and country,
and the police was of a very defective character. For the most part
there was none but the parish constable. The novels of Fielding and
Smollett are pictures of the rudeness and profligacy of these times.
The resources in the country of books and newspapers were few, and the
pot-house supplied the necessary excitement. The clergy were of a very
low tone, or were non-resident, and the farmers, getting rich, aped the
gentlemen, followed the hounds, and ended the day with a carouse.

Gradually, however, a more refined tone was diffusing itself. The
example of the head of the nation had not been without its effect.
The higher classes abandoned Ranelagh and Vauxhall to the middle and
lower classes, if they did not abandon their theatre, opera, and rout.
But the theatres, too, became more decorous, and the spread of what
had been called Methodism began to reach the higher classes through
such men as Wilberforce, and such women as the Countess of Huntingdon
and Hannah More. The most palpable drawback to this better state of
sentiment and manners was the profligacy of the Prince of Wales and
his associates. But towards the end of the reign a decided improvement
in both manners and morals had taken place. The momentous events
passing over the world, and in which Great Britain had the principal
agency, seemed to have rooted out much frivolity, and given a soberer
and higher tone to the public mind. The spread of a purer and more
humane literature baptised the community with a new and better spirit;
art added its refinements, and religion its restraints. The efforts
to introduce education amongst the people had begun, and the lowest
amusements of dog-fighting, cock-fighting, and bull-baiting were
discouraged and put down. The new birth of science, art, literature,
and manufactures was accompanied by a new birth of morals, taste, and
sentiment, and this, happily, was a true birth; and the growth of what
was then born has been proceeding ever since.

In the opening of the reign the gentlemen retained the full-skirted
coat, with huge cuffs, the cocked-hats and knee-breeches of the former
period. Pigtails were universal, and the more foppish set up their
hair in a high peak, like the women. The ladies had their hair turned
up on frames half a yard high, and this hairy mountain was ornamented
with strings of pearls or diamonds, or surmounted with a huge cap edged
with lace. They wore their waists as long as possible, with a peaked
stomacher, and hanging sleeves of Mecklenburg lace. Their gowns were of
the richest silks, satins, and brocades, their skirts flowing; and the
fan was an indispensable article.

In the army the cocked-hat and pigtail at first prevailed, but these
were soon dismissed, as well as the great jack-boots of the cavalry.
With the employment of the Hessian soldiers in the American war,
and afterwards on the Continent, there prevailed amongst English
gentlemen the Hessian boot; instead of the _queue_, cropped hair and
close-fitting small hats became the vogue. Powdering became profuse,
both amongst ladies and gentlemen, till Pitt taxed it, when it
vanished, except from the heads of particularly positive old gentlemen
and servants.

During the French war, when the Paris fashions were intercepted, much
variety in the fashion of dress took place amongst both gentlemen and
ladies; but before the peace had arrived the most tasteless costumes
had become general, and the waists of both sexes were elevated nearly
to their shoulders. The tight skirts and short waists of the ladies
gave them the most uncouth aspect imaginable; and the cut-away coats
and chimneypot hats of the gentlemen were by no means more graceful.
The military costume had undergone an equally complete revolution, and
with no better success.

The changes in furniture were not remarkable. During the French war a
rage for furniture on the classic model had taken place; but on the
return of peace Paris fashions were restored. Rosewood superseded
mahogany, and a more easy and luxurious style of sofa and couch was
adopted. There came also Pembroke tables, Argand lamps, register
stoves, Venetian and spring blinds, a variety of ladies' work-tables
and whatnots; and a more tasteful disposition of curtains and
ornamental articles purchased on the Continent.




CHAPTER V.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE IV.

    Accession of George IV.--Meeting of Parliament--General
    Election--Opening of the New Session--Dulness of Affairs--Brougham
    on Education--Queen Caroline--Omission of her Name from the
    Liturgy--She rejects the King's Proposals, and arrives in
    England--Attempts at a Compromise--The King orders an Inquiry--The
    Secret Committee--The Bill of Pains and Penalties--Arrival of
    the Queen in the House of Lords--Discussions on the Form of
    Procedure--Speeches of Denman and the Attorney-General--Evidence
    for the Prosecution--Brougham's Speech--Abandonment of the
    Bill--General Rejoicings--Violence of Party Feeling--Popularity
    of the Queen--Her Claim to be crowned refused--The Queen's
    Attempt to enter the Abbey--Indiscretion of the Act--The
    Coronation and the Banquet--The subsequent Scramble--Death
    of the Queen--Departure of her Body--The King's Visit to
    Ireland--A Royal Oration and its enthusiastic Reception--The
    King and Lady Conyngham--Changes in the Government--Discontent
    of Eldon--Wellesley in Ireland--Alarming State of the
    Country--Canning's Speech on Catholic Emancipation--Parliamentary
    Reform--Agricultural Distress and Finance--Eldon's Outbreak on
    the Marriage Bill--Suicide of Lord Londonderry--Scene at his
    Funeral--Visit of George IV. to Scotland--Loyalty of Sir Walter
    Scott--Account of the Festivities--Peel's Letter to Scott--Return
    of the King--Canning takes the Foreign Office and Leadership of
    the House of Commons--Huskisson joins the Cabinet--The Duke of
    Wellington sent to Verona--His Instructions--Principles of the Holy
    Alliance--The Spanish Colonies--French Intervention in Spain--The
    Duke's Remonstrances with the French King--His Interview with the
    Czar--The Congress of Verona--Failure of Wellington to prevent
    Intervention in Spain--Vindication of Canning's Policy in the
    Commons--He calls the New World into Existence.


George III. expired on the 29th of January, 1820. Although it was
Sunday, both Houses of Parliament met according to the requisition of
the statute, 6 Anne c. 7. Lord Eldon merely appeared on the woolsack;
and, as soon as prayers were read, the House of Peers was adjourned.
The same day a council was held at Carlton House, when the usual
ceremonies were observed, as upon the commencement of a new reign,
although George IV. had been virtually king during the period of the
Regency. On this occasion the Ministers delivered up the emblems of
their different offices, and were all graciously reappointed. Lord
Eldon, in a letter to his daughter, felicitates himself on having
been thus placed "in the very singular situation, that of a third
Chancellorship." But Lord Campbell remarks that he was probably not
aware that one of his predecessors had been Chancellor five times. His
immediate successor had been four times Chancellor, and Lord Cottenham
three times. "It is amusing," says Lord Campbell, "to observe how
he enhances the delight he felt at the commencement of this third
Chancellorship by protestations that he was reluctantly induced again
to accept the worthless bauble, lest, by declining it, he should be
chargeable with ingratitude." The Chancellor made similar protestations
of reluctance and humility when George IV., grateful for his services
in connection with the prosecution of the queen, pressed upon him
accumulated honours; giving him, at the same time, two additional steps
in the peerage, as Viscount Encombe and Earl of Eldon--honours which,
he said, he had repeatedly declined to accept when offered by George
III.

Parliament again met for a few days, but only to vote Addresses of
condolence and congratulation, as a dissolution had been determined
on. The Marquis of Lansdowne pointed out that there was not the usual
reason for a dissolution which occurred upon a demise of the Crown; but
Lord Eldon explained that, at common law, the Parliament died with the
Sovereign in whose name it was called; and although, by the statute
of William III., it could sit six months longer, it was liable to be
dissolved sooner; and constitutionally it ought to be dissolved as
soon as public business would allow; so that noble lords who started
any business to delay the dissolution would be obstructing the due
exercise of the Royal Prerogative. He, as Lord Commissioner, therefore,
concluded the Session by delivering the Royal Speech, which deplored
the loss of a Sovereign, the common father of all his people, and
praised the prudence and firmness with which the Lords and Commons had
counteracted the designs of the disaffected.

The general election was, on the whole, favourable to the Government;
the forces of Conservatism being roused into activity by the violent
democratic tendencies of the times, and by the threats of revolution.
The new Parliament met on the 21st of April. Mr. Manners Sutton was
re-elected Speaker. A week was occupied in swearing in the members,
and the Session was opened on the 27th by a Speech from the king, the
vagueness of which gave no ground for an amendment to the Address in
either House. In the old roll of members one illustrious name was
found, borne by a statesman who was never more to take his seat in
the House. Henry Grattan expired (June 4) soon after the Session
commenced. Sir James Mackintosh, in moving a new writ for Dublin, which
Grattan had represented for many years, observed "that he was, perhaps,
the only man recorded in history who had obtained equal fame and
influence in two assemblies differing from each other in such essential
respects as the English and Irish Parliaments."

[Illustration: GREAT SEAL OF GEORGE IV.]

The Session promised for some weeks to be very dull; no subjects more
stirring being brought forward or announced than the settlement of the
Civil List, the discharge of insolvent debtors, the suppression of
Sunday newspapers, and the reading of the Athanasian Creed. To one of
those subjects, the Civil List, Lord Eldon thus jocosely alluded in
a letter to his daughter:--"Our royal master seems to have got into
temper again, as far as I could judge from his conversation with me
this morning. He has been pretty well disposed to part with us all,
because we would not make additions to his revenue. This we thought
conscientiously we could not do in the present state of the country,
and of the distresses of the middle and lower orders of the people. To
which we might add, too, that of the higher orders."

But there was one subject of general and permanent interest brought
under the notice of the House of Commons. Mr. Henry Brougham made
an important speech on the great and difficult subject of Popular
Education, which he continued to advocate, with so much power and
success, throughout the whole of his lengthened and brilliant career.
He stated that there were then twelve thousand parishes or chapelries
in England; of these three thousand five hundred had not a vestige
of a school, and the people had no more means of education than the
Hottentots or Kaffirs. Of the remainder, there were five thousand
five hundred unendowed, depending entirely on the casual and fleeting
support of the parents of the children attending them. The number
of children receiving education at all the schools, week-day and
Sunday, was seven hundred thousand. Estimating the number educated
at home at fifty thousand, the whole number then under instruction
would be seven hundred and fifty thousand--about one-fifteenth of the
entire population. In Scotland the proportion at that time was about
one-tenth; in Holland and Prussia the same; in Switzerland one-eighth.
France was then at the bottom of the scale, only one-twenty-eighth
of the population being under instruction. Mr. Brougham proposed a
school-rate for England, according to the American plan.

The indisposition of Parliament to attend to the ordinary business of
the legislature, however important and pressing any portion of it might
be considered in other circumstances, may be easily accounted for. One
subject engrossed the minds of all men at this time, and agitated the
nation to a depth and extent altogether unprecedented in our history.
The story of Caroline of Brunswick is one of the saddest and most
romantic in the annals of the Queens of England. When the Prince Regent
became king, his wife, as a matter of course, became the rightful
Queen of England. But her husband had resolved that she should not
be queen; and, rather than not have his way in this, he was ready to
imperil his throne. She was as fully entitled to enjoy the well-defined
rank and position that devolved upon her by the laws of the country,
as he was to wear his crown, without regard to personal character. He
would break the marriage tie, if he could; but, failing that, he was
determined to degrade the queen by bringing against her the foulest
charges of immorality. She might, indeed, have escaped a trial on
these charges if she had consented to remain abroad, and had agreed to
forego any title that would have connected her with the Royal Family
of England. Till the death of George III., who had always been her
steady friend, she had been prayed for in the liturgy as the Princess
of Wales. There was now no Princess of Wales, and the king insisted
that she should not be prayed for at all. His Ministers, against their
own convictions--against what they well knew to be the almost unanimous
feeling of the nation--weakly yielded to the arbitrary will of their
licentious Sovereign. They and their apologists attempted to uphold
this conduct by alleging that she was prayed for under the words,
"the rest of the Royal Family." But Mr. Denman, who defended her,
afterwards observed with more truth that the general prayer in which
she was embraced was, "For all that are desolate and oppressed." The
moment the news of this outrage reached the queen, she resolved, with
characteristic spirit and determination, to come at once to England and
assert her rights in person. The Ministers flattered themselves that
this was a vain boast, and that, conscious of guilt, her courage would
fail her.

On the 3rd of May George received addresses at Carlton House, and on
the 10th he held his first levee since his accession to the Throne, at
which nearly eighteen hundred persons of distinction were present, who
testified their attachment to his person in the most gratifying manner.
The families of the great political party that formed and supported
his Government affected to treat the queen's pretensions with a quiet
disdain that evinced their confidence in the unbounded loyalty of the
nation. But their eyes were soon opened; and in a few weeks Ministers
sat abashed upon the Treasury benches as if conscious that they were
driving the vessel of the Constitution upon a rock, subservient to
the tyranny of their master. The Liberal party were vehement in their
denunciations, and the leading Whigs, whether from policy or a sense of
duty, came forward as the champions of the queen's rights. The people
were all enthusiastic in her favour, and wild with excitement.

On the 1st of June her Majesty arrived at St. Omer, intending to embark
at Calais without delay for England. She wrote a letter to the Prime
Minister, the Earl of Liverpool, commanding him to prepare a palace in
London for her reception; another to Lord Melville, to send a yacht
to carry her across the Channel to Dover; and a third to the Duke of
York, repeating both demands, and complaining of the treatment she had
received. Two days later Lord Hutchinson, with Mr. Brougham, who was
her legal adviser, arrived with a proposition from the king, offering
her fifty thousand pounds a year for life if she would remain on the
Continent, and relinquish her claims as Queen of England. The queen
instantly and indignantly rejected the offer, and started for England
with all haste, having dismissed her foreign suite, including Bergami,
her chamberlain, and the prime cause of the scandal that attached to
her name. She would not even be dissuaded by Mr. Brougham, who most
earnestly implored her to refrain from rushing into certain trouble
and possible danger; or, at least, to delay taking the step until Lord
Hutchinson should have received fresh instructions. She was peremptory,
and sailed at once for Dover, accompanied by Lady Anne Hamilton and
Alderman Wood, landing on the 6th of June. As this event was quite
unexpected by Government, the commandant, having had no orders to the
contrary, received her with a royal salute. The beach was covered
with people, who welcomed her with shouts of enthusiasm. From Dover
to London her journey was a continued ovation. In London the whole
population seemed to turn out in a delirium of joy and triumph, which
reached its climax as the procession passed Carlton House. No residence
having been provided for her by the Government, she proceeded to the
house of Alderman Wood in Audley Street.

The danger of civil war was felt to be so great that earnest attempts
were made to conciliate the queen, and to effect a compromise. Mr.
Wilberforce was very zealous in this matter. He wrote to the king,
entreating him to restore the queen's name to the liturgy. This was a
vital point. The Ministry had expressed their intention to resign if
this must be done. Mr. Wilberforce headed a deputation from the House
of Commons, who proceeded to her residence, in full court costume.
He describes her manner as "extremely dignified, but very stern and
haughty." He got no thanks from either party for his attempts at
negotiation. He was very much abused by Cobbett and other writers
on the popular side. Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman met the Duke of
Wellington and Lord Castlereagh on the 15th of June to discuss an
adjustment; when it was laid down, as a preliminary, that the queen
must not be understood to admit, nor the king to retract, anything; and
that the questions to be examined were--the future residence of the
queen; her title, when travelling on the Continent; the non-exercise
of certain rights of patronage in England; and the income to be
assigned to her for life. This fourth topic the queen desired might
be altogether laid aside in these conferences; and the differences
which arose upon the first proposition prevented any discussion on the
second and third. They suggested that her Majesty should be officially
introduced by the king's Ministers abroad to foreign Courts, or, at
least, to the Court of some one state which she might select for her
residence; and that her name should be restored to the liturgy, or
something conceded by way of equivalent, the nature of which, however,
was not specified by her negotiators. It was answered that, on the
subject of the liturgy, there could be no change of what had been
resolved; that, with respect to her residence in any foreign state,
the king, although he could not properly require of any foreign Power
to receive at its Court any person not received at the Court of
England, would, however, cause official notification to be made of her
legal character as queen; and that a king's yacht, or a ship of war,
should be provided to convey her to the port she might select. These
conditions were wholly declined by the queen, and on the 19th of June
the negotiations were broken off. On the 22nd two resolutions were
passed by the House of Commons, declaring their opinion that, when such
large advances had been made toward an adjustment, her Majesty, by
yielding to the wishes of the House, and forbearing to press further
the propositions on which a material difference yet remained, would not
be understood as shrinking from inquiry, but only as proving her desire
to acquiesce in the authority of Parliament.

All attempts at negotiation having failed, sealed green bags were laid
upon the table of the House of Lords and of the House of Commons,
with a message from the king to the effect that in consequence of the
arrival of the queen he had communicated certain papers respecting
her conduct, which he recommended to their immediate and serious
attention. The bags contained documents and evidence connected with
a commission sent in 1818 to Milan and other places to investigate
charges--or rather to collect evidence to sustain charges which had
been made against the Princess of Wales. The principal of these charges
was that she had been guilty of adultery with a person named Bergami,
whom she had employed as a courier, and afterwards raised to the
position of her chamberlain and companion. The commission was under the
direction of Sir John Leach, afterwards Vice-Chancellor.

The Crown had resolved to proceed against the queen by a Bill of
Pains and Penalties, the introduction of which was preceded by the
appointment of a secret committee, to perform functions somewhat
analogous to those of a grand jury in finding bills against accused
parties. Mr. Brougham earnestly protested against the appointment of a
secret committee, which was opposed by Lords Lansdowne and Holland. The
course was explained and defended by the Lord Chancellor, who said that
the object of Ministers in proposing a secret committee was to prevent
injustice towards the accused; that committee would not be permitted
to pronounce a decision; it would merely find, like a grand jury, that
matter of accusation did or did not exist; such matter, even if found
to have existence, could not be the subject of judicial proceeding,
strictly so called. The offence of a queen consort, or a Princess
Consort of Wales, committing adultery with a person owing allegiance
to the British Crown would be that of a principal in high treason,
because by statute it was high treason in him; and as accessories in
high treason are principals, she would thus be guilty of high treason
as a principal; but as the act of a person owing no allegiance to the
British Crown could not be high treason in him, so neither could a
princess be guilty of that crime merely by being an accessory to such a
person's act. Yet although, for this reason, there could be no judicial
proceeding in such a case, there might be a legislative one; and the
existence or non-existence of grounds for such legislative proceeding
was a matter into which it would be fit that a secret committee should
inquire. In no case could injustice be done, because that committee's
decision would not be final. There might be differences of opinion
about the best mode of proceeding, but, for God's sake, said the Lord
Chancellor, let it be understood that they all had the same object
in view, and that their difference was only about the best mode of
procedure.

Mr. Canning, who had been on terms of intimacy with her Majesty,
declined to take any part in the proceedings, declaring that nothing
would induce him to do anything calculated to reflect upon the honour
and virtue of the queen. The queen intimated to the Lord Chancellor
that she meant to come in person to the House of Lords when her case
should next be discussed there. He answered that he would not permit
her to enter without the authority of the House, for which she must
previously apply. She then desired that he would deliver a message to
the House in her name, which he declined, stating that "the House did
not receive messages from anybody but the king, unless they were sent
as answers to Addresses from the House." The petition was presented by
Lord Dacre, on which occasion the Lord Chancellor declared that he had
no objection to its being submitted to the consideration of the House,
adding that "he would sooner suffer death than admit any abatement of
the principle that a person accused is not therefore to be considered
guilty." Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman were then called in to support
the petition, which prayed that their lordships would not prosecute a
secret inquiry against her. The powerful pleading of these two orators
had an immense effect upon the public mind. On the following day Lord
Grey moved that the order for the appointment of a secret committee
should be discharged. His motion was negatived by a majority of one
hundred and two to forty-seven. This was the first division on the
proceedings against the queen, and so large a majority naturally gave
great confidence to the Government. The secret committee accordingly
set to work, opened the green bag, and examined the charges. On the 4th
of July they brought in their report, which stated "that allegations
supported by the concurrent testimony of a great number of persons in
various situations of life, and residing in different parts of Europe,
appeared to be calculated so deeply to affect the character of the
queen, the dignity of the Crown, and the moral feeling and honour of
the country, that it was indispensable that they should become the
subject of a solemn inquiry, which would best be effected in the course
of a legislative proceeding." On the 5th Lord Liverpool introduced the
Bill of Pains and Penalties against her Majesty, which, having recited
in the preamble that she carried on an adulterous intercourse with
Bergami, her menial servant, enacted "that she should be degraded from
her station and title of queen, and that her marriage with the king
should be dissolved." Counsel were again heard against that mode of
proceeding, a second reading was set down for the 17th of August, when
the preamble was to be proved, and the trial to begin.

The memorable 17th of August arrived, and the curtain was raised on
a new act in the great drama, on which the whole nation gazed with
the deepest interest, and with feverish anxiety. The queen left her
residence in St. James's Square, and proceeded to the House of Lords in
her new state carriage, which the people were with difficulty dissuaded
from unyoking, that they might draw it themselves. As she passed
Carlton House, the crowd gave three cheers, and also at the Treasury.
The soldiers on guard at the former place, and at the House of Lords,
presented arms when she arrived. The queen's carriage was preceded
by Alderman Wood's, and followed by one of her Majesty's travelling
carriages, in which were the Hon. Keppel Craven and Sir William Gell,
her chamberlains. The way from Charing Cross to Westminster Abbey was
crowded, and all the windows of the houses on each side were filled
with people, particularly with ladies. Such was the enthusiasm of
the people, that the barrier erected at St. Margaret's Church was
insufficient to keep them back, and the dense mass forced their way
through, and reached Palace Yard shortly after the queen. Sir T.
Tyrwhitt, as Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, attended by the officers
of the House, received the queen at the private entrance which had been
prepared for her. She entered at the door near the throne, supported by
Lord A. Hamilton, and attended by Lady A. Hamilton. She was dressed in
white, but wore a black lace shawl. Her demeanour was in the highest
degree dignified. On her entrance the peers all rose, and she was
pleased to salute them in return.

The Duke of Leinster, in pursuance of his intention to oppose the
Bill in all its stages, moved that the order of the day be rescinded.
The motion was negatived by a majority of two hundred and sixty to
forty-one; the number of peers present being three hundred and one.
Lord Carnarvon denounced the Bill of Pains and Penalties as a measure
unnecessary and unconstitutional. It was a species of _ex post
facto_ and illegitimate mode of proceeding against an individual, an
unprecedented anomaly in the law. In one of the cases which they had
adduced as the best precedent, the sentence passed on the criminal was
that he should be boiled to death! Far better to have drawn a veil
over the transactions, than to have searched the Alps, the Apennines,
and the ocean for evidence against the queen. The measure had excited
the disgust of every honest man in the kingdom.

[Illustration: QUEEN CAROLINE ENTERING THE HOUSE OF LORDS. (_See p._
208.)]

Lord Grey moved that it should be referred to the judges to determine
whether adultery committed out of the country with a foreigner amounted
to high treason. The motion was carried. The judges retired, and,
after an absence of twenty minutes, returned, with their decision
announced by Chief Justice Abbott, which was, that the crime in
question was not punishable as high treason, under the Statute of
Edward III. Counsel on both sides were admitted; Brougham and Denman,
for the queen, sitting on the right of the bar, and the Attorney- and
Solicitor-General on the left. Mr. Brougham prayed to be heard against
the principle of the Bill. Permission was granted, and he addressed
their lordships in a strain of impressive eloquence, demonstrating that
the mode of proceeding now adopted was in the highest degree unjust to
his illustrious client. He concluded by imploring their lordships to
retrace their steps, and thus become the saviours of their country.

Next morning Mr. Denman spoke nearly two hours for the queen, strongly
maintaining her right of recrimination against the king, who, when
seeking for a divorce, should come into court with clean hands. He
commented on the several clauses of the Bill as he went along. He said
the person who framed it had worked himself up into an ebullition
of moral zeal, and used expressions for the full support of which
the bribes and schemes of the prosecutors would produce witnesses.
Referring to a former investigation, he called the attention of
the House to the letter of Mrs. Lisle, in 1806, when flirting and
familiarity were the worst things alleged against her Royal Highness.
On the subject of familiarity he referred to a note addressed by a
waiter to the Prince of Wales--"Sam, of the Cocoanut Coffeehouse,
presents his compliments to his Royal Highness, and begs" so and so.
That illustrious person remarked, "This is very well to us, but it
won't do for him to speak so to Norfolk and Arundel." He concluded by
apologising to the queen for putting even the hypothesis of her guilt,
which he never could believe would be established; and whatever might
be enacted by means of suborned perjury or foul conspiracy, he never
would pay to any one who might usurp her situation the respect to which
the laws of God and man entitled her alone.

On the third day Lord King moved that the Bill was not one of State
necessity or expediency. This gave occasion to Lord Liverpool, then at
the head of the Government, to express his sentiments upon the measure.
He declared upon his honour and in his conscience that, if the Bill
passed, he believed the king would not marry again. But if the charges
against the queen were proved, it was absolutely impossible not to
conclude with an enactment for a divorce. Earl Grey replied to Lord
Liverpool, and called upon their lordships, from respect for their own
character, not to persevere with the measure before them.

The Attorney-General, Sir R. Gifford, was then called in, when he
proceeded to state the case against the queen. He traced her Majesty's
conduct from the time at which she left England, in 1814. Her suite
consisted of Lady Charlotte Lindsay and Lady Elizabeth Forbes, and
the Hon. Keppel Craven; Sir William Gell and a Mr. Fitzgerald as
chamberlains, with Captain Hash as equerry; Dr. Holland as physician;
and other persons, in various capacities. She went first to Brunswick,
her native place, and thence to Milan, where she remained three weeks.
There Bartolomeo Bergami was received into her service as a courier,
having been a servant in a similar capacity to a General Picco. The
princess went next to Rome, and thence to Naples, where she arrived
on the 8th of November, 1814. Her adopted child, William Austin, then
only six or seven years of age, to whom she was particularly attached,
had been in the habit of sleeping in a bed in the same room with her,
while, according to the domestic arrangements that had been adopted,
Bergami slept, among other menial servants, at a distance. On the
9th of November, three weeks after his appointment, an apartment was
assigned to Bergami near her own bedroom, and communicating with it by
means of a corridor. The surprise occasioned by this alteration was
increased when the princess directed that the child Austin should no
longer sleep in her room. There was an air of hurry, agitation, and
embarrassment about her manner which awakened suspicion, which was
increased in the morning, according to the story of the witnesses,
when they found that her own bed had not been occupied, and instead
of summoning her female attendants at the usual time, she remained
in the apartment of Bergami until a late hour. Her recent arrival at
Naples naturally induced persons of consequence to pay their respects
to her, but she was not accessible. The Attorney-General thought
their lordships could have no doubt that "this was the commencement
of that most scandalous, degrading, and licentious intercourse which
continued and increased." The natural effect of this was that Bergami
assumed airs of importance, and became haughty and arrogant with the
other servants. A few days afterwards the princess gave a masked
ball to the person then filling the Neapolitan throne. She first
appeared as a Neapolitan peasant, but soon retired to assume another
character, taking the courier with her, for the purpose of changing
her costume. She then came forth as the genius of history, in a dress,
or rather want of dress, of a most indecent and disgusting kind. The
Attorney-General referred to a number of facts of a similar kind to
those already detailed; also to instances of indelicacy and indecency,
in which the queen was said to have indulged in the presence of her
attendants and of strangers. On the fourth day, after the conclusion
of his address, he proceeded to call his witnesses, and for more than
a month the House was occupied in hearing their evidence.

The case against the queen closed on the 7th of September. An
adjournment took place to allow time for the preparation of her
defence, which was opened on the 3rd of October by Mr. Brougham, in a
magnificent oration, justly celebrated as one of the finest specimens
of British forensic eloquence. It concluded as follows:--

"It was always," said Mr. Brougham, "the queen's sad fate to lose her
best stay, her strongest and surest protection, when danger threatened
her; and by a coincidence most miraculous in her eventful history, not
one of her intrepid defenders was ever withdrawn from her without that
loss being the immediate signal for the renewal of momentous attacks
upon her honour and her life. Mr. Pitt, who had been her constant
friend and protector, died in 1806. A few weeks after that event took
place, the first attack was levelled at her. Mr. Pitt left her as a
legacy to Mr. Perceval, who became her best, her most undaunted, her
firmest protector. But no sooner had the hand of an assassin laid
prostrate that Minister, than her Royal Highness felt the force of
the blow by the commencement of a renewed attack, though she had
but just been borne through the last by Mr. Perceval's skilful and
powerful defence of her character. Mr. Whitbread then undertook her
protection; but soon that melancholy catastrophe happened which all
good men of every political party in the State, he believed, sincerely
and universally lamented. Then came with Mr. Whitbread's dreadful loss
the murmuring of that storm which was so soon to burst with all its
tempestuous fury upon her hapless and devoted head. Her child still
lived, and was her friend; her enemies were afraid to strike, for
they, in the wisdom of the world, worshipped the rising sun. But when
she lost that amiable and beloved daughter, she had no protector; her
enemies had nothing to dread; innocent or guilty, there was no hope,
and she yielded to the entreaty of those who advised her residence out
of this country. Who, indeed, could love persecution so steadfastly as
to stay and brave its renewal and continuance, and harass the feelings
of the only one she loved so dearly by combating such repeated attacks,
which were still reiterated after the echo of the fullest acquittal?
It was, however, reserved for the Milan Commission to concentrate and
condense all the threatening clouds which were prepared to burst over
her ill-fated head; and as if it were utterly impossible that the queen
could lose a single protector without the loss being instantaneously
followed by the commencement of some important step against her, the
same day which saw the remains of her venerable Sovereign entombed--of
that beloved Sovereign who was, from the outset, her constant father
and friend--that same sun which shone upon the monarch's tomb
ushered into the palace of his illustrious son and successor one of
the perjured witnesses who were brought over to depose against her
Majesty's life.

"Such, my lords," continued Mr. Brougham, "is the case now before you;
and such is the evidence by which it is attempted to be upheld. It is
evidence inadequate to prove any proposition, impotent to deprive the
subject of any civil right, ridiculous to establish the least offence,
scandalous to support a charge of the highest nature, monstrous to ruin
the honour of the Queen of England. What shall I say of it, then, as
evidence to support a judicial act of legislature--an _ex post facto_
law? My lords, I call upon you to pause. You stand on the brink of a
precipice: if your judgment shall go out against the queen, it will be
the only act that ever went out without effecting its purpose; it will
return to you upon your heads. Save the country! save yourselves!

"Oh! rescue the country--save the people of whom you are the ornaments,
but severed from whom you can no more live than the blossom that is
severed from the root and tree on which it grows. Save the country,
therefore, that you may continue to adorn it; save the Crown, which
is threatened with irreparable injury; save the aristocracy, which is
surrounded with danger; save the altar, which is no longer safe when
its kindred throne is shaken. You see that when the Church and the
Throne would allow of no church solemnity in behalf of the queen, the
heartfelt prayers of the people rose to Heaven for her protection. I
pray Heaven for her; and here I pour forth my fervent supplications
at the Throne of Mercy, that mercies may descend on the people of the
country, higher than their rulers have deserved, and that your hearts
may be turned to justice."

The examination of the witnesses for the defence continued till the
24th of October, and then powerful speeches were delivered by the
Attorney-General, Sir Robert Gifford, and by the Solicitor-General,
Mr. Copley. The speech of the former was considered so effective, that
William Cobbett threw off one hundred thousand copies of an answer to
it. Sir Archibald Alison, the Tory historian, admits that it was not
the evidence for the prosecution that told against the queen, "for it
was of so suspicious a kind that little reliance could be placed on it,
but what was elicited on cross-examination from the English officers
on board the vessel which conveyed her Majesty to the Levant--men of
integrity and honour, of whose testimony there was not a shadow of
suspicion. Without asserting that any of them proved actual guilt
against her Majesty, it cannot be disputed that they established
against her an amount of levity of manner and laxity of habits, which
rendered her unfit to be at the head of English society, and amply
justified the measures taken to exclude her from it."

On the 6th of November the second reading of the Bill was carried
by a majority of twenty-eight, the numbers being one hundred and
twenty-three to ninety-five, which the Government considered equivalent
to a finding of guilty. It appears from these numbers that a large
proportion of their lordships abstained from voting. The Bishops had
an insuperable objection to the divorce clause; but in committee
it was sustained by a majority of one hundred and twenty-nine to
sixty-two, the Opposition having nearly all voted for the clause,
with a view of defeating the Bill in its last stage. Consequently,
for the third reading, on the 10th of November, the majority was only
nine, the numbers being one hundred and eight to ninety-nine. Upon
this announcement Lord Liverpool rose and said, that upon so slender a
majority he could not think of pressing the measure further, and so he
begged leave to withdraw the Bill. The truth is, he had no option. It
had not the slightest chance of passing through the Lower House, where
ignominious defeat awaited the Government.

The intelligence of this result was received by the public with
transports of joy. London was illuminated for three successive nights;
Edinburgh, Dublin, Manchester, Liverpool, and all the great towns
followed the example. "For several days," says Alison, "the populace in
all the cities of the empire seemed to be delirious with joy. Nothing
had been seen like it before since the battle of Waterloo; nothing
approaching to it after since the Reform Bill was passed." Meetings
were immediately called in every direction to present addresses both to
the king and queen: to the former, to congratulate him on the escape of
his illustrious consort, and to call upon him to dismiss his present
Ministers; and to the latter, to congratulate her on the restoration
of those dignities from which she had been so long excluded. Not only
public meetings of citizens and civic bodies, but trades of all kinds
assembled and adopted addresses expressing their exultation at her
triumph, and tendering their homage.

The members of the Government were scarcely less rejoiced at getting
rid of the matter than the nation was at their defeat. The most
thinking men of their party became greatly alarmed at the state of
public feeling, and were in constant dread of a revolution. The most
violent language was used by the democratic leaders, and the press
abounded with libels against the Government, whose chief members were
hooted and pelted as they passed through the streets. This alarming
state of things had arrived at its height towards the end of September.
The Duke of York, who was then at Brighton, was violent against the
queen. He felt confident that the troops must be called out, and
he thought he could trust them. On them alone he depended for the
preservation of the Throne. The king, at this time, rarely showed
himself to any of his subjects. His conduct was an excitement to
popular hatred. Mr. W. H. Freemantle, who was well informed as to all
that was going forward in the highest quarters, describes the condition
of things in letters to the Duke of Buckingham. "You have no idea,"
he says, "of the state of the town. The funds fell to-day. As to the
king forming a Government, after the resignation of all his present
servants, with the avowed object of persecuting the queen, it would
be impossible; it would be making her the popular object and throwing
the country in a flame. Be assured that the king on this subject is
no less than _mad_!" "In the months of October and November," observes
the Duke of Buckingham, "it became evident that the frenzy outside the
Houses of Parliament was exerting its influence within its walls. The
aspect of affairs looked blacker every hour." "Matters here are in a
critical state," writes Lord Sidmouth to Mr. Bathurst on the 27th of
October. "Fear and faction are actively and not unsuccessfully at work;
and it is possible that we may be in a minority, and that the fate of
the Government may be decided." Plumer Ward, in his diary, has this
entry under date of November 2nd:--"Called upon (Wellesley) Pole. He
was at breakfast, and we had a long chat. He thought everything very
bad--Ministers, Opposition, king, queen, country--and, what was more,
no prospect of getting right. All ties were loosened. Insolence and
insubordination out of doors; weakness and wickedness within. 'The
Whigs,' he said, 'were already half Radicals, and would be entirely so
if we did not give way.' I said his brother, the Duke of Wellington,
felt this too, but would not give way nevertheless. Meantime, the king
was as merry as a grig. At first he had been annoyed, but was now
enjoying himself at Brighton."

[Illustration: THE PAVILION, BRIGHTON.]

The Duke of Buckingham justly remarks that the task of the Government
was from the first an up-hill one, "which nothing but their devotion
to their master's service made them continue; but when a thousand
unmistakable signs foretold a rebellion if they persevered, they had
no alternative but to put an end to the thing with all convenient
despatch." The truth is, in this case, victory would have been ruin to
the victors. By beating a timely retreat they saved the monarchy. The
Tory leaders, however, consoled themselves that they had so damaged
the queen's character that even the chiefs of the great Whig families
would not wish to have her at the head of the female aristocracy, or
to have their wives and daughters at her court. They said: "The stout
lady in the magnificent hat and feathers was very well as a source
of Ministerial embarrassment; but, much as some of them pretended to
decry the evidence against her that was elicited during her trial, they
took especial care not to allow her anything resembling an intimacy
with their wives or daughters." She was, however, visited after the
trial by her son-in-law, Prince Leopold, and by the Duke of Sussex;
and for some time the carriages of the highest ladies in the land
were at her door. Grateful to Providence for the deliverance she had
experienced from the hands of her persecutors, she went in state to
St. Paul's to return public thanks to God. But even in this she was
subjected to humiliation. An application had been made to have a sermon
preached on the occasion, and Archdeacon Bathurst solicited the honour
of delivering an appropriate discourse, but the authorities of the
Cathedral refused his request, and the ceremony consisted merely of the
reading of the morning service. The Bishop of Llandaff stigmatised the
service as "a mockery of a religious solemnity, at which every serious
Christian must shudder."

It was arranged that the coronation should take place early in the
summer of 1821, and the queen, who in the interval had received an
annuity of £50,000, was resolved to claim the right of being crowned
with the king. She could hardly have hoped to succeed in this, but her
claims were put forth in a memorial complaining that directions had not
been given for the coronation of the queen, as had been accustomed on
like occasions, and stating that she claimed, as of right, to celebrate
the ceremony of her royal coronation, and to preserve as well her
Majesty's said right as the lawful right and inheritance of others of
his Majesty's subjects. Her memorial was laid before the Privy Council,
and the greatest interest was excited by its discussion. The records
were brought from the Tower: the "_Liber Regalis_" and other ancient
volumes. The doors continued closed, and strangers were not allowed
to remain in the adjoining rooms and passages. The following official
decision of the Privy Council was given after some delay:--"The
lords of the committee, in obedience to your Majesty's said order of
reference, have heard her Majesty's Attorney- and Solicitor-General
in support of her Majesty's said claim, and having also heard the
observations of your Majesty's Attorney- and Solicitor-General
thereupon, their lordships do agree humbly to report to your Majesty
their opinions, that as it appears to them that the Queens Consort of
this realm are not entitled of right to be crowned at any time, her
Majesty the queen is not entitled as of right to be crowned at the
time specified in her Majesty's memorials. His Majesty, having taken
the said report into consideration, has been pleased, by and with
the advice of the Privy Council, to approve thereof." The queen's
subsequent applications, which included a letter to the king, were
equally unsuccessful.

The Government determined to make the most formidable preparations for
the preservation of the peace, and for putting down a riot, should it
occur. Troops were seen directing their march from all quarters to
the metropolis, and there was not a village in the vicinity which did
not display the plumed helmet. George IV., always excessively fond
of show and pomp, was resolved that the ceremonial of his coronation
should outshine anything in history. The nation entered into the spirit
of the occasion, and the metropolis was full of excitement. As early
as one o'clock on the morning of the 19th of July, Westminster, the
scene of this magnificent pageant, presented a dazzling spectacle.
Even at that early hour, those who were fortunate enough to obtain
places were proceeding to occupy them. From Charing Cross two streams
of carriages extended, one to the Abbey and the other to Westminster
Hall. The streets were crowded with foot passengers eager to secure
seats on the platforms erected along the way, or some standing-place.
All distinctions of rank were lost in the throng of eager expectants;
judges, bishops, peers, commanders, wealthy citizens, richly dressed
ladies, all mingled in the moving masses that converged towards the
great centre of attraction.

At an early hour a crowd was assembled at the queen's residence in
South Audley Street. Lady Anne Hamilton, "faithful found among the
faithless, faithful only she," arrived a few minutes before five
o'clock. Soon afterwards the gate was thrown open, and a shout was
raised, "The queen! the queen!" She appeared in her state coach,
drawn by six bays, attended by Lady Hood and Lady Anne Hamilton, Lord
Hood following in his own carriage. Having arrived at Dean's Yard
Gate, it was found that the entrance for persons of rank was Poet's
Corner; thither the coachman went, but there he found there was no
thoroughfare. After several stoppages she was conducted to the Poet's
Corner, and arriving at the place where the tickets were received,
Lord Hood demanded admission for the queen. The doorkeeper said that
his instructions were to admit no person without a peer's ticket. Lord
Hood asked, "Did you ever hear of a queen being asked for a ticket
before? This is your queen. I present to you your queen. Do you refuse
her admission?" She also said that she was his queen, and desired
permission to pass. The doorkeeper answered that his orders were
peremptory. Lord Hood then tendered one ticket which he had, and asked
the queen whether she would enter alone. After a short consultation
she declined, and it was resolved that, having been refused admission
to the cathedral church of Westminster, she should return to her
carriage. As she quitted the spot, some persons in the doorway laughed
derisively, and were rebuked by Lord Hood for their unmannerly and
unmanly conduct.

[Illustration: _Reproduced by André & Sleigh, Ltd., Bushey, Herts._

THE CORONATION OF KING GEORGE IV. IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY: THE CEREMONY OF
THE HOMAGE.

FROM THE PAINTING BY PUGIN AND STEPHANOFF, IN THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT
MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON.]

It was a melancholy thing to see the Queen of England bandied about
from door to door, in the throng of curious and anxious spectators;
cheered by some, laughed at by others, and an object of pity to her
friends, making vain efforts to obtain admission to witness the glory
of her worthless husband, repulsed at every point by the lowest
officials, and compelled to return home discomfited and humiliated. By
indiscreet and foolish acts like this she injured her position, and
degraded herself to an extent that her husband, powerful and malignant
as he was, never could have done. She and her friends counted upon
the devotion of the people to her cause, which they hoped would have
borne down all impediments and broken through all barriers. But it was
felt that in attempting to intrude herself in that way at the risk of
marring a great national festival, and causing tumult and possibly
bloodshed, she had forgotten her own dignity; her conduct shocked the
public sense of propriety, and went far to forfeit popular sympathy.
She became deeply sensible of this fact while waiting for admission,
and with all her attempts at hilarity, her laughter and gaiety of
manner ill concealed the deep, self-inflicted wounds of her spirit,
which were never healed. Now completely disenchanted, robbed of the
fond illusion which had hitherto affected her perception of things,
and viewing her situation in the cold morning light of stern reality,
a chill of despondency came over her, and thenceforth settled heavily
upon her spirit.

The coronation was a magnificent ceremonial, and during the proceedings
in the Abbey, Westminster Hall was being prepared for the banquet.
There were three tables on each side, each table having covers for
fifty-six persons, and each person having before him a silver plate.
The other plate was entirely of gold. The dishes served up were
all cold, consisting of fowls, tongues, pies, and a profusion of
sweetmeats, with conserves and fruit of every kind. At twenty minutes
to four o'clock the gates were thrown open to admit the procession
on its return. Seen from the opposite end of the hall, the effect
was magnificent as the procession passed under the triumphal arch.
On the entrance of the king he was received with loud and continued
acclamations. His Majesty being seated at the banquet, the first course
came with a grand procession, which the king seemed to regard with
great satisfaction. The Duke of Wellington, as Lord High Constable, the
Marquis of Anglesey, as Lord High Steward, and the Deputy Earl Marshal,
Lord Howard of Effingham, mounted on horses, and attended by their
pages and grooms, advanced to the foot of the platform; the horsemen
stopped while the clerks of the kitchen advanced to the royal table,
and took the dishes from the gentlemen pensioners. Then the whole
procession moved back, the horsemen backing their chargers with the
greatest precision, amidst loud applause. The first course having been
removed, a flourish of trumpets was heard at the bottom of the hall,
the great gates were instantly thrown wide open, and the champion, Mr.
Dymoke, made his appearance under the Gothic archway, mounted on his
piebald charger, accompanied on the right by the Duke of Wellington,
and on the left by Lord Howard of Effingham, and attended by trumpeters
and an esquire. The usual challenges were given. Some other ceremonies
having been gone through, the king's health was proposed by one of the
peers, and drunk with acclamation. The National Anthem was then sung,
after which the king rose and said, "The king thanks his peers for
drinking his health and does them the honour of drinking their health
and that of his good people." Shortly afterwards his Majesty quitted
the hall and returned to his palace in his private carriage, attended
by his usual body-guard.

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. A scene followed the
king's departure which seems almost incredible. After the service of
the second course, the numerous attendants, singers, and even ladies
and gentlemen began to press round the royal table, as if prepared for
a scramble to possess its contents. The crowd of spectators pressed
nearer and nearer. For a moment only covetous eyes were cast on the
spoils, as if each were afraid to begin the plunder; but, at last, a
rude hand having been thrust through the first ranks, and a golden
fork having been seized, this operated as a signal to all, and was
followed by a "general snatch." In a short time all the small portable
articles were transferred to the pockets of the multitude. The Lord
High Chamberlain, hearing of the attack, hastened to the rescue,
and with the greatest difficulty saved the more important articles
of plate, and had them conveyed to Carlton Garden. Then followed a
scene unparalleled in the annals of coronations. The crowds in the
galleries had beheld with envy the operations at the banquet. They were
very hungry, and very thirsty, and seeing now that Westminster Hall
was "liberty hall," they rushed down different stairs and passages,
and attacked the viands and the wine. A raging thirst was the first
thing to be satisfied, and in a few minutes every bottle on the table
was emptied. A fresh supply was soon obtained from the cellarettes.
When the ravening selfishness of the hungry crowd was satisfied, the
gentlemen recovered their politeness, and began to think of the ladies.
Groups of beautiful women then found their way to the tables, and
every effort was made to afford them the refreshment of which they
stood so much in need. In the meantime, the plunderers took advantage
of the confusion to enrich themselves with trophies, breaking and
destroying the table ornaments to obtain fragments of things too
cumbrous to carry away. Thus, baskets, flowerpots, vases, and figures
were everywhere disappearing, and these were followed by glasses,
knives, forks, salt-spoons, and, finally, the plates and dishes. The
last were engraved with the royal arms and the letters "Geo. IV.," and
were therefore specially coveted as memorials. The dirty state of the
articles, however, was rather out of keeping with the costly dresses;
but the ladies and gentlemen got over the difficulty by wrapping up the
articles in their pocket-handkerchiefs. Having thus secured all the
spoils they could, they made all possible haste to their carriages. At
a subsequent period, it was with the greatest difficulty that the royal
plate could be kept from being carried away by the multitude outside
when the barriers were removed.

After the coronation, the queen resided at Brandenburgh House,
determined to lead a life of dignified retirement. But the violent
agitation and excitement, and the terribly painful mortification to
which she was subjected in her ill-advised attempt to form part of
the coronation pageant, were too much for her constitution. As soon
as it was evident that her end was approaching, much public sympathy
was excited, and the vicinity of her residence was incessantly
thronged with persons of all classes making anxious inquiries about
her health, and solicitous for her restoration. On the 4th of August,
when her professional advisers were receiving instructions about the
disposition of her property, one of them suggested the propriety of
sending a messenger to Italy to seal up her papers, in order to prevent
them from falling into the hands of her enemies. "And what if they
do?" she exclaimed; "I have no papers that they may not see. They can
find nothing, because there is nothing, nor ever has been, to impeach
my character." One of them said that he was aware of that, but her
enemies might put there what they did not find. She replied, "I have
always defied their malice, and I defy it still." Nevertheless, it
was her conscious failure in her efforts to make the public believe
this, coupled with the public humiliation to which she had been
subjected, that bowed down her spirit at last, and gave the victory
to her enemies. She had painted their characters in vivid colours in
her private diary, and might have transmitted their punishment to
posterity had she ordered it to be preserved and published; but she
gave directions to have it destroyed, and it was burnt in her presence
by one of her foreign maids. After suffering intensely for four or five
days, she sank into a stupor, from which she never woke, and on the
7th of August, after an entire absence of sense and faculty for more
than two hours, expired Caroline of Brunswick, Queen Consort of George
IV., in the fifty-fourth year of her age. She had by her bedside in her
last hours her faithful friends and constant attendants, Lord and Lady
Hood, and Lady Anne Hamilton; Alderman Wood, who had been devoted to
her interests from the first, was also present, as well as her legal
and medical advisers.

The king, who had set out on his long-premeditated visit to Ireland,
leaving his wife on her death-bed, was already at Holyhead when he
received the tidings of her decease. From that port Lord Londonderry
wrote a note to the Lord Chancellor, in which he said, "I add this
private note to the letter which the king has directed me to write,
to say that his Majesty is quite well, and has evinced, since the
intelligence of the queen's death was received, every disposition to
conform to such arrangements and observances as might be deemed most
becoming upon an occasion which cannot be regarded in any other light
than as the greatest of all possible deliverances, both to his Majesty
and to the country. The king feels assured that the events to which
my letters refer, once in your hands, will be sifted to the bottom
and wisely decided; and to the advice he may receive there will be
every disposition on his Majesty's part to conform; but where papers
connected with his daughter, as well as other branches of his family,
are in question, your lordship will estimate the deep interest the king
takes in your giving the whole your best consideration."

[Illustration: GEORGE IV.]

The king rejoiced too soon. The announcement to the public of the
queen's death was the knell of the popularity which he had recently
acquired. There was an immediate and powerful reaction in the public
mind against the king, which was strengthened by the ungracious
measures adopted in connection with her funeral. There was a clause
in her will to this effect:--"I desire and direct that my body be
not opened, and that three days after my death it be carried to
Brunswick for interment; and that the inscription on my coffin be,
'Here lies Caroline of Brunswick, the injured Queen of England.'"
The Government were very anxious to have the corpse sent out of the
kingdom immediately, in order that its presence might not interfere
with the festivities in Ireland; they therefore wished to have the
remains dispatched at once to Harwich for embarkation. Lady Hood
appealed in vain to Lord Liverpool for some delay on the ground that
the queen's ladies were not prepared to depart so soon, at the same
time protesting against any military escort. The military guard was
an ostensible honour; but its real object was to prevent popular
manifestations detrimental to the Government in connection with the
funeral. The friends of the queen could not even learn by what route
the body would be conveyed. It should have gone through the City, where
the Lord Mayor and Corporation announced their intention of following
the hearse; but to prevent that honour, it was ordered that the corpse
should be sent round by the New Road to Romford. The funeral passed
from Hammersmith to Kensington Church without obstruction; there the
conductors were turning off from the way to the City, in order to get
into the Bayswater Road, when they were met by a loud cry of wrath and
execration from the multitude. In a few minutes the road was dug up,
barricaded, and rendered impassable. The Life Guards and the chief
magistrate of Bow Street appeared, and seeing the impossibility of
forcing a passage, they ordered the _cortège_ to proceed on the direct
route through the City, amidst thundering shouts of victory that might
have appalled the king had he heard them. In the meantime the multitude
had been rushing through the parks in mighty surging masses, now in
one direction and now in another, according to the varying reports
as to the course the procession was to take. Orders had been issued
from the Government that it should go through the Kensington gate of
Hyde Park, but the people closed the gates, and assumed such a fierce
and determined attitude of resistance that the authorities were again
compelled to give way, and again the popular shouts of victory sounded
far and wide. Peremptory orders were given by the Government to pass
up the Park into the Edgware Road, either by the east side or through
Park Lane. In the effort to do this the line of procession was broken,
the hearse was got into the Park, and hurried onwards to Cumberland
Gate; but the people had outrun the military, and again blocked up
the way in a dense mass. Here a collision ensued: the populace had
used missiles; the military were irritated, and having had peremptory
orders, they fired on the people, wounding many and killing two. But
the people, baffled for the moment, made another attempt. At Tottenham
Court Road the Guards found every way closely blocked up, except the
way to the City. In this way, therefore, they were compelled to move,
amidst the exulting shouts of the multitude. Seeking an outlet to the
suburbs at every turn in vain, the procession was forced down Drury
Lane into the Strand. The passage under Temple Bar was accompanied
by the wildest possible excitement and shouts of exultation. The
Corporation functionaries assembled in haste and accompanied the
funeral to Whitechapel. On the whole way to Romford, we read, that
not only the direct, but the cross roads, were lined with anxious
spectators. The shops were closed, the bells were tolling, mourning
dresses were generally worn, and in every direction symptoms abounded
of the deep feeling excited by the death of the queen. The funeral
_cortège_ rested for the night at Colchester, the remains being placed
in St. Peter's Church. There the plate with the inscription "injured
Queen" was taken off, and another substituted. At Harwich the coffin
was unceremoniously conveyed to the _Glasgow_ frigate. At length the
remains arrived at their last resting-place in a vault beneath the
cathedral at Brunswick.

Sir Francis Burdett once wrote a letter of a single sentence to his
friend Lord Cloncurry, as follows:--"Dear Lord Cloncurry, I should like
to know what you think would allay Irish agitation? Yours truly, F.
B." It would have taken a volume to answer this question, and perhaps,
after all, Sir Francis Burdett would not have been satisfied. George
IV. thought that his visit would have had that effect, and appearances
for a time seemed to justify his sanguine anticipations. The visit had
been long meditated. He set out on a yachting excursion soon after
the coronation, and arrived at Plymouth on the 1st of August amidst
the huzzas of an immense concourse of people. On the following day
the royal squadron departed for Ireland, and anchored in the bay at
Holyhead on the 7th. The news of his approach threw the people of
Dublin into a paroxysm of joy, to which the newspapers of the day gave
expression in the most extravagant terms. The blessing that awaited
them seemed too great to be realised. Never had they comforted their
hours of despondency or flattered themselves in seasons of imagined
felicity, with anything approaching to the reality which fortune was
about to shower upon them. The king's name, they declared, was more to
them than a tower of strength; it had effected what neither patriots,
philosophers, nor moralists could ever accomplish.

As the king was to land privately and to proceed to the Viceregal Lodge
in Phœnix Park without entering the city, it was uncertain whether
he would come by Dunleary or Howth. There was an idea that he would
land at the former place on Sunday, the 12th of August, and immense
crowds lined the coast during the day, watching for the approach of the
steamer. They were disappointed, for his Majesty arrived at Howth about
five o'clock. He was accompanied by the Marquis of Londonderry, the
Marquis of Thomond, Lord Mount Charles, Lord Francis Conyngham, and Mr.
Freeling, Secretary to the Post Office, England. A small ship-ladder,
covered with carpeting, was fixed to facilitate his landing. This he
ascended without assistance, and with great agility. As the narrow pier
was crowded to excess, he found himself jammed in by a mass of people,
who could not be displaced without throwing numbers of them into the
water. Though he had reason to be displeased with the want of proper
arrangements, he bore the inconvenience with good humour; indeed, his
Majesty was very jolly, owing to copious draughts of Irish whisky
punch with which he had drowned sorrow, during the voyage, for the
loss of the queen. On seeing Lord Kingston in the crowd, he exclaimed,
"Kingston, Kingston, you black-whiskered, good-natured fellow, I am
happy to see you in this friendly country." Having recognised Mr.
Dennis Bowles Daly, he cordially shook hands with that gentleman, who
at the moment was deprived of a gold watch, worth sixty guineas, and a
pocket-book, by one of the light-fingered gentry. The king also shook
hands with numbers of the persons present who were wholly strangers to
him. At length his Majesty managed to get into his carriage, and as
he did so, the cheers of the multitude rent the air. He turned to the
people, and, extending both his hands, said, with great emotion, "God
bless you all. I thank you from my heart." Seemingly exhausted, he
threw himself back in the carriage; but on the cheering being renewed,
he bent forward again, and taking off his cap, bowed most graciously
to the ladies and those around him. One of the horses became restive
on the pier, but a gentleman, regardless of personal danger, led him
till he became manageable. The cavalcade drove rapidly to town, and
proceeded by the Circular Road to the Park. On the way there was a
constant accession of horsemen, who all rode uncovered. When they came
to the entrance of the Park, the gentlemen halted outside the gate,
not wishing to intrude, when the king put out his head and said, "Come
on, my friends." On alighting from his carriage he turned round at the
door, and addressed those present in nearly the following words:--"My
lords and gentlemen, and my good yeomanry,--I cannot express to you
the gratification I feel at the warm and kind reception I have met
with on this day of my landing among my Irish subjects. I am obliged
to you all. I am particularly obliged by your escorting me to my very
door. I may not be able to express my feelings as I wish. I have
travelled far, I have made a long sea voyage; besides which, particular
circumstances have occurred, known to you all, of which it is better at
present not to speak; upon those subjects I leave it to delicate and
generous hearts to appreciate my feelings. This is one of the happiest
days of my life. I have long wished to visit you; my heart has been
always with the Irish; from the day it first beat I have loved Ireland.
This day has shown me that I am beloved by my Irish subjects. Rank,
station, honours, are nothing; but to feel that I live in the hearts
of my Irish subjects is to me exalted happiness. I must now once more
thank you for your kindness, and bid you farewell. Go and do by me as I
shall do by you--drink my health in a bumper; I shall drink all yours
in a bumper of good Irish whisky." Mr. W. H. Freemantle, writing to
the Duke of Buckingham, says, "I don't know whether you have heard any
of the details from Ireland, but the conduct of the Irish is beyond
all conception of loyalty and adulation, and I fear will serve to
strengthen those feelings of self-will and personal authority which
are at all times uppermost in '_the mind_.' The passage to Dublin was
occupied in eating goose-pie and drinking whisky, of which his Majesty
partook most abundantly, singing many joyous songs, and being in a
state on his arrival to double in sight even the number of his gracious
subjects assembled on the pier to receive him. The fact was that he
was in the last stage of intoxication: however, they got him to the
Park." But whatever happened on board ship, and whether or not the
king was "half-seas over," he acquitted himself so as to excite the
boundless admiration of his Irish subjects, and the visit, which lasted
twenty-two days, was an unqualified success from the spectacular point
of view.

If the scandalous gossip of the Court may be trusted, the king did not
allow affairs of State, or public displays, or the death of the queen
to wean him even for a week from his attachment to Lady Conyngham. Mr.
Freemantle, a rather cynical commentator on public affairs, wrote as
follows:--"Lady C. has been almost constantly at the Phœnix Park, but
has not appeared much in public." Again, the same writer remarks, "I
never in my life heard of anything equal to the king's infatuation and
conduct towards Lady Conyngham. She lived exclusively with him during
the whole time he was in Ireland at the Phœnix Park. When he went to
Slane, she received him dressed out as for a drawing-room; he saluted
her, and they then retired alone to her apartments. A yacht is left to
bring her over, and she and the whole family go to Hanover. I hear the
Irish are outrageously jealous of her, and though courting her to the
greatest degree, are loud in their indignation at Lord C. This is just
like them. I agree in all you say about Ireland. As there is no chance
of the boon being granted, no lord-lieutenant could have a chance of
ingratiating himself, or of fair justice done him, with the king's
promises and flattery."

[Illustration: LANDING OF GEORGE IV. AT HOWTH. (_See p._ 218.)]

The king had a stormy and rather perilous passage across the Channel.
Mr. Freemantle sarcastically alludes to the feelings of the royal
passenger in connection with this voyage:--"The king in his journey
home overtook Lord and Lady Harcourt, now the bosom friends of Lady
Conyngham, stopped them, got out of his carriage, and sat with them for
a quarter of an hour on the public road, recounting all his perilous
adventures at sea, and flattering reception in Ireland. Lady Harcourt
told me his _pious acknowledgment_ for his great escape of being
shipwrecked was quite edifying, and the very great change in his moral
habits and religious feelings was quite astonishing, and all owing to
Lady Conyngham." On his return to London, after a visit to Hanover, the
king devoted himself to a life of seclusion for a considerable time,
during which it appears that the Marchioness of Conyngham maintained
an ascendency over him most damaging to his character and Government.
She had not only made the royal favour tributary to the advancement of
her own family, but she meddled in political affairs with mischievous
effect. "Had it been confined to mere family connections," writes
Robert Huish, "no voice, perhaps, would have been raised against it;
but when the highest offices in the Church were bestowed on persons
scarcely previously heard of--when political parties rose and fell,
and Ministers were created and deposed to gratify the ambition of a
female--then the palace of the king appeared as if surrounded by some
pestilential air. The old hereditary counsellors of the king avoided
the Court, as alike fatal to private probity and public honour. The
entrance to Windsor Castle was, as it were, hermetically sealed by the
enchantress within to all but the favoured few. The privilege of the
_entrée_ was curtailed to the very old friends of the king, and even
the commonest domestics in the castle were constrained to submit to the
control of the marchioness. The Court of George IV. certainly differed
widely from that of Charles II., although the number and reputation of
their several mistresses were nearly the same in favour and character;
but George IV. had no confiscations to confer on the instruments of his
pleasures."

[Illustration: LOWER CASTLE-YARD, DUBLIN. (_From a Photograph by W.
Lawrence._)]

Thus passed the winter of 1821-22. Parliament met on the 5th of
February, 1822, for the transaction of business, and was opened by
the king. In his Speech from the Throne he expressed regret for the
agricultural distress that prevailed in England; and he had the
unpleasant task imposed upon him of referring to a state of things
in Ireland the reverse of what might have been expected from his
conciliation policy--"a spirit of outrage" that had led to daring
and systematic violations of the law which he submitted to the
consideration of Parliament. In the House of Lords the Address was
adopted without opposition. In the Commons amendments were proposed
by Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Hume, which were rejected by large
majorities. The state of Ireland was the first subject that occupied
the attention of the legislature. A salutary change had been effected
in the executive of that country. Lord Talbot, the late Viceroy,
was a man of narrow and exclusive spirit, wedded to the _régime_ of
Protestant ascendency. But according to a system of counterpoise which
had been adopted in the Irish Government, his influence was checked
by his Chief Secretary, Mr. Charles Grant, a man of large mind,
enlightened principles, and high character. This system tended to keep
the rival parties in a state of conflict, and naturally weakened the
authority of the Government. A modification in the English Cabinet
led to corresponding changes in Ireland. The spirit of discontent
among the commercial classes in England induced Lord Liverpool to
enter into a compromise with the Grenville-Wynn party, and the Marquis
of Buckingham, its chief, was created a duke; Lord Sidmouth retired
from the Home Office, and was succeeded by Mr. Peel; the Marquis
Wellesley became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; while Mr. Plunket, a man
of Liberal politics and transcendent abilities, was appointed Irish
Attorney-General in the room of Mr. Saurin, the champion of unmitigated
Protestant ascendency. The Liberal tendencies of these statesmen were
to some extent counteracted by the appointment of Mr. Goulburn, the
determined opponent of the Catholic claims, as Chief Secretary. Lord
Liverpool, however, defended the appointment on the ground that a man's
opinions on the Catholic question should not disqualify him for office
in Ireland, "it being understood that the existing laws, whatever they
may be, are to be equally administered with respect to all classes of
his Majesty's subjects, and that the Roman Catholics are in any case to
enjoy their fair share of the privileges and advantages to which they
are by law entitled."

This coalition was considered a matter of great importance, not as
giving strength to the Administration of Lord Liverpool, to which it
brought only a few votes in the House of Commons, but as indicating a
radical change of policy towards Ireland. Lord Eldon was by no means
satisfied with the changes. "This coalition," he writes, "I think, will
have consequences very different from those expected by the members of
administration who have brought it about. I hate coalitions." No doubt
they ill suited his uncompromising spirit; and any connection with
Liberal opinions must have been in the highest degree repugnant to the
feelings of one who believed that the granting of Catholic Emancipation
would involve the ruin of the Constitution.

Very strong hopes were entertained by the Liberal party from the
Administration of Lord Wellesley, but it was his misfortune to be
obliged to commence it with coercive measures, always the ready
resource of the Irish Government. The new Viceroy would have removed,
if possible, the causes of public disturbance; but, in the meantime,
the peace must be preserved and sanguinary outrages must be repressed,
and he did not shrink from the discharge of his duty in this respect
on account of the popular odium which it was sure to bring upon his
Government. Mr. Plunket, as Attorney-General, was as firm in the
administration of justice as Mr. Saurin, his high Tory predecessor,
could be. The measures of repression adopted by the legislature were
certainly not wanting in severity. The disorders were agrarian,
arising out of insecurity of land tenure, rack rents, and tithes
levied by proctors upon tillage, and falling chiefly upon the Roman
Catholic population, who disowned the ministrations of the Established
Church. The remedies which the Government provided for disturbances
thus originating were the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act and the
renewal of the Insurrection Act. By the provisions of the latter the
Lord-Lieutenant was empowered, on the representation of justices in
session that a district was disturbed, to proclaim it in a state of
insurrection, to interdict the inhabitants from leaving their homes
between sunset and sunrise, and to subject them to visits by night,
to ascertain their presence in their own dwellings. If absent, they
were considered idle and disorderly, and liable to transportation
for seven years! These measures encountered considerable opposition,
but they were rapidly passed through both Houses, and received the
Royal Assent a week after Parliament met. Under these Acts a number
of Whiteboys and other offenders were tried and convicted, several
hanged, and many transported. Lord Wellesley must have felt his
position very disagreeable between the two excited parties. To be
impartial and just was to incur the hostility of both. Possibly he
became disgusted with the factions that surrounded him. Whether from
this cause, or from an indolent temper, or from the feeling that he
was hampered and restrained, and could not do for the country what he
felt that its well-being required, or from ill health, it is certain
that he became very inactive. A member of the Cabinet writes about
him thus:--"I find the Orange party are loud in their abuse of Lord
Wellesley, for shutting himself up at the Phœnix Park, lying in bed
all day, seeing nobody, and only communicating with Secretary Gregory
by letter. Indeed, I believe that the latter is more than he often
favours Secretaries Peel and Goulburn with." In another letter,
the same Minister, Mr. Wynn, complains of his total neglect of his
correspondence with England. This, he said, was inexcusable, because
those on whom the chief responsibility rested had a right to know
his views upon the state of Ireland, in order to be able to meet
the Opposition during the sitting of Parliament. This was written
towards the end of April, and at that time the Government had not
for a month heard a syllable from him on the agitated questions of
tithes, magistracy, and police. The state of Ireland, indeed, became
every day more perplexing and alarming. A revolutionary spirit was
abroad, and all other social evils were aggravated by famine, which
prevailed in extensive districts in the south and west. The potato
crop, always precarious, was then almost a total failure in many
counties, and left the dense population, whose existence depended upon
it, totally destitute. The cry of distress reached England, and was
responded to in the most generous spirit. Half a million sterling was
voted by Parliament, and placed at the disposal of Lord Wellesley, to
be dispensed in charitable relief and expended on public works for
the employment of the poor. In addition to this, the English people
contributed from their private resources the sum of three hundred
thousand pounds for the relief of Irish distress. On the 30th of May
there was a ball given for the same object, in the King's Theatre,
London, which produced three thousand five hundred pounds.

The disabilities under which the Roman Catholics laboured were a
constant source of irritation in Ireland; the agitation upon the
subject was becoming every day more formidable. Mr. Plunket was anxious
to bring forward the question in the House of Commons, but he was
urged by his colleagues to postpone it, from an apprehension that the
time was not yet come to give it a fair consideration: the Cabinet was
divided, the Chancellor was obstinate, and the king vacillating, if not
double-minded. "As to the conduct of the king," writes Mr. Freemantle,
a member of the Government, "it is inexplicable. He is praising Lord
Liverpool on all occasions, and sending invitations to nobody but the
Opposition. With regard to Ireland, I am quite satisfied the great man
is holding the most conciliatory language to both parties--holding out
success to the Catholics, and a determination to resist them to the
Protestants."

Mr. Canning had been offered the Governor-Generalship of India.
Before his departure, he was resolved, if possible, to make a breach
in the system of Parliamentary exclusiveness. On the 29th of March
he gave notice of a motion to bring in a Bill for the admission of
Roman Catholic peers to seats in Parliament, and on the following day
supported it by a speech of great power of argument and brilliant
eloquence, illustrating his position very happily from the case of the
Duke of Norfolk, and his official connection with the ceremonial of
the coronation. He asked, "Did it ever occur to the representatives of
Europe, when contemplating this animating spectacle--did it occur to
the ambassadors of Catholic Austria, of Catholic France, or of states
more bigoted in matters of religion--that the moment this ceremony was
over the Duke of Norfolk would become disseized of the exercise of
his privileges amongst his fellow peers?--that his robes of ceremony
were to be laid aside and hung up until the distant (be it a very
distant!) day when the coronation of a successor to his present most
gracious Sovereign might again call him forth to assist at a similar
solemnisation?--that, after being thus exhibited to the eyes of the
peers and people of England, and to the representatives of the princes
and nations of the world, the Duke of Norfolk--highest in rank amongst
the peers--the Lord Clifford, and others like him, representing a long
line of illustrious ancestry, as if called forth and furnished for the
occasion, like the lustres and banners that flamed and glittered in
the scene, were to be, like them, thrown by as useless and trumpery
formalities?--that they might bend the knee and kiss the hand, that
they might bear the train or rear the canopy, might discharge the
offices assigned by Roman pride to their barbarian ancestors--

    'Purpurea tollant aulæa Britanni;'

but that with the pageantry of the hour their importance faded
away?--that as their distinction vanished their humiliation
returned?--and that he who headed the procession of peers to-day could
not sit among them as their equal on the morrow?"

The debates were very animated, and excited the liveliest interest.
The Bill was read the first time by a majority of five. On the 10th of
May the House divided on the second reading, which was carried by a
majority of twelve, the numbers being, for the Bill, two hundred and
thirty-five; noes, two hundred and twenty-three. The exertions made to
defeat this Bill were extraordinary. There were twenty-seven pairs of
members who appeared in the House. The Duke of York canvassed against
it in all directions with the utmost zeal and activity. It was felt
that if it passed into law, the admission of Roman Catholics into the
Lower House must follow as a matter of course. The Bill, however, was
thrown out by the Lords.

This Session is memorable for the introduction of the subject of
Parliamentary Reform by Lord John Russell. His plan was to add one
hundred members to the House--sixty for counties and forty for large
towns. He argued that this enlargement of the representation was
rendered just and politic by increasing intelligence among the people,
especially the middle classes, of whom large numbers were unrepresented
in Parliament. His motion was negatived, on the 29th of April, by two
hundred and sixty-nine to one hundred and sixty-four, Mr. Canning
having led the opposition of the Conservatives, and defended the
Constitution as it stood. The motion, in fact, was premature, though
in the previous Session he had procured the disfranchisement of the
corrupt borough of Grampound--a victory which the Lords sought to
neutralise by transferring the seat to the county of York, instead of
to one of the great unrepresented cities.

The complaints of agricultural distress prevalent in England, with
the sudden reaction from war prices at the establishment of peace,
had become so loud and general this year that Parliament undertook
to find a remedy. An agricultural committee had been appointed to
inquire into the subject, and had produced a report which was far from
satisfactory. On the 29th of April the House of Commons resolved itself
into a committee to consider the report. Three different schemes were
proposed for the relief of the farmers and landlords--the first by
the Marquis of Londonderry, the second by Mr. Ricardo, and the third
by Mr. Huskisson. There was no scarcity of produce in England; on the
contrary, it was very abundant, and the evil that oppressed the farmers
was excessive cheapness, by which they were disabled from paying the
high rents and heavy taxation entailed by the war. Some of the remedies
proposed were sufficiently radical in their character. The most natural
was the reduction of taxation by means of retrenchment in the public
expenditure. Some proposed that the tithes should be alienated from
the Church, and used for the purpose of reducing the national burdens.
The largest party insisted upon the reduction of the interest of the
National Debt, which was defended as an equitable measure on the ground
of the increased value of the currency since the passing of Peel's Bill
for the resumption of cash payments. The plan of relief proposed by
Lord Londonderry consisted of the repeal of the annual malt tax, and
the loan of a million by Exchequer Bills to the landed interest upon
the security of warehoused corn.

Mr. Vansittart introduced some financial measures which effected a
material saving. He proposed a plan for reducing the interest of the
Navy Five per Cents. to four per cent. Holders not signifying their
dissent were to have one hundred and five pounds in a New Four per
Cent. stock, and persons dissenting were to be paid off in numerical
order. By this scheme an annual saving to the public of one million
one hundred and forty thousand pounds would be effected; besides a
further saving of upwards of ninety thousand pounds of annual charge,
which would be gained by similar reduction of the Irish Five per Cents.
The high prices of the public funds obviated all difficulty in the
execution of this financial operation, and the holders of the Five per
Cent. stock found it expedient to acquiesce in the Minister's terms.
The dissentients were in number only one thousand seven hundred and
seventy-eight, and the stock held by them amounted to two million six
hundred and fifteen thousand nine hundred and seventy-eight pounds,
not a fifteenth part of the Five per Cent. capital. Another operation
related to what was called "The Dead Weight Annuity." The amount of
military and naval pensions and civil supernumeraries was about five
millions annually. Accordingly Mr. Vansittart brought forward an
amended scheme for relieving the immediate pressure of this dead weight
by extending it over a longer term of years than the natural lives
of the annuitants. For this purpose an annuity of two million eight
hundred thousand pounds was appropriated out of the existing revenue
for forty-five years, invested in trustees for the discharge of the
then payments, which for that year were estimated at four million nine
hundred thousand pounds, subject to a yearly diminution by deaths. It
was computed that, according to the ordinary duration of human life,
the annuities for the lives of the then holders would be equal to the
annuity of two million eight hundred thousand pounds for forty-five
years. The trustees were therefore empowered to sell from time to time
such portions of this annuity as would provide the funds required
for the payment of the dead weight, according to a computation made
of the amount which would probably be due in each year. The Bank of
England became the contractor for a portion of the annuity. There was
no novelty of principle in the project; it was only the old one of
anticipating distant resources by throwing the burden of the existing
generation on the next. It had the further disadvantage of incurring a
useless expense for management; whereas the Sinking Fund, amounting at
the time to about five millions, might have been applied to existing
exigencies, and a real saving effected.

A question was opened in the House of Commons, on a motion of Mr.
Western, which often subsequently occupied its attention. It referred
to the effect on prices of Mr. Peel's Act of 1819 for the resumption of
cash payments. According to the views of Mr. Western and Mr. Attwood,
the value of money had been enormously increased by the resumption
of payments in specie by the Bank, and its necessary preliminary,
a diminution of the circulation. Prices had in consequence fallen;
rents, taxes, annuities, and all fixed payments become more onerous.
These views were opposed by Huskisson, Peel, and Ricardo, and, on the
motion of the first-named, a resolution was carried, by one hundred and
ninety-four to thirty, "That this House will not alter the standard of
gold or silver in fineness, weight, or denomination."

[Illustration: SIR WALTER SCOTT. (_After the Portrait by Sir Henry
Raeburn._)]

Marriage is one of the fundamental principles of the social system. The
law of marriage, therefore, ought to be plain and simple, intelligible
to all, and guarded in every possible way against fraud and abuse.
Yet the marriage laws of the United Kingdom were long in the most
confused, unintelligible, and unsettled state, leading often to
ruinous and almost endless litigation. A new Marriage Act was passed
in the Session now under review, which, like many Acts of the kind,
originated in personal interests affecting the aristocracy. It was said
to have mainly arisen out of the marriage of the Marquis of Donegal
with Miss May, who was the daughter of a gentleman celebrated for
assisting persons of fashion with loans of money. The brother of the
marquis sought to set this marriage aside, and to render the children
illegitimate, in order that he might himself, should the marquis die
without lawful issue, be heir to his title and estates. In law the
marriage was invalid; but it was now protected by a retrospective
clause in the new Act. By the Marriage Act of 1754 all marriages of
minors certified without the assent of certain specified persons
were declared null. A Bill was passed by the Commons giving validity
to marriages which, according to the existing law, were null, and
providing that the marriages of minors, celebrated without due notice,
should not be void, but merely voidable, and liable to be annulled only
during the minority of the parties, and at the suit of the parents or
guardians.

On the 20th of June, when the Bill was in committee of the Peers, the
Lord Chancellor urged his objection to the retrospective clause, as
unsettling the rights of property. The report being brought up on the
25th, he repeated his objections, and moved that the retrospective
clause should be omitted. The motion was negatived. On the 2nd of July,
the day fixed for the third reading, his brother, Lord Stowell, made
a similar motion, which was also defeated. The Lord Chancellor moved
the insertion of a clause for giving validity to deeds, assignments
and settlements made by persons having claims on any property affected
by the Bill. The Marquis of Lansdowne opposed this clause, which, he
said, would give the Bill the effect of declaring children legitimate
and yet disinheriting them--"of peopling the House of Lords with titled
beggars." This clause having been negatived on a division, the Lord
Chancellor proposed another to the same effect, with the addition
of the words, "for good and valuable consideration." This also was
rejected by a majority. This was too much for the temper of Lord
Eldon, so long accustomed to have his way in that House. Irritated at
being repeatedly thwarted in his efforts, on declaring the numbers he
exclaimed with vehemence, "My lords, ten days ago I believed this House
possessed the good opinion of the public, as the mediator between them
and the laws of the country; if this Bill pass to-night, I hope in
God that this House may still have that good opinion ten days hence.
But to say the best of this measure, I consider it neither more nor
less than a legal robbery, so help me God! I have but a short time to
remain with you, but I trust it will be hereafter known that I used
every means in my power to prevent its passing into law." Thenceforth
the Lord Chancellor became sulky with his colleagues, feeling himself
dragged on by their too rapid progress. He was very reluctant to attend
their Cabinet meetings, and absented himself whenever he could make
any excuse. In reply to a summons from Mr. Peel, the Home Secretary,
to attend a meeting on the Alien Act, he answered that he could not
possibly attend, adding, "My absence, however, can be of little, and
possibly of no consequence." The Session ended on the 6th of August;
the Parliament being prorogued by the king in person.

Lord Londonderry, wearied with the labours of the Session, had
retired to his country seat at North Cray Farm, near Bexley, in
Kent, to recruit his strength, and prepare to take his part as the
representative of England at the forthcoming Congress of Verona, which
was to be held in October. There, on the 12th of August, he committed
suicide by cutting the carotid artery with a penknife. Lord Eldon, in a
letter on the subject, says:--"I learn, upon the best authority, that
for two or three days he was perfectly insane; and the medical men
attribute that fact to the operation upon his head of the unceasing
attention to business which the last harassing Session (to him) called
for." The disease would appear to have been coming on some time
before; he had got the idea that he was beset by secret enemies--that
he was the object of conspiracies. He was full of apprehension of
being waylaid in the Park, and he felt that his life was every hour in
danger. His mind gave way under the pressure of these morbid fears,
and he put an end to his existence in the fifty-third year of his age.
Impartial history, we think, will come to the conclusion that, with
intellectual abilities not much above mediocrity, he owed his success
as a statesman, in a great measure, to his fixity of purpose, and to
his audacity, courage, and perseverance in adhering to his line of
action in the midst of the most formidable difficulties; while the
strength of his will was aided by a commanding person, an imperturbable
temper, extreme affability, and winning frankness of manner. Of the
policy of the Government in which he bore so long a leading part, it
must be said that it was narrow, exclusive, jealous of popular rights,
favourable to despotism abroad and at home, devoted to the interests
of the Throne and the aristocracy, at the expense of social order
and national progress. Such, at all events, was the impression of
the majority of the nation, and the detestation in which the London
populace held his character as a statesman was painfully evinced by
the shouts of exultation which followed his coffin into Westminster
Abbey, where it was deposited between the remains of Fox and Pitt.
This conduct greatly shocked Lord Eldon. "This morning," he writes, "I
have been much affected by attending Lord Londonderry to his grave.
The concourse of people between St. James's Square and the Abbey was
very great; the great bulk of them behaving decorously, some behaving
otherwise; but I protest I am almost sorry to have lived till I have
seen in England a collection of persons so brutalised as, upon the
taking the coffin at the Abbey door out of the hearse, to have received
it with cheering for joy that L. was no more. Cobbett and the paper
called the _Statesman_ have, by the diabolical publications he and
that paper have issued, thus demoralised these wretches."

The honour conferred upon Ireland and Hanover by the royal visits
had excited the jealousy of Scotland; and the most ardently loyal of
the nobility and people of that country were extremely desirous that
a similar honour should be conferred upon them. The king complied
with their request, and started on the 10th of August. "There were
great preparations," says Lord Eldon, "to make his embarkation and
voyage down the river one of the finest exhibitions ever seen upon the
surface of old Father Thames." The river and its banks, from London to
Greenwich, appeared in the highest state of animation, swarming with
human life and gay with brilliant decorations. A party of hussars,
guarding a plain carriage, were his Majesty's only equipage. The shouts
of the different groups of spectators attended his progress along the
road to Greenwich, until the royal standard floating over the Hospital
announced his arrival. Thousands of voices hailed him as the yacht
departed with a favourable breeze; and as he passed Woolwich a royal
salute was fired, and the regiment on duty at the Arsenal presented
arms. At Tilbury Fort, Southend, and Sheerness he met with lively
demonstrations of loyalty. At the last named place the Lord Mayor,
and other authorities who had escorted him down the river, parted
from the royal squadron and returned in their barge to town. The tide
now checked the king's progress, and the ships lay-to in the channel
till morning. At Harwich, Scarborough, and other places, crowds of
people put off in boats as the squadron neared the shore. It was twice
becalmed; and it was not till the 14th that the _Royal George_ cast
anchor off Leith.

Sir Walter Scott was the master of the ceremonies on this memorable
occasion. He was now in the height of his popularity as the "Great
Unknown." His romances had revived or created the spirit of chivalry,
and ministered to the intense nationality of the Scottish people
in general, and the Highland clans in particular. In arranging
the programme Sir Walter had as many parts to play as ever tasked
the Protean genius of his friend Mathews. The bewildered local
magistrates threw themselves on him for advice and direction. He had
to arrange everything, from the ordering of a procession to the cut
of a button and the embroidering of a cross. Provosts, bailies, and
deacon-conveners of trades were followed, in hurried succession, by
swelling chieftains wrangling about the relative positions their clans
had occupied on the field of Bannockburn, which they considered as
constituting the authentic precedent for determining their respective
places in the procession from the pier of Leith to the Canongate.

The weather was so unpropitious when the royal squadron cast anchor
on the 14th, that it was found necessary to defer the landing until
the 15th. The officers of the Household and of the State, in splendid
uniforms and appropriate insignia, awaited the king's landing. He wore
the full-dress uniform of an admiral, with St. Andrew's cross and a
large thistle in his gold-laced hat. The Lord-Lieutenant of Midlothian
and the Lord Chamberlain received his Majesty on shore, while the
senior magistrate congratulated him on his arrival on Scottish ground.
The cavalry, the Highland infantry, and the Gentlemen Archers of the
Royal Guards saluted him. The Usher of the White Rod sent his herald
to give three knocks at the city gate, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh
going through the same mediæval forms as the Lord Mayor of Dublin. The
knocking, after proper delay, was answered, the keys were delivered
and returned, and the king was admitted into his ancient capital
with enthusiastic acclamations. The royal _cortège_ was peculiarly
interesting from the variety of costumes adopted. The king declared
that the beauty of the scenery, the splendour of the display, and the
enthusiasm of his welcome affected him more than anything in the whole
course of his life. The people, in their turn, were delighted beyond
measure with the condescension and affability of their Sovereign. He
took up his residence during his stay at Dalkeith Palace, as the guest
of the Duke of Buccleuch. The following day he held a levee in the
palace of Holyrood, restored for the occasion to its former splendour,
so far as upholstery could accomplish the renovation. The king on this
occasion wore the Highland costume, selecting for his dress the tartan
of the Stewarts. On the next day three thousand persons paid their
respects to his Majesty at a court held in the same place. He received
his visitors in a field-marshal's uniform. He completely won the hearts
of the Scottish ladies, dancing with the young and gaily chatting
with the old. A magnificent _fête_ was given by the Lord Provost in
the Parliament House, Sir Walter Scott officiating as croupier. When
the king's health had been drunk, his Majesty stood up and said, "I
am quite unable to express my sense of the gratitude which I owe to
the people of this country. But I beg to assure them that I shall ever
remember, as one of the proudest moments of my life, the day I came
among them, and the gratifying reception they gave me. I return you,
my Lord Provost, my lords and gentlemen, my warmest thanks for your
attention this day, and I can assure you--with truth, with earnestness
and sincerity--that I shall never forget your dutiful attention to
me upon my visit to Scotland, and particularly the pleasure I have
derived from dining in your hall this day." ("God save the King" and
immense cheering followed.) He continued: "I take this opportunity,
my lords and gentlemen, of proposing the health of the Lord Provost,
_Sir_ William Arbuthnot, Baronet, and the Corporation of Edinburgh."
When the king named the Lord Provost by the title he had conferred upon
him, the magistrate knelt, and kissed his hand, which was held out at
the moment, and the incident was loudly applauded by the company. The
king afterwards gave as a toast, "Health to the chieftains and clans,
and God Almighty bless the 'Land o' Cakes!'" He added, "Drink this with
three times three!" The delight of the company in drinking this toast
may well be imagined.

[Illustration: DALKEITH PALACE.]

[Illustration: GEORGE IV. HOLDING A LEVEE IN HOLYROOD PALACE. (_See p._
227.)]

The king attended the theatre one evening, and by his desire the drama
of _Rob Roy_ was performed. The theatre was of course crowded to
excess, the boxes presenting a dazzling galaxy of rank and beauty. When
the approach of the king was announced, there was a pause of deathlike
stillness; then an outburst of deep, honest enthusiasm never to be
forgotten. "A prolonged and heartfelt shout, which for more than a
minute rent the house," a waving of handkerchiefs, tartan scarfs, and
plumed bonnets, testified the joy of the assembly and delighted the
ears and eyes of the "chief of chiefs." Sir Walter Scott in a letter to
his son gives a vivid description of this royal visit. For a fortnight
Edinburgh had been a scene of giddy tumult, and considering all that
he had to do, he wondered that he had not caught fever in the midst
of it. All, however, went off most happily. The Edinburgh populace
behaved themselves like so many princes, all in their Sunday clothes;
nothing like a mob--no jostling or crowding. "They shouted with great
emphasis, but without any running or roaring, each standing as
still in his place as if the honour of Scotland had depended on the
propriety of his behaviour. This made the scene quite new to all who
had witnessed the Irish reception." The king's stay in Scotland was
protracted till the 29th of August. On the day before his departure,
Mr. Peel, who accompanied him as Home Secretary, wrote the following
letter to Sir Walter Scott:--"My dear sir,--The king has commanded me
to acquaint you that he cannot bid adieu to Scotland without conveying
to you individually his warm personal acknowledgments for the deep
interest you have taken in every ceremony and arrangement connected
with his Majesty's visit, and for your ample contributions to their
complete success. His Majesty well knows how many difficulties have
been smoothed, and how much has been effected by your unremitting
activity, by your knowledge of your countrymen, and by the just
estimation in which they hold you. The king wishes to make you the
channel of conveying to the Highland chiefs and their followers, who
have given to the varied scenes which we have witnessed so peculiar
and romantic a character, his particular thanks for their attendance,
and his warm approbation of their uniform deportment. He does justice
to the ardent spirit of loyalty by which they are animated, and is
convinced that he could offer no recompense for their services so
gratifying to them as the assurance which I now convey of the esteem
and approbation of their Sovereign."

The king left Scotland on the 29th, taking a route different from
that by which he entered. On his way to the place of embarkation he
visited the Earl of Hopetoun, at whose house he conferred the honour
of knighthood on Mr. Raeburn, the celebrated portrait-painter. At
Queensferry the country people assembled to testify their loyalty
with a last look and a parting cheer. The roar of cannon from all the
surrounding hills, and the shouts of the multitude, greeted him on his
embarkation at Port Edgar. The royal squadron arrived safely on the 1st
of September at Greenwich, where he was cordially welcomed home.

Lord Eldon, who was by no means weary of political life, became
uneasy about his position, and certain arrangements at which the king
had mysteriously hinted. The Lord Chancellor religiously obeyed his
injunction to abstain from speaking on politics to anybody. But he was
revolving in his mind not less anxiously who was to be the new leader
of the House of Commons, and how the Constitution in Church and State
might be best protected against the spirit of innovation. On the king's
return from his northern metropolis the Lord Chancellor was about to
press upon him the promotion to the vacant leadership of the House of
Commons of Mr. Peel, who had won high distinction in the late debate
upon the Catholic peers, when he found, to his unspeakable chagrin,
that Lord Liverpool himself had selected Mr. Canning, and overcome the
royal objections to him on the ground of his having been formerly the
champion of the queen. He had represented to the king that this was
the only arrangement by which the Whigs could be effectually excluded,
and he gave him an assurance that Catholic Emancipation, though left
an open question, should be resolutely opposed. Great as Mr. Canning's
talents for Parliament were, and great as was the want of talent on the
Ministerial side of the House, it was not without the utmost reluctance
that the Cabinet consented to receive him as an associate. They invited
him to fill the place vacated by Lord Londonderry, because he was
forced upon them by circumstances, and they felt that the Government
could not go on without his aid. His only competitor was Mr. Peel, who
had not yet had sufficient opportunity of evincing his great powers for
the conduct and discussion of public affairs to command the station
which many of his colleagues would have gladly seen assigned to him.
Canning was unpopular with the anti-Catholic party in general, and
particularly obnoxious to the Lord Chancellor; and, besides, there
was the great objection of his having been the friend and adherent of
the queen. But Lord Liverpool, the Premier, having been associated
with him from early life, was so thoroughly convinced that he was the
fittest man for the post, and so well acquainted with his transcendent
powers of intellect, that he prevailed upon him to relinquish the
Governor-Generalship of India, to which he had been appointed, and to
accept the vacant Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs, together with the
leadership of the Commons.

This was not the only bitter pill that poor Lord Eldon was compelled
to swallow. Without one word of intimation from the king or the Prime
Minister, he learnt for the first time from the _Courier_ that Mr.
Huskisson had been introduced into the Cabinet. Mr. Huskisson was
made President of the Board of Trade, and in his stead Mr. Arbuthnot
became First Commissioner of the Land Revenues. Mr. Vansittart, who
had proved a very inefficient Chancellor of the Exchequer, was raised
to the peerage by the title of Lord Bexley, and got the quiet office
of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was succeeded in the more
important office by a much abler financier, Mr. Robinson.

It was very generally understood that it had been definitely arranged
that Lord Londonderry should represent England at the Congress of
Verona, and it was universally believed, as we have seen, that this
fact weighed on his mind and led to his suicide; but Mr. Gleig states
that in consequence of the reluctance expressed by Lord Londonderry to
undertake the mission, it had for some time been settled that England
should be represented there by the Duke of Wellington, and that he
had begun to make his preparations, when a severe illness fell upon
him, from which he did not sufficiently recover to set out upon his
journey till after Lord Londonderry's death. The Duke of Wellington
started for his mission when Mr. Canning had been only forty-eight
hours in office. Stress has been laid upon the fact that he received
his instructions from Mr. Canning, and this has been declared to be the
turning-point in our foreign policy, when England began to disengage
herself from the Holy Alliance. She was not formally a party to that
alliance, but the despots composing it had counted on her aid and
influence in keeping down the nations which they oppressed. But Mr.
Gleig states that Lord Londonderry himself had compiled a letter of
instruction for the representative of England at the Congress, and
that this was transferred without a single alteration to the Duke of
Wellington. It is, he says, "a very interesting document. It touches
upon every point which could be expected to come under consideration at
the Congress, and it handles them all so as to guard with scrupulous
care not only the honour of Great Britain, but the rights of foreign
peoples as well as of their Governments. It assumes that the subjects
of general discussion would be three: first, the Turkish question,
external and internal; secondly, the Spanish question, European and
American; and, thirdly, the affairs of Italy. With this last question
the representative of England was directed not to concern himself
at all. As England had been no party to the military occupation of
Naples and Sardinia--as she had merely acquiesced in it with a view
to prevent worse things--so she felt herself precluded from advising
upon the arrangement now that it was complete, lest by so doing she
should appear to admit the justice of a proceeding against which from
the outset she had protested. The representative of Great Britain was
therefore instructed to hold aloof from all meetings at which Italian
affairs were to be discussed, and, if possible, to avoid connecting
himself with the Congress till these should have been settled."

With regard to the Turkish question, all possible measures were in the
first instance to be tried, with a view to reconcile the differences
between Russia and Turkey. These referred to the Russian protection
of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, and the navigation of the
Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. When these matters were disposed of,
then, and not till then, was the condition of Greece to be considered,
and in dealing with this question the British plenipotentiary was
to use great caution, to avoid committing England either to the
recognition or subjugation of that country.

The case of Spain was the most perplexing of all. The British Cabinet
expressed the opinion that no foreign Power had any right whatever
to interfere with any form of government which she had established
for herself, and that her king and people were to be left to settle
their own differences as best they could. The representative of Great
Britain was directed to urge this point with all his influence upon
the Allies, and especially upon France. But the case of her revolted
colonies was different. It was evident, from the course of events, that
their recognition as independent States was become a mere question of
time. Over by far the greater portion of them Spain had lost all hold,
and it had been found necessary, in order to admit their merchant
vessels into British ports, to alter the navigation laws both of
Britain and Spain. The letter of instructions accordingly directed
the British plenipotentiary to advocate a removal of the difficulty
on this principle: that every province which had actually established
its independence should be recognised; that with provinces in which
the war still went on no relation should be established; there was
to be no concert with France, or Russia, or any extraneous power, in
establishing relations with the new States. "The policy projected was
exclusively English and Spanish, and between England and Spain alone
its course was to be settled. Other nations might or might not come
into the views which England entertained; but upon their approval
or disapproval of her views England was not in any way to shape her
conduct."

There were other matters which the British representative was to bring
forward, and foremost among them all was the suppression of the
slave trade, either by a general declaration from the Allies that it
should be treated as piracy, or by obtaining from them an engagement
that they would not admit into their markets any article of colonial
produce which was the result of slave labour. "It will be seen," says
Mr. Gleig, "that the recognition of the actual independence of many
of the Spanish colonies had already been determined upon by Great
Britain, and that the establishment of diplomatic relations with them
all had come to be considered as a mere question of time. This is a
point worthy of notice, because of the misunderstanding in regard to
it which originated in a speech subsequently delivered by Mr. Canning
in the House of Commons, and which still, to a considerable extent,
prevails. It will be further noticed that the principle observed by
Lord Londonderry as the true principle was that of non-interference by
Great Britain in the internal affairs of foreign nations. That the Duke
of Wellington entirely coincided with Lord Londonderry in this respect,
his conduct both now and in the future stages of his career clearly
demonstrates. The leading object of his political life was to preserve
the peace at home and abroad which it had been the great aim of his
military life to conquer."

The Sovereigns of the Holy Alliance, however, acted on principles
and with designs very different. Their general principle was not to
tolerate any change in the European Governments that did not emanate
from themselves. The Greek Revolution they denounced as a rebellion
against the legitimate authority of the Sultan. The actual Government
of Spain they regarded as incompatible with the safety of monarchical
power, and France called upon the Sovereigns to re-establish the
despotism of Ferdinand. Russia, Austria, and Prussia took the same view
of the Spanish Revolution, but were unwilling to interfere by force of
arms. France was not so scrupulous upon that point. Chateaubriand and
other votaries of absolutism in Church and State were busy fomenting
conspiracies in Spain, and secretly supplying arms and ammunition
to the priest-ridden enemies of constitutional government in that
country. An army which during the previous year had been assembled on
the frontier, under the ridiculous pretence of preventing the fever at
Barcelona from spreading into France, changed its name from that of
a sanitary cordon to an army of observation. M. de Villele, the new
French Prime Minister, threw off the mask, and in a circular note
stated that unless Spain altered her political constitution, France
would use force to convert her from her revolutionary theories.

Such was the state of things with which the Duke of Wellington had to
deal as British plenipotentiary when he left London on his mission
early in September, taking Paris on his way. There he had some
interesting conferences with the king and his Minister. The latter
could hold out no hope that France would fulfil her engagements as to
the slave trade. He spoke, indeed, of their African settlements as
useless to the French people, and proposed to make them over to Britain
in exchange for the Isle of France; but farther than this he declined
to go, because there were too many interests, both public and private,
engaged to thwart his efforts, should he be so unwise as to make any.
His language with regard to South America was not less vague and
unsatisfactory. He stated that France had not entered into relations
with those provinces in any form, and did not intend to do so till they
should have settled their differences with Spain one way or another. M.
de Villele did not add, as he might have done, that France was feeling
her way towards the severance of Spain from her colonies, and towards
the establishment in the New World of one or two monarchies, with
younger branches of the House of Bourbon at their head.

[Illustration: VERONA.]

The third topic discussed at these conferences was the nature of the
relations then subsisting between France and Spain, and the projects of
the former power in reference to the latter. These were explained by
the Minister without any reserve, and with no symptoms of apprehension
that they would be disagreeable to Britain, or of anxiety as to the
result, whether they were so or not. He frankly avowed that, under
cover of the sanitary cordon, 100,000 French troops were assembled;
that it was proposed to throw them in two columns into Spain; that one
column, of 40,000 men, was to pass into Catalonia, while the other,
of 60,000, was to march by the great road through Irun upon Madrid.
He stated that the sole object of this invasion was to insure the
personal safety of the king, to afford him the opportunity to collect a
native force strong enough to enable him to protect himself against the
schemes of the Revolutionists--that is, to put down the Constitution.
Of course, France said she entertained no views of conquest or
aggrandisement, or even of prolonged occupation. She would withdraw
her troops whenever the King of Spain said he could do without them,
and yield up every inch of territory. In reference to this matter the
Duke of Wellington wrote home for instructions, and in reply Canning
said:--"If there be a determined project to interfere by force or by
menace in the present struggle in Spain, so convinced are his Majesty's
Government of the uselessness and danger of any such interference--so
objectionable does it appear to them in principle, as well as utterly
impracticable in execution--that when the necessity arises--or, I would
rather say, when the opportunity offers--I am to instruct your grace at
once frankly and peremptorily to declare that to any such interference,
come what may, his Majesty will not be a party." To say that England
peremptorily declined "to be a party" to the invasion of an independent
state, in order to force upon the people a government contrary to
their will, was not saying very much, nor putting the objection very
strongly. We are assured, however, that the Duke steadily set his face
against the project, pointing out that the step would be not only
unjust, but impolitic; that it would precipitate the catastrophe which
the French Government feared; that the Revolutionists would probably
remove Ferdinand from Madrid as soon as they heard of the passing of
the frontier by the French troops, and that, even if these troops
should reach the capital, the Spaniards would not therefore submit, nor
would the king be set at liberty. He argued that a war between France
and Spain for such a purpose would be pronounced a war to put down free
institutions, and that if France sought the support of her allies, the
only one amongst them that had free institutions would feel it her duty
to meet such a request with a refusal. Europe would be ranged into two
hostile camps, that of absolutism on the one side and of revolution
on the other; amid which not thrones only, but settled governments in
every form, might be overthrown. In reply to these arguments, both
the king and his Minister stated that whatever France might do in the
matter she would do single-handed, and that she would not only not
apply for assistance from without, but that, if such assistance were
offered, she would refuse it. The Duke could not, however, prevail upon
the French Government to refrain from bringing the question between
France and Spain before the Congress. The king and his Minister both
contended that vast moral good would accrue from a joint remonstrance
on the part of the Allies against the treatment to which the King of
Spain was subjected, and a joint threat that if any violence were
offered to his person or family all would unite to avenge the outrage.

Having reported to Mr. Canning the result of his diplomatic efforts at
Paris, the Duke set out on his journey to Vienna, where he arrived on
the 29th of September, and where he expected the Congress to be held.
But there again England's plenipotentiary, the great conqueror of
Napoleon, who had restored the legitimate despots to their thrones, was
treated with as little consideration as at Paris. Not till his arrival
did he learn that the Congress which he was invited to attend was not
to be held at Vienna at all, but at Verona. Meanwhile, in the interval
between the adjournment from one city to another, the Allied Sovereigns
were paying a visit of friendship to the King of Bavaria, whose system
of government no doubt met with their unqualified approval. As the
Duke's instructions forbade him to meddle with Italian affairs, he
tarried at Vienna till he should receive further instructions from
his own Government. While awaiting an answer he had opportunities of
conferring personally with the Czar, who had obtained an ascendency in
the councils of the Holy Alliance which rendered him the virtual master
of every situation. With regard to the affairs of Turkey, the Duke
succeeded in obtaining from his Imperial Majesty an assurance that,
unless driven to it by some unforeseen and irresistible necessity,
he would not come to an open rupture with the Sultan. He was not so
successful in his exertions with regard to the Spanish question, on
which the Czar was in an irritable mood. He said that Spain was the
very centre and focus of revolutionary principles, and he felt it to be
the duty not less than the policy of the Allied Sovereigns to trample
them out at their source, and for this purpose he had proposed to
contribute 150,000 men, whom he intended to march into Spain through
French territory. In reply to the Duke's earnest remonstrances against
this course, the Czar put a question which betrays the aggressive
policy of military despots. He asked what he was to do with his army.
It insisted upon being led against Turkey, and was only restrained
because he had expressed his determination of employing it in putting
down what he called Jacobinism in the west.

The British Cabinet having come to the conclusion that the Duke of
Wellington ought not to abstain from attending the Congress because of
its meeting in an Italian city, and thinking so himself, he set out for
Verona, after a fortnight's sojourn in Vienna.

Wellington acquitted himself as well as could be expected in the
circumstances. Austria was induced to acknowledge an old debt to
Britain, and to pay an instalment. The utmost which she could obtain
from the Allies on the slave trade was a reissue of the joint
condemnation of the traffic which had been pronounced in 1815 at
Vienna, and a special assurance from France that as soon as public
feeling would admit, steps would be taken to carry out the treaty with
Great Britain. In the discussion of the affairs of Italy the Duke took
no part; but the peace which he had urged upon Russia and Turkey was
happily concluded, on terms honourable to both. With regard to the
struggles for freedom in Spain and other countries, the Duke found the
Allied Sovereigns in the worst possible temper. They had no patience
with Britain on account of her dissent, however mild, from their
policy. "Hence, though England never expressed her approval of the
military revolts in Spain and Italy, or even in South America, still,
because she declined to be a party to the suppression of the free
institutions in which they issued, Austria, Prussia, and Russia spoke
of her as the champion of revolutionary principles all over the world."

Accordingly, the Duke found himself alone in his opposition to the plan
of an armed intervention in Spain. It was at first proposed that all
the Allies should unite in this; but it was ultimately agreed that a
_procès verbal_ should be jointly adopted, in which the King of Spain
and his family should be declared to be under the protection of Europe,
and Spain threatened with a terrible vengeance if any injury were done
to them. This _procès verbal_ was addressed to the head of the Spanish
Government, with an explanation of the reasons for its adoption. The
Duke was disappointed and mortified at the obstinate self-will of the
crowned despots. He had gone to Verona in the hope that they would at
all events be open to arguments in favour of peace; he found them bent
on such a course as would render its preservation impossible. When the
Ministers reduced their ideas to a definite shape, the incidents which
they agreed to accept as leading necessarily to war appeared to him
fallacious in the extreme. They were these:--First, an armed attack by
Spain upon France. Second, any personal outrage offered to Ferdinand
VII., or to any member of the Spanish royal family. Third, an act of
the Spanish legislature dethroning the king, or interfering in any way
with the right of succession. Austria, Prussia, and Russia accepted the
conditions readily, adhering, at the same time, to the substance of the
notes which they had previously put in.

The Duke produced a paper of his own, in which the three hypothetical
causes of war were considered separately. He showed, "First, that an
attack by Spain upon France was an occurrence beyond the range of human
probability; next, that though, according to the usages of civilised
nations, the persons of monarchs were held to be sacred, to extend a
character of sanctity to those of other members of the Royal Family was
a thing never before heard of in the history of the world; and lastly,
that, till the Allies should be informed on sufficient authority
that a plan for dethroning Ferdinand or changing the succession in
Spain was actually in progress, to assume that such crimes might be
perpetrated was to insult the whole Spanish nation. For his own part,
he must decline to have any share in the transaction, or to deliver an
opinion upon purely hypothetical cases further than this--that if the
independence of Spain were assailed without just cause, Great Britain
would be no party to the proceeding."

So prejudiced were the Allied Sovereigns against England, that they
were ready to believe any tale to her disadvantage. One story which
was circulated amongst them at the time was that Great Britain had
bound herself to support Spain against France in return for certain
stipulated commercial advantages. Another was that she had entered
into a secret treaty to defend Portugal against France, even though
Portugal should join Spain in the war. After all the Duke's arguments,
explanations, and remonstrances, the French plenipotentiary was about
to set off for Paris, representing all the Powers as being perfectly
unanimous on the policy adopted towards Spain, and the Duke was obliged
to threaten him with a public contradiction if he did not alter that
statement and except Great Britain.

The Duke withdrew much dissatisfied with the turn affairs had taken,
and distrustful of the issue. In a parting interview with the Emperor
of Russia, the latter spoke at length in strong disapprobation of the
refusal of England to co-operate in putting down revolution, and said,
in conclusion, that Russia was prepared for every eventuality. "She was
able, with the support of Austria and Prussia, to crush revolution
both in France and Spain; and, if the necessity should arise, she was
determined to do so." The Duke heard his Imperial Majesty to an end,
and then ventured to assure him that the only thing for which Great
Britain pleaded was the right of nations to set up whatever form of
government they thought best, and to manage their own affairs, so long
as they allowed other nations to manage theirs. Neither he nor the
Government which he represented was blind to the many defects which
disfigured the Spanish Constitution; but they were satisfied that they
would be remedied in time. The Emperor could not gainsay the justice
of these remarks, but neither was he willing to be persuaded by them;
so, after expressing himself well pleased with the settlement of the
Turkish question which had been effected, he embraced the Duke, and
they parted.

The Duke arrived at Paris on the 9th of December, having spent more
than two months at diplomacy with very unsatisfactory results. He
found the king and his Minister, M. de Villele, much cooled in their
feelings towards the Spanish Government, in consequence of the tone of
moderation it had assumed after its defeat of the Royalist insurgents.
The king was now disposed to recall his army of observation, if he
could do so with honour, and all he pressed for now was that Spain
should so modify her system as to make the Constitution emanate from
the king, by resting it upon a royal charter and not upon the will of
the people. If this were done, and done in time for him to explain
the case to the Parliament, when they met on the 28th of January,
everything else, every matter of arrangement and detail, would be
left to the undisturbed management of the Spanish Cabinet and Cortes.
This was truly very accommodating. If Spain would only recant her
constitutionalism, and adopt the absolutist creed of Divine Right, the
Allies would not send their armies into the country for the protection
of the king against his people. The Duke having reported the altered
state of feeling in the French Government, and all that had passed,
to Mr. Canning, the Foreign Secretary instructed him to deliver an
official note to M. de Villele, containing a direct offer from England
to mediate. This offer was declined. On the 20th of December the Duke
quitted Paris, and arrived in London early in January. Subsequently the
diplomatic war was carried on between M. Chateaubriand and Mr. Canning,
both men of genius, and masters of a brilliant style of rhetoric, to
which the Duke of Wellington had no pretensions. Mr. Canning, alluding
to the proposed armed intervention in Spain, with a view to stamp out
the revolution, said, "The spirit of revolution--which, shut up within
the Pyrenees, might exhaust itself with struggles, trying indeed to
Spain, but harmless to her neighbours, when restricted--if called forth
from within these precincts by the provocation of foreign attack, might
find, perhaps, in other countries fresh aliment for its fury, and might
renew throughout Europe the misery of the five-and-twenty years which
preceded the peace of 1815."

On the 29th of January, 1823, the King of France opened the Chambers
with a speech of decidedly warlike tone. It spoke of 100,000 French
soldiers prepared to march under a prince of the blood for the
deliverance of Ferdinand VII. and his loyal people from the tyranny of
a portion. A few weeks afterwards the march commenced, and from the
Bidassoa to Madrid it was a continued triumph. The king was set at
liberty, and the gates of Cadiz were opened. The Spaniards were not
true to themselves, the mass of the people being unable to appreciate
liberal institutions. There was also a counter-revolution in Portugal,
aided by foreign bayonets, restoring the despotic system. These events
produced great dissatisfaction in England, and the Duke was strongly
censured for the timidity of his tone in the Congress. Replying to
attacks made in the Upper House by Lords Ellenborough, Holland, and
Grey, he asked whether it would be becoming in one who appeared in the
character of a mediator to employ threats, especially if he had no
power to carry them into effect:--"Were they for a policy of peace or a
policy of war? If for the former, could he go farther than to declare
that to any violent attack on the independence of Spain the king his
master would be no party? If for the latter, all he had to say was that
he entirely differed from them, and he believed that his views would be
supported by all the intelligent portion of the community."

The conduct of the Government in reference to the Congress was the
subject of an animated debate in the House of Commons, which began
on April 28th and lasted three days. It was on a motion for a Vote
of Censure for the feebleness of tone assumed by the Government in
the negotiations with the Allies, an amendment having been proposed
expressive of gratitude and approbation. In Mr. Canning's speech on the
third day there was one remarkable passage, which clearly defined his
foreign policy, and showed that it had a distinct purpose, and aimed
at an object of the highest importance. He said:--"I contend, sir, that
whatever might grow out of a separate conflict between Spain and France
(though matter for grave consideration) was less to be dreaded than
that all the Great Powers of the Continent should have been arrayed
together against Spain; and that although the first object, in point of
importance, indeed, was to keep the peace altogether, to prevent any
war against Spain, the first in point of time was to prevent a general
war; to change the question from one affecting the Allies on the one
side and Spain on the other, to a question between nation and nation.
This, whatever the result might be, would reduce the quarrel to the
size of ordinary events, and bring it within the scope of ordinary
diplomacy. The immediate object of England, therefore, was to hinder
the impress of a joint-character from being affixed to the war, if
war there must be, with Spain; to take care that the war should not
grow out of an assumed jurisdiction of the Congress; to keep within
reasonable bounds that predominating _areopagitical_ spirit which the
memorandum of the British Cabinet of May, 1820, describes as beyond
the sphere of the original conception and understood principles of the
alliance--an alliance never intended as a union for the government of
the world, or for the superintendence of the internal affairs of other
states; and this, I say, was accomplished."

The sense of the House was so completely with the Government, that
Mr. Brougham, who led the Opposition, declined to go to a division. A
division having been called for, however, on the part of Ministers,
the whole assembly poured into the lobby, till it could hold no more;
and then the remaining members who were shut in were compelled to pass
for an opposition, though there were Ministerialists among them. They
amounted to twenty, in a House of three hundred and seventy-two.

The aggressive policy of the Holy Alliance, and the French invasion of
Spain, despite England's remonstrances, provoked Mr. Canning to hasten
the recognition of the revolted colonies in South America. It was in
defending this policy that he uttered the memorable sentence so often
quoted as a specimen of the sublime:--"Contemplating Spain such as our
ancestors had known her, I resolved that if France had Spain, it should
not be Spain with the Indies. I called the New World into existence to
redress the balance of the Old."




CHAPTER VI.

REIGN OF GEORGE IV. (_continued_).

    Prosperity of the Manufacturers--Depression of
    Agriculture--Resumption of Cash Payments--A restricted
    Currency--The Budget of 1823--Mr. Huskisson--Change of the
    Navigation Acts--Budget of 1824--Removal of the Duties on Wool
    and Silk--Repeal of the Spitalfields Act and the Combination
    Laws--Speculative Mania--The Crash--Remedial Measures of the
    Government--Riots and Machine-breaking--Temporary Change in
    the Corn Laws--Emigration--State of Ireland--Efforts of Lord
    Wellesley--Condition of the Peasantry--Unlawful Societies--The
    Bottle Riot--Failure to obtain the Conviction of the Rioters--The
    Tithe Commutation Act--Revival of the Catholic Question--Peel's
    Views--The Catholic Association and its Objects--Bill for its
    Suppression--Plunket's Speech--A new Association formed--Rejection
    of Burdett's Resolution--Fears of the Moderates--General
    Election--Its Features--Inquiry into the Bubble Companies--Death of
    the Duke of York--Canning's vigorous Policy in Portugal--Weakness
    of the Ministry and Illness of Liverpool--Who was to be
    his Successor?--Canning's Difficulties--Peel and the Old
    Tories resign--State of Canning's Health--His arrangements
    completed--Opposition to Him--His Illness and Death--Collapse of
    the Goderich Ministry--Wellington forms an Administration--Eldon is
    omitted--The Battle of Navarino--"The Untoward Event"--Resignation
    of the Canningites--Grievances of the Dissenters--Lord John
    Russell's Motion for the Repeal of the Test and Corporation
    Acts--Peel's Reply--Progress of the Measure--Lord Eldon's
    opposition--Public Rejoicings.


The year 1823 opened auspiciously, and continued to exhibit unequivocal
marks of progressive prosperity. Every branch of manufacturing industry
was in a flourishing state. The cotton trade was unusually brisk. There
was a considerable increase in the quantity of silks and woollens
manufactured; and in consequence of augmenting exportation, the demand
for hardware and cutlery was quickened from the state of stagnation in
which it had remained since the conclusion of the war. The shipping
interest, which had been greatly depressed, fully shared in the general
improvement. The agriculturists, however, were still embarrassed and
discontented. In January no less than sixteen English counties had
sent requisitions to their sheriffs to call meetings to consider the
causes of their distresses. The principal remedies proposed were
reduction of taxation; reform of the House of Commons; depreciation
of the currency; commutation of tithes; and appropriation of the
redundant wealth of the Church to public exigencies. At the Norwich
meeting a series of resolutions was proposed and seconded by the gentry
of the county, but they were rejected and put aside on the motion of
Mr. Cobbett, who read a petition which was adopted with acclamation.
It recommended an appropriation of part of the Church property to
the payment of the public debt; a reduction of the standing army; an
abolition of sinecures and undeserved pensions; the sale of the Crown
lands; an equitable adjustment of contracts; the suspension of all
legal processes for one year for the recovery of rents and tithes; and
the repeal of the taxes on malt, soap, leather, hops, and candles.

The distress which had pressed so severely on the people, and which
had set them thinking about the most perilous political changes, was
intimately connected with the state of the country. Throughout the
troubled period of almost incessant war and lavish expenditure between
1797 and 1815, the business of the nation was carried on with an
inconvertible paper currency, the precious metals having nearly all
departed from the country. Bank notes were issued in such quantities,
to meet the exigencies of the Government, that the prices of all
commodities were nearly doubled. The Bill which was passed in 1819
providing for the resumption of cash payments had reduced the currency
from £48,278,070, which was its amount in 1819, to £26,588,000, in
1822. The consequence was the reduction of prices in the meantime,
at the rate of fifty per cent., in all the articles of production
and commerce. With this tremendous fall of prices, the amount of
liabilities remained unchanged; rents, taxes, and encumbrances were to
be paid according to the letter of the contract, while the produce and
commodities--the sale of which was relied upon to pay them--did not
produce more than half the amount that they would have brought at the
time of the contracts. The evil of this sudden change was aggravated
by the South American Revolution, in consequence of which the annual
supply of the precious metals was reduced to a third of its former
amount. It was peculiarly unfortunate that this stoppage in the supply
of gold and silver occurred at the very time that the Legislature
had adopted the principle that paper currency should be regarded as
strictly representing gold, and should be at any moment convertible
into sovereigns. A paper currency should never be allowed to exceed
the available property which it represents, but it is not necessary
that its equivalent in gold should be lying idle in the coffers of the
Bank, ready to be paid out at any moment the public should be seized
with a foolish panic. It is enough that the credit of the State should
be pledged for the value of the notes, and that credit should not
be strained beyond the resources at its command. The close of 1822
formed the turning-point in the industrial condition of the country.
The extreme cheapness of provisions, after three years of comparative
privation, enabled those engaged in manufacturing pursuits to purchase
many commodities which they had hitherto not been able to afford. This
caused a gradual revival of trade, which was greatly stimulated by the
opening of new markets for our goods, especially in South America,
to which our exports were nearly trebled in value between 1818 and
1823, when the independence of the South American Republics had been
established. The confidence of the commercial world was reassured by
the conviction that South America would prove an unfailing Dorado for
the supply of the precious metals. The bankers, therefore, became more
accommodating; the spirit of enterprise again took possession of the
national mind, and there was a general expansion of industry by means
of a freer use of capital, which gave employment and contentment to
the people. This effect was materially promoted by the Small Note Bill
which was passed in July, 1822, extending for ten years longer the
period during which small notes were to be issued; its termination
having been fixed by Peel's Bill for 1823. The average of bank-notes in
circulation in 1822 was £17,862,890. In November of the following year
it had increased by nearly two millions. The effect of this extension
of the small note circulation upon prices was remarkable. Wheat rose
from 38s. to 52s., and in 1824 it mounted up to 64s. In the meantime
the bullion in the Bank of England increased so much that whereas
in 1819 it had been only £3,595,360, in January, 1824, it amounted
to £14,200,000. The effect of all these causes combined was the
commencement of a reign of national prosperity, which burst upon the
country like a brilliant morning sun, chasing away the chilling fogs of
despondency, and dissipating the gloom in the popular mind.

On the 12th of February, 1823, the President of the Board of Trade
said, in his place in Parliament:--"The general exports of the country
in the four years from 1815 to 1819 had decreased £14,000,000 in
official value; and he took the official value in preference to the
declared, because it was from the quantity of goods produced that the
best measure was derived of the employment afforded to the different
classes of the community. In the year from the 5th of January, 1819,
to the 5th of January, 1820, the exports of the country fell off no
less than £11,000,000; and in looking at that part of it which more
completely embraced British or Irish manufacture, he found that the
difference in four years was £8,414,711; and that in the year from the
5th of January, 1820, to the 5th of January, 1821, there was a decrease
of £8,929,629. Nobody, therefore, could be surprised that, at that
period, the industry of the country appeared to be in a state of the
utmost depression; that our manufacturers were most of them unemployed;
that our agriculturists were many of them embarrassed; and that the
country, to use the phrase of a friend of his in presenting a petition
from the merchants of London, 'exhibited all the appearances of a dying
nation.' Though the condition of the agricultural interest was not as
favourable as he could wish, still it was most satisfactory for him to
state that not only did the exports of last year [1822] exceed those of
all the years to which he had been alluding, but also those of the most
flourishing year which had occurred during the continuance of the war.
In all material articles there had been a considerable increase. The
export of cotton had increased ten per cent., and hardware seventeen
per cent.; of linens twelve per cent., and of woollens thirteen per
cent.; and the aggregate exports of 1822 exceeded those of 1820 by
twenty per cent., and of 1821 by seven per cent., notwithstanding a
deduction was to be made from the exports of one great article, sugar,
owing to a prohibitory decree of Russia, amounting to thirty-five per
cent." The result of this prosperous state of things was that, in
1823, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer was enabled to present the
best and most popular Budget that had been laid before Parliament for
many years, remitting a large amount of taxes that had pressed most
heavily on the springs of industry, and inflicted the greatest amount
of inconvenience and privation upon the people. The revenue of the
nation in that year was £57,000,000, and the expenditure was estimated
at £49,672,999, leaving a surplus of upwards of £7,000,000. Of this
surplus, £5,000,000 was set aside for the reduction of the National
Debt, and the remainder for the remission of taxes. As the assessed
taxes were most oppressive, they were reduced fifty per cent., a
reduction which was estimated on the window tax alone at £1,205,000. On
the whole, the assessed taxes were reduced by £2,200,000. This included
£100,000, the total amount of assessed taxes in Ireland. In England the
whole of the window tax was removed from the ground floors of shops and
warehouses.

In 1823 we behold the starting-point of the liberal system of
commercial policy, for which not only England, but all the world,
is so much indebted--the rivulet which gradually expanded into a
mighty river bearing incalculable blessings upon its bosom to every
nation under heaven. The appointment of Mr. Huskisson as a member of
the Government was an immense advantage to the nation. He was a man
of great abilities, which he had perseveringly devoted to the study
of political economy. He was a complete master of all subjects in
which statistics were involved, and was universally looked up to as
the highest authority on all financial and commercial questions. As
President of the Board of Trade he had ample opportunities of turning
his knowledge to account, and to him is mainly due the initiation
and direction of the course of commercial policy which a quarter of
a century later issued in the complete triumph of Free Trade. Mr.
Huskisson was not only intimately acquainted with the whole range of
economic, financial, and mercantile subjects, in their details as
well as in their principles, he was also a powerful debater, a sound
reasoner, and was animated in all he did by a spirit of generous
philanthropy. At the same time it is only just to point out that he
did but carry out the policy of Mr. Wallace, the Vice-President of the
Board of Trade, a statesman whose name is almost forgotten.

A law in force since the time of Cromwell had provided that no
merchandise from Asia, Africa, or America should be imported into
Great Britain in any foreign ships; and not only the commander, but
three-fourths of the crew, were required to be English. In addition
to this restriction of our foreign commerce to English-built and
English-manned ships, discriminating duties were imposed upon foreign
ships from Europe, which had to pay more heavily than if the goods
were imported under the British flag. The object of this system,
which prevailed for one hundred and fifty years, was to maintain the
ascendency of Britain as a Maritime Power. Adam Smith remarks that the
Navigation Act may have proceeded from national rivalry and animosity
towards Holland; but he held that its provisions were as beneficial as
if they had been dictated by the most consummate wisdom. He admits,
however, that they were not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the
growth of that opulence that can arise from it, remarking, "As defence
is of more value than opulence, the Act of Navigation is perhaps the
wisest of all the commercial regulations of England." But had Adam
Smith lived later on, he would have seen that the utmost freedom of
commerce with foreign nations, and the most boundless opulence arising
from it, are quite compatible with a perfect system of national
defence; and whatever were the advantages of the restrictive system,
other nations could act upon it as well as England. America did so, and
thus commenced a war of tariffs equally injurious to herself and the
mother country, causing the people of each to pay much more for most of
the commodities they needed than they would have done if the markets
of the world were open to them. The consequence was that both parties
saw the folly of sending their ships across the Atlantic in ballast,
and a commercial treaty was concluded in 1815, which put the shipping
of both America and England upon an equal footing, and relieved them
from the necessity of paying double freight. The reciprocity system
was also partially adopted in our commerce with other countries. In
1822 Mr. Wallace had brought in four Bills, which made other important
alterations. The 3 George IV., cap. 41, repealed certain statutes
relating to foreign commerce which were passed before the Navigation
Act. Another Act (cap. 42) repealed that part of the Navigation Act
itself which required that goods of the growth or manufacture of
Asia, Africa, and America should only be imported in British ships;
and that no goods of foreign growth or manufacture should be brought
from Europe, except from the place of their production, and in the
ships of the country producing them. The next enactment prescribed
certain specified goods to be brought to Great Britain from any port
in Europe, in ships belonging to the ports of shipment. Two other
Acts further extended freedom of commerce, and removed the vexatious
restrictions that had hampered our colonial and coasting trade. In
1823 Prussia retaliated, as the United States had done, which led Mr.
Huskisson to propose what are called the Reciprocity Acts, 4 George
IV., cap. 77, and 5 George IV., cap. 1, which empowered the king, by
Order in Council, to authorise the importation and exportation of goods
in foreign ships from the United Kingdom, or from any other of his
Majesty's dominions, on the same terms as in British ships, provided
it should first be proved to his Majesty and the Privy Council that
the foreign country in whose favour the order was made had placed
British ships in its ports on the same footing as its own ships. These
enactments proved an immense advantage to the people of the nations
affected by them, and satisfied all parties but the ship-owners, who
cried out loudly that their interest was ruined. But their complaints
were altogether unfounded, as will appear from the following figures.
Under the restrictive system, from 1804 to 1823, the tonnage of British
shipping had increased only ten per cent. Under the Reciprocity Acts
and the Free Trade system, from 1823 to 1845, the increase rose to
forty-five per cent. This result fully bore out the calculations and
anticipations of Mr. Huskisson, in his answer to the arguments of the
Protectionists.

[Illustration: THE ADMIRALTY, LONDON.]

Some remarkable commercial reforms were introduced by Robinson
and Huskisson in 1824. In the previous year the Chancellor of the
Exchequer was able to boast of a very large surplus, and this year
he had a surplus of £1,050,000. Part of it was devoted to the repair
and embellishment of Windsor Castle; £40,000 were devoted towards
the erection of rooms for the reception of the library of George
III., which was presented to the British Museum by his successor,
whose gift, however, was somewhat discounted by the fact that he was
with difficulty dissuaded from selling the collection. With £57,000
Government purchased Angerstein's collection of pictures, which
became the nucleus of the National Gallery. But the main object of
the Budget was not expenditure but economy. The Four per Cents. were
redeemed or exchanged for Three-and-a-Half per Cent. Stock, and a
death-blow was given to the old system of bounties by a reduction of
that on the herring fishery and the immediate cessation of that on
inferior kinds of linen, while that on the higher class of linen was
annually decreased ten per cent. There was further a reduction of the
duties on rum and coals, with the result, as Robinson prophesied, that
lower prices considerably increased the consumption. His greatest
innovations, however, concerned the wool and silk trades. In the former
there prevailed a great conflict of interests. The agriculturists
wished for the prohibition of foreign wool; the manufacturers desired
the retention of an export duty, together with free importation. The
judicious Chancellor effected a compromise by which the duty on foreign
wool was reduced from 6d. to 1d. per pound, while the exportation of
English wool was sanctioned on a similar duty. The fear of a large
exportation of English wool proved so groundless that by 1826 only
100,000 pounds in weight had been exported, while 40,000,000 pounds of
foreign wool had been introduced.

[Illustration: GEORGE III.'S LIBRARY, BRITISH MUSEUM.]

In much the same way the silk industry had been protected by
prohibitory legislation, of which the only effect was to convert
smuggling into an important trade. Again, the manufacturers petitioned
for the removal of the duties upon spun silk, but were eager to exclude
foreign manufactured silks. On the other hand, the silk spinners were
opposed to the introduction of spun silk, but desired the removal of
duties upon raw silk, while the journeymen believed that ruin stared
them in the face if foreign manufactured silks were introduced.
Robinson, with Huskisson's assistance, decided to admit foreign silk
on an _ad valorem_ duty of 30 per cent. At the same time he largely
reduced the duties on the raw material. The duty on Indian silk was
reduced from 4s. to 3d., that on Chinese and Italian silks from 5s.
6d. to 6d., that on organzine from 14s. 10d. to 7s. 6d. a pound. The
manufacturers vowed and protested that they were ruined; in ten years'
time they were exporting to France, their former rival, £60,000 worth
of manufactured silk.

High duties were not the only evils that had been strangling the silk
trade. Its chief seat was at Spitalfields, where by the Act of 1811
and other legislation the magistrates had been empowered to fix the
rate of wages, and to subject to severe penalties any masters who
employed weavers in other districts. The result, said a manufacturers'
petition in 1823, is, "that the removal of the entire manufacture from
the metropolis is inevitable, if the Acts are to continue any longer
in force." However, the journeymen declared that a repeal of the Acts
would be followed by the reduction of their wages and the increase of
the poor rates. No less than 11,000 petitioned against Huskisson's
motion for a repeal, and, though the Bill passed the House of Commons
by small majorities, it was so altered by amendments in the Lords that
it was abandoned for the Session. But in this remarkable Session of
1824 it was reintroduced and passed through all its stages. As a result
the Combination Acts directed against meetings of workmen to affect
wages, the Acts which prevented the emigration of artisans, and the
laws against the exportation of machinery were brought under discussion
by Joseph Hume. The last question was waived for the present, but
the laws interfering with the emigration of artisans were repealed
without a voice being raised in their favour. As for the Combination
Acts, it was ordained that no peaceable meeting of masters or workmen
should be prosecuted as a conspiracy, while summary punishments were
enacted on those "who by threats, intimidation, or acts of violence
interfered with that freedom, which ought to be allowed to each
party, of employing his labour or capital in a manner he may deem
most advantageous." In consequence, however, of the outrages which
occurred during the Glasgow strikes of 1824, during which a workman who
disregarded the wishes of his union was shot, and men of one trade were
employed to assassinate the masters of another, further legislation
was necessary. By the Act of 1825 all associations were made illegal,
excepting those for settling such amount of wages as would be a fair
remuneration to the workman. Any other combination either of men
against masters or of masters against men, or of working men against
working men, was made illegal. The law thus framed continued to
regulate the relations of capital and labour for nearly half a century.

Of course, the commercial changes introduced by Mr. Huskisson and Mr.
Robinson excited loud murmurs of dissatisfaction from the interests
affected, especially the shipping interest. But the best answer to
objectors was the continuously flourishing state of the country. At
the opening of the Session in 1825, Lord Dudley and Ward, in moving
the Address in answer to the King's Speech in the Upper House,
observed:--"Our present prosperity is a prosperity extending to all
orders, all professions, and all districts, enhanced and invigorated
by the flourishing state of all those arts which minister to human
comfort, and those inventions by which man obtains a mastery over
nature by the application of her own powers, and which, if one had
ventured to foretell a few years ago, it would have appeared almost
incredible." This happy state of things was the result of a legitimate
expansion of trade. Manufacturers and merchants were at first guided
by a spirit of sober calculation. The steady advance in the public
securities, and in the value of property of all sorts, showed that
the national wealth rested upon a solid basis. The extension of the
currency kept pace with the development of trade and commerce, and
the circulation of bankers' paper was enormously increased. But out
of the national prosperity there arose a spirit of rash speculation
and adventure, resulting in a monetary crisis. The issue of notes by
country banks was under no restriction; no measures were taken to
secure that their paper represented property, and could be redeemed if
necessary. There were hundreds of bankers in the provinces who could
issue any quantity of notes they pleased, and these passed as cash from
hand to hand. The spirit of speculation and enterprise was stimulated
to a feverish degree of excitement by the recognition of the states of
Colombia, Mexico, and Buenos Ayres, formally announced in the King's
Speech on the 3rd of February, which said that treaties of commerce had
been made with those new states. The rich districts of South America
being thus thrown open, there was a rush of capitalists and adventurers
to work its inexhaustible mines. A number of companies was formed for
the purpose, and the gains of some of them in a few months amounted to
fifteen hundred per cent. The result was a mania of speculation, which
seized upon all classes, pervaded all ranks, and threw the most sober
and quiet members of society into a state of tumultuous excitement.
Joint-stock companies almost innumerable were established, to
accomplish all sorts of undertakings. There were thirty-three companies
for making canals and docks, forty-eight for making railroads,
forty-two for gas, twenty insurance companies, twenty-three banking
companies, twelve navigation packet companies, five indigo and sugar
companies, thirty-four metal companies, and many others. The amount
of capital subscribed in these various companies, which numbered two
hundred and seventy-six, was upwards of £174,000,000. In connection
with South America there was the Anglo-Mexican Company, the Brazilian,
the Colombian, Real de Monte, and the United Mexican. On the South
American shares only ten pounds each had been paid, except the Real
de Monte, on which £70 had been paid. We may judge of the extent to
which gambling speculation was carried from the following statement
of the market prices of the shares, in five of the principal mining
companies, at two periods, December 10th, 1824, and January 11th,
1825:--

                    December 10th.     January 11th.
                       £   s.  d.          £   s.  d.
    Anglo-Mexican     33   0   0         158   0   0
    Brazilian          0  10   0          66   0   0
    Colombian         19   0   0          82   0   0
    Real de Monte    550   0   0       1,350   0   0
    United Mexican    35   0   0       1,550   0   0

In the course of this commercial madness the imports greatly exceeded
the exports, and there was consequently a rapid drain of specie
from the country. The drain of bullion from the Bank of England was
immense. In August, 1823, it had £12,658,240, which in August, 1825,
was reduced to £3,634,320, and before the end of the year it ran
as low as £1,027,000. Between July, 1824, and August, 1825, twelve
millions of cash were exported from Great Britain, chiefly to South
America. During the Revolutionary war, which had lasted for fourteen
years, the capital of the country had been completely exhausted,
while all productive labour had been abandoned. The unworked mines
were filled with water. They were accessible, it is true, to English
speculators, but they were worked exclusively with English capital. The
South American mining companies were so many conduits through which a
rapid stream of gold flowed from Great Britain. The catastrophe that
followed took the commercial world by surprise; even the Chancellor of
the Exchequer failed to anticipate the disaster. On the contrary, his
Budget of 1825 was based upon the most sanguine expectations for the
future, and on the assurance that the public prosperity was the very
reverse of what was ephemeral and peculiar, and that it arose from
something inherent in the nation. Even at the prorogation of Parliament
in July, the Royal Speech referred to the "great and growing"
prosperity on which his Majesty had the happiness of congratulating
the country at the beginning of the Session. The commercial crisis,
however, with widespread ruin in its train, was fast coming upon
Britain. Vast importations, intended to meet an undiminished demand
at high prices, glutted all the markets, and caused prices to fall
rapidly. Merchants sought accommodation from their bankers to meet
pressing liabilities, that they might be enabled to hold over their
goods till prices rallied. This accommodation the bankers were unable
to afford, and sales were therefore effected at a ruinous loss. The
South American mines, it was found, could not be worked at a profit,
and they made no return for the twenty million pounds of British money
which they had swallowed up. The effect was a sudden contraction of
the currency, and a general stoppage of banking accommodation. The
country banks, whose issues had risen to £14,000,000, were run upon
till their specie was exhausted, and many of them were obliged to stop
payment. The Plymouth Bank was the first to fail, and in the next three
weeks seventy banks followed in rapid succession. The London houses
were besieged from morning to night by clamorous crowds, all demanding
gold for their notes. Consternation spread through all classes. There
was a universal pressure of creditors upon debtors, the banks that
survived being themselves upon the edge of the precipice; and the
Bank of England itself, pushed to the last extremity, peremptorily
refused accommodation even to their best customers. Persons worth one
hundred thousand pounds could not command one hundred pounds; money
seemed to have taken to itself wings and fled away, reducing a state
of society in the highest degree artificial almost to the condition
of primitive barbarism, which led Mr. Huskisson to exclaim, "We were
within twenty-four hours of _barter_."

It is impossible to conceive the extent of suffering and desolation
inflicted upon society, almost every family being involved, more or
less, in the general calamity. Flourishing firms were bankrupt, opulent
merchants impoverished, the masses of working people suddenly thrown
out of employment, and reduced to destitution; and all from causes
with which the majority had nothing to do--causes that could have been
prevented by a proper monetary system. If Bank of England notes had
been a legal tender, to all intents and purposes supplying the place
of gold as currency; if these notes had been supplied to the country
banks in any quantities they required, ample security being taken to
have assets equal to their respective issues, then the currency would
have had an elastic, self-adjusting power, expanding or contracting
according to the requirements of commerce. Inordinate speculation would
not have been stimulated by a reckless system of credit, and business
would have been conducted in a moderate and judicious manner, instead
of rushing on at a high pressure that rendered a crash inevitable.
The Government, after anxious and repeated deliberations, supplied
a remedy on this principle. They determined to issue one-pound and
two-pound notes of the Bank of England, for country circulation, to
any amount required. In the meantime the Mint was set to work with all
its resources in the coining of sovereigns, which, for the course
of a week, were thrown off at the rate of 150,000 a day. The notes
could not be manufactured fast enough to meet the enormous demand for
carrying on the business of the country. In this dilemma the Bank was
relieved by a most fortunate discovery--a box containing £700,000, in
one- and two-pound notes that had been retired, but which were at once
put into circulation. The people having thus got notes with Government
security, the panic subsided, and the demand for gold gradually ceased.
The restoration of confidence was aided by resolutions passed at a
meeting of bankers and merchants in the City of London, declaring
that the unprecedented embarrassments and difficulties under which
the circulation of the country laboured were mainly to be ascribed
to a general panic, for which there were no reasonable grounds; that
they had the fullest confidence in the means and substance of the
banking establishments of the capital and the country; that returning
confidence would remove all the symptoms of distress caused by the
alarms of the timid, so fatal to those who were forced to sacrifice
their property to meet unexpected demands. The new measures so promptly
adopted and so vigorously carried into effect, raised the circulation
of the Bank of England notes in three weeks from £17,477,290 to
£25,611,800. Thus the regular and healthful action of the monetary
system was restored by an adequate circulation of paper money, on
Government security, without specie to sustain it. There were at the
time of the crash 770 country bankers; 63 stopped payment, 23 of them
having subsequently resumed business, and paid twenty shillings in the
pound; and even those that were not able to resume, paid an average of
seventeen shillings and sixpence in the pound. It was estimated that
the total loss to the country by this panic was one hundred million
pounds.

Such a tremendous crash in the commercial world could not have occurred
without involving the working classes in the deepest distress. In order
fully to understand all that society has gained by the instruction
of the people, by extending to them the blessings of education, and
especially by the diffusion of useful knowledge through the medium
of cheap literature, we have only to read the records of popular
disturbance and destructive violence which occurred in 1825 and 1826.
In the August of the former year there was a combination of seamen
against the shipowners at Sunderland; and on one occasion there was a
riot, when a mob of some hundreds flung the crew of a collier into the
sea. They were rescued from drowning, but, the military having fired
on the rioters, five persons were killed. Their funeral was made the
occasion of a great popular demonstration. There was a procession with
flags, and a band of singers, twelve hundred seamen walking hand in
hand, each with crape round the left arm. In the Isle of Man the people
rose against the tithing of their potatoes, and were quieted only by
the assurance that the tithe would not be demanded of them, either that
year or at any future time. In the spring of 1826 the operatives of
Lancashire rose up in open war against the power-looms, the main cause
of the marvellous prosperity that has since so largely contributed to
the wealth of England. They believed that the power-looms were the
cause of their distress, and in one day every power-loom in Blackburn,
and within six miles of it, was smashed; the spinning machinery having
been carefully preserved, though at one time the spinning jennies
were as obnoxious as the power-looms. The work of destruction was not
confined to one town or neighbourhood. The mob proceeded from town
to town, wrecking mill after mill, seizing upon bread in the bakers'
shops, and regaling themselves freely in public-houses. They paraded
the streets in formidable numbers, armed with whatever weapons they
could lay hands on--scythes, sledge-hammers, and long knives. They
resisted the troops fiercely, showering upon them stones and other
missiles. The troops, in their turn, fired upon the crowds, and when
they were dispersed the streets were stained with blood, the mob
carrying away their wounded into the fields. In one week no less than a
thousand power-looms were destroyed, valued at thirty thousand pounds.
In Manchester the mob broke the windows of the shops. At Carlisle,
Norwich, Trowbridge, and other places in England, similar lawless
proceedings occurred. Even in Glasgow the blame of the general distress
was thrown upon the machinery, not only by the ignorant operatives, but
by the gentry and the magistrates. In Dublin the silk-weavers marched
through the streets, to exhibit their wretchedness.

The distress was greatly aggravated, and spread over the whole country,
by the extraordinary drought which prevailed in the summer of 1826.
The richest meadows were burnt up. The stunted grain crops were only
a few inches in height. The cattle, and even the deer in noblemen's
parks, died from thirst. The people sat up all night to watch the
springs, waiting for their turn to be supplied. Water was retailed
in small quantities, and sold like beer. Those who occupied the more
favoured districts sent jars of fresh water to their friends in other
places, as most acceptable presents. In the midst of all this scarcity
and suffering the Corn Laws stopped the supplies of provisions from
abroad, which were ready to be poured in in any quantities. Bills
had been passed with great difficulty through Parliament, to enable
Government to relax the restrictions of the Corn Laws, in order to meet
the emergency. But so clogged were those enactments with conditions,
that in autumn Ministers were obliged to anticipate their operation by
opening the ports, trusting to the legislature for an indemnity. It is
melancholy to reflect upon the perplexities and miseries in which the
country was involved through the mistaken views of the landed interest,
then predominant in Parliament.

[Illustration: SCENE IN DUBLIN: PAINTING KING WILLIAM BLACK. (_See p._
247.)]

One important result of this terrible distress was to force on
emigration to a large extent, and thus to people the American States.
Emigration at that time was without any guidance, and the result was
a vast amount of disappointment and suffering among the emigrants.
Consequently, Mr. Wilmot Horton moved for a select committee to inquire
into the expediency of encouraging emigration from the United Kingdom.
The committee was appointed, and presented its report and evidence
before the dissolution of Parliament, with a recommendation that the
subject should be pursued without loss of time.

Lord Redesdale in a letter to Lord Eldon, written in 1821, soon after
the king's visit, gave expression to some important truths about the
Government of Ireland. "Ministers," he said, "have fancied that Ireland
would do better without a Lord-Lieutenant, and some of them have called
his office a useless pageant, but under the present circumstances they
would govern the colonies as well without governors as they can govern
Ireland without that pageant. If the pageant is useless, it is because
they make it useless, because they give him a Secretary to thwart him,
or to be a viceroy over him. The office of Lord-Lieutenant requires,
in my opinion, a considerable portion of ability, sound judgment,
discretion, firmness, good temper, and conciliating manners. Such a
Lord-Lieutenant ought to be supreme. If Ministers think fit to appoint
to such an office a man wholly unqualified for it, they must put him
in leading-strings, and give him a Secretary with all the qualities
the Lord-Lieutenant ought to have; and, moreover, with a disposition
to conceal rather than display his power over his superior--to lead,
and not to command, the Lord-Lieutenant. In England the machine goes on
almost of itself, and therefore a bad driver may manage it tolerably
well. It is not so in Ireland. The country requires great exertion
to bring it into a state of order and submission to law. The whole
population--high and low, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant--must
all be brought to obedience to law; all must be taught to look up to
the law for protection. The gentry are ready enough to attend grand
juries, to obtain presentments for their own benefit, but they desert
the quarter-sessions of the peace. The first act of a constable in
arrest must not be to knock down the prisoner; and many, many reforms
must be made, which only can be effected by a judicious and able
Government on the spot. Ireland, in its present state, cannot be
governed in England. If insubordination compels you to give, how are
you to retain by law what you propose to maintain while insubordination
remains? It can only be by establishing completely the empire of the
law."

The Marquis Wellesley was sent over to Ireland by Lord Liverpool
in order to govern Ireland upon this principle; and he might have
succeeded better if he had not been checked by Mr. Goulburn, the Chief
Secretary, distinguished by his hostility to Catholic Emancipation, who
was appointed "viceroy over him." In a letter which the Marquis wrote
to the Duke of Buckingham (June 14th, 1824) he refers to some of the
difficulties with which he had to contend in carrying out an impartial
policy between the extreme parties, which were then very violent.
His labours, however, in enforcing respect for the law and effecting
improvements were not altogether in vain. "The situation of Ireland,"
he writes, "although very unsatisfactory, is certainly much improved,
and foundations of greater improvement have been firmly laid. The
committees of Parliament have done much good; and, if vigorously and
fairly pursued, may effect a permanent settlement of this distracted
country. The present violent collision of the two ultra parties, or
rather factions, Orange and Papist, is a crisis of the disorder which
was necessary to their mutual dissolution, an event which I think is
fast approaching, and which must be the preliminary of any settlement
of peace."

The evils of the social state of Ireland were bad enough without
being aggravated by the virulence of faction. The result of numerous
Parliamentary inquiries, and the observations of travellers from
foreign countries, was to present a state of society the most
deplorable that can well be imagined in any civilised country under a
Christian Government. Many of the lower orders, especially in Munster
and Connaught, as well as in mountainous districts of the other
provinces, maintained a state of existence the most wretched that can
be conceived. They lived in cabins built of mud, imperfectly covered
with sods and straw, consisting generally of one room, without any
window, with a chimney which admitted the rain, but did not carry
off the smoke. They had little or nothing that deserved the name of
furniture; their food consisted of potatoes and salt, with milk or a
herring sometimes as a luxury; their wages, when they got work, were
only sixpence or fourpence a day. They subsisted on small patches of
land, which were continually subdivided as the children got married,
the population at the same time multiplying with astonishing rapidity.
When the potatoes and the turf failed, towards summer, the men went
off to seek harvest work in the low lands and richer districts of the
country, and in England and Scotland. The women, locking up the doors,
set forth with the children to beg, the youngest of the lot being
wrapped up in blankets, and carried on their backs. They passed on from
parish to parish, getting a night's lodging, as they proceeded, in a
chimney corner or in a barn, from the better part of the peasantry and
farmers, who shared with them their potatoes, and gave them "a lock of
straw" to sleep on. Thus they migrated from county to county, eastward
and northward, towards the sea, lazily reposing in the sunshine by the
wayside, their children enjoying a wild kind of gipsy freedom, but
growing up in utter ignorance, uncared for by anybody, unrecognised
by the clergy of any church. The great proprietors were for the most
part absentees, who had let their lands, generally in large tracts,
to "middlemen," a sort of small gentry, or "squireens," as they
were called, who sublet at a rack-rent to the peasantry. Upon these
rack-rented, ignorant cultivators of the soil fell a great portion
of the burden of supporting the Established clergy, as well as their
own priesthood. The tithes were levied exclusively off tillage, the
rector or vicar claiming by law a tenth of the crop, which was valued
by his "tithe proctors," and unless compounded for in money, which was
generally done by the "strong farmers," before the crop left the field,
the tenth sheaf must have been set aside to be borne away on the carts
of the Protestant clergyman, who was regarded by the people that thus
supported him as the teacher of heresy.

Perhaps there is no cause from which Ireland has suffered more than
from misrepresentations. Nowhere have the want of discrimination,
and due allowance for the extravagant exaggerations of vehement
partisans, been more pernicious. There were in the reign of George
IV. no evils in Ireland which would not have yielded to the action of
just and impartial government, removing real grievances, and extending
to the people, in a confiding spirit, the blessings of the British
Constitution, in the spirit of Lord Wellesley's administration. He
had to contend, indeed, with peculiar difficulties. Ireland shared
largely in the general distress of the United Kingdom, occasioned by
the contraction of the currency, and the consequent low prices of
agricultural produce. He found a great portion of the south in a state
of licentiousness, surpassing the worst excesses of former unhappy
times; he had to deal with dangerous and secret conspiracies in other
parts of the country. He applied the energies of his powerful mind to
master these complicated difficulties in the spirit of conciliation
which had been enjoined in the king's instructions. He explored
every dangerous and untried path, and he laboured diligently, by the
equal administration of the laws, to promote peace and happiness
among all classes of the people. He succeeded to a great extent in
accomplishing the object of his administration. Mr. Plunket, the Irish
Attorney-General, in his speech on unlawful societies, in the House
of Commons, in February, 1825, described the country as in a state of
peace and prosperity. She had been enabled, by the noble lord at the
head of the Government, and by the measures which he had matured, to
enjoy the blessings which were the offspring of internal tranquillity.
Those measures had been properly administered, and public confidence
had been in consequence restored. "It was a great blessing," he said,
"it was a most gratifying object, to behold that country now floating
on the tide of public confidence and public prosperity. She was lying
on the breakers, almost a wreck, when the noble marquis arrived; and if
he had not taken the measures which have been so successfully adopted,
she never could have floated on that tide of public prosperity."

The Attorney-General defied the enemies of the administration to point
out a single instance in which the Viceroy had deviated from the line
of strict impartiality, yet he was the object of most virulent attacks
by the fanatical members of the Orange societies in Dublin, and by the
Orange press. Their animosity was excited to the utmost by a proceeding
which he adopted with reference to the statue of King William III. in
College Green. For some years a set of low persons, connected with
the Orange lodges, had been in the habit of bedaubing the statue
with ridiculous painting and tawdry orange colours, with a fantastic
drapery of orange scarves. The Catholics believed that this was done
with the avowed purpose of insulting them, and they thought that they
had as much right to undress as others had to dress a public statue.
On one occasion, therefore, they painted King William with lampblack.
Consequently, on the 12th of July, 1822, a serious riot occurred, in
the course of which lives were endangered, the tranquillity of the
metropolis was disturbed, and evil passions of the most furious kind
were engendered in the minds of the parties. As the peace must be
preserved, the only course was to put an end to those senseless brawls
by ordering that no unauthorised parties should presume to put their
hands on a public monument, either for the purpose of decorating or
defiling it. But this judicious order the Orangemen felt to be a wrong,
which should be resented and avenged by driving Lord Wellesley out
of the country. Accordingly, certain members of the Orange Society,
amounting to nearly one hundred, entered into a conspiracy to mob him
in the theatre. They were supplied with pit-tickets, and assembling
early at the door, they rushed in, and took possession of the seat
immediately under the Viceregal box. Other parties of them went to
the galleries. They agreed upon the watchword, "Look out." They had
previously printed handbills, which were freely distributed in and
about the theatre, containing insulting expressions, such as "Down
with the Popish Government!" Before the Viceroy arrived, they had been
crying for groans for the "Popish Lord-Lieutenant," for the house of
Wellesley, for the Duke of Wellington. When the marquis arrived he was
received with general cheering, that overbore the Orange hisses; but
during the playing of the National Anthem the offensive noise became so
alarming that some of the audience left the theatre. At this moment a
bottle was flung from one of the galleries, which was supposed to be
aimed at the head of the Lord-Lieutenant, and which fell near his box.

Some of the offenders in this "Bottle Riot," as it was called, were
prosecuted. Bills against them were sent up to the grand jury of the
city of Dublin. But as this body had a strong Orange animus, the
bills were thrown out. Mr. Plunket then proceeded by _ex-officio_
informations, which raised a great outcry against the Government, as
having violated the Constitution, and a resolution to that effect
was moved by Mr. Brownlow in the House of Commons. It turned out,
however, that his predecessor, Mr. Saurin, one of his most vehement
accusers, who alleged that the course was altogether unprecedented,
had himself established the precedent ten or twelve years before.
Forgetting this fact, he denounced the conduct of Mr. Plunket as "the
most flagrant violation of constitutional principle that had ever been
attempted." The trial in the Court of Queen's Bench, which commenced
on February 3rd, 1823, produced the greatest possible excitement.
The ordinary occupations of life appeared to be laid aside in the
agitating expectation of the event. As soon as the doors were opened,
one tremendous rush of the waiting multitude filled in an instant the
galleries, and every avenue of the court. The result of the trial was,
that the jury disagreed, the traversers were let out on bail, the
Attorney-General threatening to prosecute again; but the proceedings
were never revived.

But in the midst of all this strife and turmoil the work of real
amelioration steadily proceeded. The tithe proctor system was a great
and galling grievance to Protestants as well as Roman Catholics, but
especially to the latter, who constituted the mass of the tillers of
the soil. Such an odious impost tended to discourage cultivation, and
throw the land into pasture. The Tithe Commutation Act was therefore
passed in order to enable the tenant to pay a yearly sum, instead of
having the tenth of his crop carried away in kind, or its equivalent
levied, according to the valuation of the minister's proctor. It was
proposed to make the Act compulsory upon all rectors, but this was so
vehemently resisted by the Church party that it was left optional. If
the measure had been compulsory, the anti-tithe war, which afterwards
occurred, accompanied by violence and bloodshed, would have been
avoided. It was, however, carried into operation to a large extent,
and with the most satisfactory results. Within a few months after
the enactment, more than one thousand applications had been made
from parishes to carry its requirements into effect. In 1824, on the
motion of Mr. Hume for an inquiry into the condition of the Irish
Church Establishment, with a view to its reduction, Mr. Leslie Foster
furnished statistics from which it appeared that the proportion of
Roman Catholics to Protestants was four to one. In Ulster, at that
time, the Roman Catholic population was little more than half the
number of Protestants.

The year 1824 is memorable in Ireland for the establishment of the
Catholic Association. The Catholic question had lain dormant since
the Union. Ireland remained in a state of political stupor. There was
a Catholic committee, indeed, under the direction of a gentleman of
property, Mr. John Keogh, of Mount Jerome, near Dublin. But his voice
was feeble, and seldom heard. The councils of the Roman Catholics
were much distracted. Many of the bishops, and most of the gentry,
recommended prudence and patience as the best policy. Liberal statesmen
in England were willing to make concessions, but the conscientious
scruples of George III. had presented an insuperable barrier in the way
of civil equality. There was an annual motion on the subject--first by
Grattan, then by Plunket, and lastly by Burdett; but it attracted very
little attention, till the formidable power of the Catholic Association
excited general alarm for the stability of British institutions.
Adverting to the past history of Ireland--her geographical position,
her social state in respect of the tenure of property, and the numbers
of the respective religious denominations of her people--the ablest
Conservative statesmen considered that it would be extremely difficult
to reconcile the perfect equality of civil privilege, or rather the
_bonâ fide_ practical application of that principle, with those objects
on the inviolable maintenance of which the friends and opponents of
Catholic Emancipation were completely agreed--namely, the Legislative
Union and the Established Church. There was the danger of abolishing
tests which had been established for the express purpose of giving
to the legislature a Protestant character--tests which had been
established not upon vague constitutional theories, but after practical
experience of the evils which had been inflicted and the dangers
which had been incurred by the struggles for ascendency at periods
not remote from the present. There was the danger that the removal of
civil disabilities might materially alter the relations in which the
Roman Catholics stood to the State. Sir Robert Peel, in his "Memoirs,"
recites those difficulties at length, and in all their force. He fully
admits that "the Protestant interest" had an especial claim upon his
devotion and his faithful service, from the part which he had uniformly
taken on the Catholic question, from the confidence reposed in him on
that account, and from his position in Parliament as the representative
of the University of Oxford.

[Illustration: MR. HUSKISSON.]

Peel then shows how, and under what constraining sense of duty, he
responded to that claim: "And if the duty which that acknowledged claim
imposed upon me were this--that in a crisis of extreme difficulty
I should calmly contemplate and compare the dangers with which the
Protestant interest was threatened from different quarters--that I
should advise a course which I believe to be the least unsafe--that
having advised and adopted, I should resolutely adhere to it--that
I should disregard every selfish consideration--that I should
prefer obloquy and reproach to the aggravation of existing evils,
by concealing my real opinion, and by maintaining the false show
of personal consistency--if this were the duty imposed upon me,
I fearlessly assert that it was most faithfully and scrupulously
discharged."

The crisis of extreme difficulty to which Peel referred was occasioned
by the power acquired by the Catholic Association, which had originated
in the following manner. Early in 1823 Mr. O'Connell proposed to his
brother barrister, Mr. Sheil, and a party of friends who were dining
with Mr. O'Mara, at Glancullen, the plan of an association for the
management of the Catholic cause. At a general meeting of the Roman
Catholics, which took place in April, a resolution with the same design
was carried, and on Monday, the 12th of May, the first meeting of the
Catholic Association was held in Dempsey's Rooms, in Sackville Street,
Dublin. Subsequently it met at the house of a Catholic bookseller named
Coyne, and before a month had passed it was in active working order.
From these small beginnings it became, in the course of the year, one
of the most extensive, compact, and powerful popular organisations
the world had ever seen. Its influence ramified into every parish in
Ireland. It found a place and work for almost every member of the
Roman Catholic body; the peer, the lawyer, the merchant, the country
gentleman, the peasant, and, above all, the priest, had each his
task assigned him: getting up petitions, forming deputations to the
Government and to Parliament, conducting electioneering business,
watching over the administration of justice, collecting "the Catholic
rent," preparing resolutions, and making speeches at the meetings of
the Association, which were held every Monday at the Corn Exchange,
when everything in the remotest degree connected with the interests of
Roman Catholics or of Ireland was the subject of animating and exciting
discussion, conducted in the form of popular harangues, by barristers,
priests, merchants, and others. Voluminous correspondence was read by
the secretary, large sums of rent were handed in, fresh members were
enrolled, and speeches were made to a crowd of excited and applauding
people, generally composed of Dublin operatives and idlers. But as the
proceedings were fully reported in the public journals, the audience
may be said to have been the Irish nation. And over all, "the voice of
O'Connell, like some mighty minster bell, was heard through Ireland,
and the empire, and the world."

The objects of the Association were--"1st, to forward petitions to
Parliament; 2nd, to afford relief to Catholics assailed by Orange
lodges; 3rd, to encourage and support a liberal and independent press,
as well in Dublin as in London--such a press as might report faithfully
the arguments of their friends and refute the calumnies of their
enemies; 4th, to procure cheap publications for the various schools in
the country; 5th, to afford aid to Irish Catholics in America; and,
6th, to afford aid to the English Catholics." Such were the ostensible
objects, but more was aimed at than is here expressed. The Association
was formed on a plan different from other bodies in Ireland. It
proposed to redress all grievances, local or general, affecting the
people. It undertook as many questions as ever engaged the attention of
a legislature. "They undertook," said the Attorney-General Plunket,
"the great question of Parliamentary Reform; they undertook the repeal
of the Union; they undertook the regulation of Church property; they
undertook the administration of justice. They intended not merely to
consider the administration of justice, in the common acceptance of
the term; but they determined on the visitation of every court, from
that of the highest authority down to the court of conscience. They did
not stop here. They were not content with an interference with courts;
they were resolutely bent on interfering with the adjudication of every
cause which affected the Catholics, whom they styled 'the people of
Ireland.'"

The Association had become so formidable, and was yet so carefully kept
within the bounds of law by "Counsellor O'Connell," in whose legal
skill the Roman Catholics of all classes had unbounded confidence,
that the Government resolved to procure an Act of Parliament for its
suppression. Accordingly, on the 11th of February, 1825, a Bill was
brought into the House of Commons by the Irish Chief Secretary, Mr.
Goulburn, under the title of Unlawful Societies in Ireland Bill. The
plural form caused a great deal of debating. The Government declared
they wished to include the Orange Society as well as the Catholic
Association. But the Opposition had no faith in this declaration, and
Mr. Brougham stated that they would put down the Catholic Association
with one hand and pat the Orange Society on the back with the other.
The debates on the subject were very animated, and touched upon
constitutional questions of the widest interest to the public. The
Irish Attorney-General said he did not deny that if a set of gentlemen
thought fit to unite for those purposes, it was in their power to do
so; but then came the question as to the means which they employed,
and those means he denied to be constitutional. "They have," he said,
"associated with them the Catholic clergy, the Catholic nobility, many
of the Catholic gentry, and all the surviving delegates of 1791. They
have established committees in every district, who keep up an extensive
correspondence through the country. This Association, consisting
originally of a few members, has now increased to 3,000. They proceeded
to establish a Roman Catholic rent; and in every single parish, of the
2,500 parishes into which Ireland is divided, they appointed twelve
Roman Catholic collectors, which make an army of 30,000. Having this
their army of collectors, they brought to their assistance 2,500
priests, and the whole ecclesiastical body. And thus provided, they
go about levying contributions on the peasantry." This Mr. Plunket
pronounced to be unconstitutional, though not in the strict sense
illegal; the Association was a representative and a tax-levying body.
He denied that any portion of the subjects of this realm had a right
to give their suffrages to others, had a right to select persons
to speak their sentiments, to debate upon their grievances, and to
devise measures for their removal. This was the privilege alone of
the Commons of the United Kingdom. He would not allow that species of
power to anybody not subjected to proper control. But to whom were
those individuals accountable? Where was their responsibility? Who was
to check them? Who was to stop their progress? By whom were they to be
tried or rebuked if found acting mischievously? People not acquainted
with Ireland were not aware of the nature of this formidable instrument
of power, greater than the power of the sword. Individuals connected
with it went into every house and every family. They mixed in all the
relations of private life, and afterwards detailed what they heard with
the utmost freedom. The Attorney-General could not conceive a more
deadly instrument of tyranny than it was when it interfered with the
administration of justice. Claiming to represent six millions of the
people of Ireland, it denounced as a public enemy, and arraigned at the
bar of justice, any individual it chose to accuse of acting contrary
to the popular interest. Thus the grand inquest of the people were the
accusers, and there was an unlimited supply of money to carry on the
prosecution. The consequence was that magistrates were intimidated,
feeling that there was no alternative but to yield, or be overwhelmed
by the tide of fierce popular passions.

[Illustration: "SOLICITING A VOTE." FROM THE PAINTING BY R. W. BUSS,
1834.]

After a debate of four nights the second reading was carried by the
large majority of one hundred and fifty-five, the numbers being two
hundred and seventy-eight to one hundred and twenty-three. In the House
of Lords the numbers were nearly four to one in favour of the measure,
which was quickly passed into law. As soon as this fact was made
known in Ireland, Mr. O'Connell moved that the society be dissolved.
This was no sooner done than a new society was formed; and when the
Attorney-General returned to Ireland he found it in active operation.
It was in reference to this proceeding O'Connell boasted that he could
drive a coach-and-four through an Act of Parliament. It was declared
that the new Catholic Association should not assume, or in any manner
exercise, the power of acting for the purpose of obtaining redress of
grievances in Church or State, or any alteration in the law, or for
the purpose of carrying on or assisting in the prosecution or defence
of causes civil or criminal. Nothing could be more inoffensive or
agreeable than its objects, which were to promote peace, harmony,
and tranquillity; to encourage a liberal and enlightened system of
education; to ascertain the population of Ireland, and the comparative
numbers of different persuasions; to devise means of erecting suitable
Catholic places of worship; to encourage Irish agriculture and
manufactures, and to publish refutations of the charges against the
Catholics. Such was the new platform; but the speeches were of the same
defiant and belligerent strain as before. The speakers still prayed
that God Almighty would increase the dissensions and differences of the
Government, and rejoiced in the inspiring prospect of a cloud bursting
on England from the North, where Russia had 1,300,000 men in arms.

On the 1st of March Sir Francis Burdett presented a Catholic petition,
and in a speech of great eloquence and force moved for the appointment
of a committee to inquire into the grievances of which it complained.
The question thus brought before the House of Commons was one on which
the Cabinet was divided. Canning had come down to the House from a
sick bed, and on a crutch, to give his support to the motion. Plunket
delivered one of his most powerful speeches on the same side. Peel
took upon himself the heavy task of replying to both. He was supported
by Mr. Leslie Foster. Brougham closed the debate; and the motion was
carried by a majority of thirteen, amid loud cheers. Resolutions
were adopted, and a Bill founded upon them passed the Commons, but
it was lost in the Upper House, where it was thrown out, on the 19th
of May, by a majority of sixty-five. It was on that occasion that
the Duke of York, then heir presumptive to the Throne, made the
celebrated declaration against all concession to the Catholics, which
excited against him intense animosity in Ireland. At the conclusion
of a vehement speech he said:--"If I have expressed myself warmly,
especially in the latter part of what I have said, I must appeal to
your lordships' generosity. I feel the subject most forcibly; but it
affects me the more deeply when I recollect that to its agitation
must be ascribed that severe illness and ten years of misery which
had clouded the existence of my beloved father. I shall therefore
conclude with assuring your lordships that I have uttered my honest
and conscientious sentiments, founded upon principles I have imbibed
from my earliest youth, to the justice of which I have subscribed after
careful consideration in maturer years; and these are the principles
to which I will adhere, and which I will maintain, and that up to the
latest moment of my existence, whatever may be my situation of life, so
help me God!"

It was not Protestants only that were alarmed at the democratic
movement which was guided by O'Connell. The Roman Catholic peers, both
in England and Ireland, shared their apprehensions. Lord Redesdale,
writing to Lord Eldon, said:--"I learn that Lord Fingall and others,
Catholics of English blood, are alarmed at the present state of things,
and they may well be alarmed. If a revolution were to happen in
Ireland, it would be in the end an Irish revolution, and no Catholic of
English blood would fare better than a Protestant of English blood. So
said Lord Castlehaven, an Irish Catholic of English blood, one hundred
and seventy years ago, and so said a Roman Catholic, confidentially to
me, above twenty years ago. The question is not simply Protestant and
Catholic, but English and Irish; and the great motive of action will be
hatred of the Sassenach, inflamed by the priests."

Apprehensions of this kind were not lessened by the memorable speech
of Mr. Canning, delivered on the 15th of February, in which he gave
a narrative of his labours and sacrifices in the Catholic cause,
and complained of the exactions and ingratitude of its leaders.
Having shown how he stood by the cause in the worst of times, he
proceeded:--"Sir, I have always refused to act in obedience to the
dictates of the Catholic leaders; I would never put myself into their
hands, and I never will.... Much as I have wished to serve the Catholic
cause, I have seen that the service of the Catholic leaders is no easy
service. They are hard taskmasters, and the advocate who would satisfy
them must deliver himself up to them bound hand and foot.... But to
be taunted with a want of feeling for the Catholics, to be accused of
compromising their interests, conscious as I am--as I cannot but be--of
being entitled to their gratitude for a long course of active services,
and for the sacrifice to their cause of interests of my own--this is a
sort of treatment which would rouse even tameness itself to assert its
honour and vindicate its claims."

Parliament was prorogued on the 31st of May, 1826, and two days
afterwards dissolved. It had nearly run its course. It was the sixth
Session, which had been abridged with a view of getting through
the general election at a convenient season. But though short, the
Session had much work to show of one kind or another, including
some useful legislation. The Parliamentary papers printed occupied
twenty-nine folio volumes, exclusive of the journals and votes. The
Parliament whose existence was now terminated had, indeed, effected
the most important changes in the policy of Great Britain, foreign and
domestic. Mr. Canning had severed the connection, unnatural as it was
damaging, between England and the Holy Alliance. The Government of the
freest country in the world, presenting almost the only example of a
constitution in which the power of the people was represented, was no
longer to be associated in the councils of a conclave of despots; and
this change of direction in its foreign policy was cordially adopted by
the House of Commons and by the nation. Another great and vital change
in national policy was the partial admission of the principles of Free
Trade, which the Tories regarded, not without reason, as effecting
a complete revolution, which extended its influence to the whole
legislation and government.

[Illustration: ELECTION MEETING IN IRELAND. (_See p._ 254.)]

In one respect the general election happened at an unseasonable time.
It was the driest and warmest summer on record. On the 28th of June,
the hottest day in the year, the thermometer stood at eighty-nine
and a half degrees in the shade. Several deaths were occasioned
by sunstroke; among the victims were a son of Earl Grey, and Mr.
Butterworth, the eminent law bookseller, a candidate for Dover. The
elections were carried on in many places with great spirit. But, though
there were exciting contests, the struggles were not for parties, but
for measures. There were three great questions at issue before the
nation, and with respect to these pledges were exacted. The principal
were the Corn Laws, Catholic Emancipation, and the Slave Trade. In
England and Wales one hundred and thirty-three members were returned
who had never before sat in Parliament. This large infusion of new
blood showed that the constituencies were in earnest. In Ireland the
contests turned chiefly on the Catholic question. The organisation
of the Catholic Association told now with tremendous effect. In
every parish the populace were so excited by inflammatory harangues,
delivered in the chapel on Sundays, after public worship, both by
priests and laymen--the altar being converted into a platform--that
irresistible pressure was brought to bear upon the Roman Catholic
electors. The "forty-shilling freeholders" had been multiplied to an
enormous extent by the landlords for electioneering purposes. Roman
Catholic candidates being out of the question, and the Tory interest
predominant in Ireland, electioneering contests had been hitherto
in reality less political than personal. They had been contests for
pre-eminence between great rival families; consequently, farms were cut
up into small holdings, because a cabin and a potato garden gave a man
who was little better than a pauper an interest which he could swear
was to him worth forty shillings a year. The Protestant landlords who
pursued this selfish course little dreamt that the political power they
thus created would be turned with terrible effect against themselves;
and they could scarcely realise their position when, in county after
county, they were driven from the representation, which some of them
regarded as an inheritance almost as secure as their estates. The most
powerful family in Ireland, and the most influential in the Government,
was that of the Beresfords, whose principal estates lay in the county
Waterford, and where no one would imagine that their candidate could
be opposed with the least prospect of success. But on this occasion
they suffered a signal defeat. The forty-shilling freeholders, as well
as the better class of Roman Catholic farmers, were so excited by the
contest that they went almost to a man against their landlords. In many
cases they had got their holdings at low rents on the express condition
that their vote should be at the disposal of the landlord. But all such
obligations were given to the winds. They followed their priests from
every parish to the hustings, surrounded and driven forward by a mass
of non-electors armed with sticks and shouting for their church and
their country. O'Connell was now in his glory, everywhere directing
the storm which he had raised. When the contest was over, many of the
landlords retaliated by evicting the tenants who had betrayed their
trust and forfeited their pledges. They were tauntingly told that they
might go for the means of living to O'Connell and the priests. This was
a new ingredient in the cauldron of popular discontent, disaffection,
and agrarian crime. The gain of the Catholic party in Ireland, however,
was more than counterbalanced by the gain of the opposite party in
England and Scotland.

The new Parliament met on the 14th of November. Mr. Manners Sutton
was re-elected Speaker. A week was spent in the swearing-in of
members, and on the 21st the Session was opened by the king in person.
In the Royal Speech allusion was made to the throwing open of the
ports for the admission of foreign grain, and the distress that had
visited the manufacturing districts. The Address was carried in the
Upper House without a division, and in the Lower House an amendment,
moved by Mr. Hume, found only twenty-four supporters. On the 5th of
December Alderman Waithman moved for a committee of inquiry with
reference to the part taken by members of Parliament in the Joint
Stock mania of 1824-5-6. He stated that within the last three years
six hundred joint-stock companies had been formed, most of them for
dishonest purposes. The directors of these fraudulent schemes worked
with the market as they pleased, forcing up the prices of shares to
sell, and depressing them to buy, pocketing the difference. He dwelt
particularly on the Arignon Mining Company, of which the late chairman
of the Committee of Ways and Means, Mr. Brogden, had been a director.
The directors of this company, besides an allowance of three guineas
per day for the use of their names, had divided between them a large
surplus, arising from traffic in shares. Other members of the House,
he alleged, had enriched themselves by bubble companies, particularly
Sir William Congreve. At the suggestion of Mr. Canning, the inquiry
was restricted to the Arignon Company. A vast amount of loss and
suffering had been inflicted by these bubble companies. A check was
given to the steady and wholesome progress of the country by the fever
of excitement, followed by a sudden and terrible collapse. Healthful
commerce was blighted, and one of the worst results of the revulsion
was that it not only swept away the delusive projects of adventurers,
but paralysed for a season the operations of legitimate enterprise.
The commercial atmosphere, however, had been cleared by the monetary
crisis of 1825-6. An extensive decomposition of commercial elements was
effected. Masses of fictitious property were dispersed, and much of the
real capital of the country was distributed in new and safe channels,
which caused the year 1827 to open with more cheering prospects.

The Duke of York did not long survive his vehement declaration against
the concession of the Catholic claims. His vow that he would never
permit the Emancipation to take place, whatever might be his future
position--alluding to his probable accession to the Throne--embittered
the feelings of the Irish Roman Catholics against him. His disease
was dropsy, and Mr. Sheil, at a public dinner, jeeringly referred to
the "rotundity of his configuration." Mr. O'Connell, with equally
bad taste, exulted in the prospect of his dissolution, and said, "I
wish no physical ill to the royal duke; but if he has thrown his oath
in the way of our liberties, and that, as long as he lives, justice
shall not be done to the people of Ireland, it is a mockery to tell
me that the people of Ireland have not an interest in his ceasing
to live. Death is the corrector of human errors; it is said to be
man's hour for repentance, and God's opportunity. If the royal duke
should not become converted from his political errors, I am perfectly
resigned to the will of God, and shall abide the result with the most
Christian resignation." The duke's bodily sufferings increased very
much towards the end of 1826, and in December the disease manifested
the most alarming symptoms. He continued to the last to discharge his
duties as Commander-in-Chief. His professional zeal flashed out even
on his death-bed. At a time when his breathing was so oppressed that
it was necessary to support him with pillows in an upright position,
he personally gave all the orders, and directed all the arrangements,
for the expedition which left England in the middle of December, when
the peace of Europe was in imminent danger from the threatened invasion
of Portugal. Notwithstanding his dislike to Canning, in consequence of
their difference on the Catholic question, he co-operated with him in
this matter with an earnestness and vigour which the Duke of Wellington
himself could not have surpassed. On the 5th of January, 1827, he died.

The occasion for the Portuguese expedition arose in this way: bands
of Portuguese rebels, armed, equipped, and trained in Spain, at the
instigation of France, passed the Spanish frontier, carrying terror
and devastation into their own country, crossing the boundary at
different points, and proclaiming different pretenders to the throne of
Portugal. Had Spain employed mercenaries to effect the invasion, there
could not be a doubt of its hostile character. Portugal then enjoyed a
constitutional government, under the regency of the infant daughter of
the King of Brazil. The Absolutist party had proclaimed Don Miguel, the
King of Brazil's younger brother. During the civil war the rebels had
been driven into Spain, where they were welcomed with ardour, equipped
afresh, and sent back to maintain the cause of Absolutism in the
Portuguese dominions. England was bound by treaty to assist Portugal
in any such emergency. Her aid was demanded accordingly, and, averse
as Mr. Canning was from war, and from intervention in the affairs of
foreign states, he rendered the assistance required with the utmost
promptitude. On Friday, December 3rd, the Portuguese ambassador made a
formal demand of assistance against a hostile aggression from Spain.
Canning answered that, though he had heard rumours to that effect,
he had not yet received such precise information as justified him in
applying to Parliament. It was only on Friday that that information
arrived. On Saturday the Cabinet came to a decision; on Sunday
the decision received the sanction of the king; on Monday it was
communicated to both Houses of Parliament, and on Tuesday the troops
were on their march for embarkation. The expedition arrived at Lisbon
in good time, and had the desired effect of restoring tranquillity and
preventing war--that "war of opinions" which Canning so much dreaded.
It was on this occasion that Canning delivered the magnificent oration
which electrified the House and the country. No speech in Parliament
had ever before produced such an effect. Only a man of splendid genius
and intense sympathy, placed in a position to wield the force of a
great nation, could have delivered such a speech or produced such an
effect. "The situation of England," he said, "amidst the struggle of
political opinions which agitates more or less sensibly different
countries of the world, may be compared to that of the ruler of the
winds--

                                'Celsa sedet Æolus arce,
    Sceptra tenens; mollitque animos et temperat iras;
    Ni faciat, maria ac terras cœlumque profundum
    Quippe ferant rapidi secum verrantque per auras.'

"The consequence of letting loose the passions at present chained and
confined would be to produce a scene of desolation which no man can
contemplate without horror, and I would not sleep easy on my couch if
I were conscious that I had contributed to accelerate it by a single
moment. This is the reason why I dread the recurrence of hostilities in
any part of Europe; why I would forbear long on any point which did not
taint the national honour, ere I let slip the dogs of war, the leash
of which we hold in our hands, not knowing whom they may reach, or
how far their ravages may be carried. Such is the love of peace which
the British Government acknowledges, and such the necessity for peace
which the circumstances of the world inculcate. Let us fly to the aid
of Portugal, because it is our duty to do so; and let us cease our
interference when that duty ends. We go to Portugal not to rule, not
to dictate, not to prescribe constitutions, but to defend and preserve
the independence of an ally. We go to plant the standard of England
on the well-known heights of Lisbon. Where that standard is planted,
foreign dominion shall not come." The House received this speech with
tumultuous applause, and refused to listen to the objections that Mr.
Hume and others wished to urge against the expedition on the score
of economy. In the Upper House also the Government was sustained by
an overwhelming majority. The expedition, consisting of six thousand
men, received orders to march (as we have seen) on the 11th of
December, and began to land in Lisbon on Christmas Day. The incursions
from Spain immediately ceased, and France, which had instigated and
secretly encouraged the movement, now found it prudent to disclaim all
connection with it. Before eighteen months had elapsed the troops had
returned.

Toryism had now lost two of its main pillars, the Marquis of
Londonderry and the Duke of York. They had worked together for many
years, one directing the foreign policy of the country while sustaining
the chief burden of a great war against France, the other at the head
of the British army, whose valour ultimately triumphed at Waterloo.
A third of those pillars, Lord Liverpool, was now struck down; and
the fourth, Lord Eldon, was not destined to survive very long. On the
17th of February a stroke of paralysis terminated the public life
of the Prime Minister, though he survived till December 4th in the
following year (1828). He was born in 1770, and as Mr. Jenkinson and
Lord Hawkesbury had been a firm supporter of Mr. Pitt; his Premiership
commenced on June 9th, 1812. He had acquired from his father an
extensive knowledge of monetary and commercial affairs, and this,
combined with the experience of a protracted official career, gave
him a great advantage in Parliament, making him master of the leading
principles and facts. Amiable, exemplary, frank, and disinterested
in his private character, he secured the attachment of his friends,
and conciliated the good-will of his political opponents. He was
not distinguished for superior statesmanship, power in debate, or
originality of mind; but as a political leader he was what is called a
safe man--cautious, moderate, plausible, and conciliatory. His Cabinet
was weakened by division, the most agitating topic of the day being an
open question with its members--Eldon, Wellington, and Peel voting with
him on one side, Canning and his friends on the other. His practical
wisdom was shown in so far yielding to the spirit of the times as to
admit Mr. Canning into the Cabinet on the death of Lord Londonderry,
though he found great difficulty in overcoming the repugnance of the
king to this arrangement. In the same spirit he had admitted the
Grenvilles to a responsible share in the Administration. Had he been
a man of more decision of character and more energetic will, he would
have been more one-sided and straightforward, and that would not have
suited a time of great transition and changes of political currents.
During his long tenure of office new ideas were fermenting in the
public mind. The people had become impatient of class legislation,
and were loudly demanding greater influence in the legislation of
the country, greater security for their rights, and freer scope for
their industry. They had the most powerful advocates in the press
and in Parliament, where Henry Brougham stood foremost among their
champions, incessantly battling for their cause. The Conservatives were
entrenched behind the bulwarks of monopoly, which were assailed with
a frequency and determination that, it was foreseen by the wisest of
their defenders, nothing could ultimately resist. Lord Liverpool, with
great tact and prudence, managed to postpone the hour of surrender so
long as he was in command of the fortress. He had yielded one outwork
after another, when resistance was no longer possible, but the value
of his services in retaining the rest was not fully appreciated till
he was disabled and placed _hors de combat_. Without any far-reaching
sagacity, he could estimate the relative value of existing social and
political forces, and, weighing all the circumstances, determine what
was the best thing to be done, the best of several courses to adopt
here and now. He felt that Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary
Reform might be still safely resisted, and here he was loyal to his
party; but on questions of currency, Free Trade, and navigation, he
went readily with his Liberal supporters.

[Illustration: LISBON.]

When he was removed, it was evident that the temporising system would
do no longer. The head of the Cabinet must take one side or the
other. The Prime Minister must be a friend or an enemy of progress--a
Reformer or an anti-Reformer. In these circumstances the king had
great difficulty in forming an Administration. The prostration of
Lord Liverpool had come upon the political world "with the force of
an earthquake," convulsing parties in the most violent and singular
manner, and completely changing the aspect of affairs at Court and in
the State. The Sovereign had before him, on one hand, Mr. Canning,
the leader of the House of Commons, the most popular Minister, the
most brilliant statesman in England since the days of Pitt. How could
he put aside his claims to be Prime Minister? On the Tory side there
was no statesman to whom the post could be safely entrusted. If Eldon
could be kept in his place as Lord Chancellor, it was as much as could
be expected at his time of life. The Duke of Wellington's military
character, as well as his anti-Catholic feeling, prevented his being
placed at the head of an Administration. Mr. Peel was considered too
young to occupy so great a position. The latter was consulted, and
gave it as his opinion that an anti-Catholic Ministry could not be
formed. The issue was, that, after a fortnight's anxious suspense
and difficulty, the king entrusted Mr. Canning with the formation of
a Ministry. The task which he undertook was extremely delicate and
difficult. He was greatly disliked by the chiefs of both parties.
He belonged to no old aristocratic house. He had risen to the first
position in the State by his genius and industry, by the wise and
beneficent application of the most brilliant and commanding talents.
These excited intense jealousy among those whose principal merit
consisted in hereditary rank. When he had received the king's orders,
though aware of their feelings towards him, he dealt with them in a
frank and generous spirit. He wrote to his colleagues individually,
courteously expressing his desire that the public service might
still enjoy the advantages to be derived from the exercise of their
administrative talents. Most of them answered evasively, pretending
that they did not know who was to be Prime Minister, and postponing
their decision till they had received that information. As soon as
they learnt that they were to serve under Mr. Canning, the entire
Administration, with very few exceptions, resigned. Mr. Peel did not
share the antipathies of his aristocratic colleagues. Mr. Canning
declared that he was the only seceding member of the Government that
behaved well to him at this time; and so high was his opinion of that
gentleman that he considered him to be his only rightful political
heir and successor. He was not deceived on either of those points.
Mr Peel, writing confidentially to Lord Eldon, on the 9th of April,
expressed his feelings frankly, and they did him honour. His earnest
wish was to see the Government retained on the footing on which it
stood at the time of Lord Liverpool's misfortune. He was content with
his own position as Home Secretary. Though differing from every one of
his colleagues in the House of Commons on the Catholic question, he
esteemed and respected them, and would consider it a great misfortune
were his Majesty to lose the services of any of them, "but particularly
of Canning." He was willing to retire alone if the rest of his
colleagues, who did not feel the same difficulty, would consent to hold
office with Canning. He advised the king that an exclusive Protestant
Government could not be formed. He also said that he was out of the
question as the head of a Government under the arrangement that he
considered the best that could be made, namely, the reconstruction of
the late Administration, "because it was quite impossible for Canning
to acquiesce in his appointment." He was, however, ready to give
Canning's Government his general support.

On the 10th of April, when Mr. Canning kissed hands as First Lord of
the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, he found himself deserted
by the Duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, Mr. Peel, Lords Bathurst,
Melville, and Westmoreland. The members of the Cabinet who finally
adhered to him were Lord Harrowby, Mr. Huskisson, Mr. Wynne, and Mr.
Robinson, afterwards Lord Goderich, who had become Secretary of the
Colonial Department, with the lead of the Government in the House of
Lords. Having received the resignations, and presented them to the
king, Mr. Canning said:--"Here, sire, is that which disables me from
executing the orders I have received from you respecting the formation
of a new Administration. It is now open to your Majesty to adopt a
new course; for no step has yet been taken in the execution of those
orders that is irrecoverable." He added, that if he was to go on, his
writ must be moved for that day, which was the last before the Easter
recess. The king at once gave him his hand to kiss, and confirmed
the appointment. Two hours afterwards the House was ringing with
acclamations while Mr. Wynne was moving that a new writ be issued for
the borough of Newport in consequence of the Right Honourable George
Canning having accepted the office of First Lord of the Treasury. This
was a result which Lord Eldon did not anticipate. He evidently expected
that Canning would be foiled in his attempt to form a Ministry. He
wrote, "Who could have thought it? I guess that I, Wellington, Peel,
Bathurst, Westmoreland, and C. will be out." Again he says, "The whole
conversation in town is made up of abusive, bitterly abusive, talk of
people about each other--all fire and flame. I have known nothing like
it." Elsewhere he remarks, "I think political enmity runs higher and
waxes warmer than I ever knew it."

The irritation arose from the fact that the force of public opinion was
wresting political power from the families that had so long held it in
well-assured possession as their hereditary right. Mr. Canning appeared
before them as the man in whom that opinion had triumphed--who, by his
own talents and merit alone, had risen to the first position in the
State, to be, in fact, the chief ruler, the acting Sovereign of the
empire. Hence the mortification, hence the factious wrath that was
poured upon his devoted head. They succeeded in victimising a statesman
of whom, as Englishmen, they ought to have been proud, vainly hoping
that they could thereby maintain the domination of their order in
the Government of the country. They were aware that the state of Mr.
Canning's health was not good. He had all the exquisite sensibility
as well as the pride of genius. His finely strung nervous system had
been overwrought by incessant labour and anxiety, and irritated by
the unworthy and unmerited attacks to which he had been subjected.
He suppressed his feelings with a manly self-control, and a noble
disdain of the mean and virulent assaults upon him. But he felt keenly,
nevertheless, and the more carefully he hid the wounds of his mind, the
more fatally the poisoned shafts rankled within.

The new Premier, however, was resolute, and persevered with his
arrangements. He found an excellent successor to Lord Eldon, as
Chancellor, in Sir John Copley, the Master of the Rolls, who was
created Lord Lyndhurst. Mr. Peel, as Home Secretary, was succeeded by
Mr. Sturges Bourne, who retired after a few weeks to make way for the
Marquis of Lansdowne. He represented a section of the Whigs, prominent
among whom were Brougham, Tierney and Burdett, who gave their support
to the Ministry. The Duke of Clarence succeeded Lord Melville as
First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Marquis of Anglesey the Duke of
Wellington as Master-General of the Ordnance. Viscount Palmerston was
appointed the Secretary at War, with which office he commenced his
long, brilliant, and popular career as a Cabinet Minister. The new
Master of the Rolls was Sir John Leech, the Attorney-General Sir James
Scarlett, and the Solicitor-General Sir N. Tindal. Mr. Lamb, afterwards
Lord Melbourne, succeeded Mr. Goulburn as Chief Secretary of Ireland.

These three events--the death of the Duke of York, the appointment
of Mr. Canning as Prime Minister, and the entire remodelling of the
Cabinet on Liberal principles--succeeding one another so rapidly
in the early months of 1827, were regarded as the turning-points
in the modern history of England, and fraught with most momentous
consequences. The first changed the Heir-Apparent to the Throne, and
for an obstinate bigot substituted a prince of popular sympathies. The
second represented the triumph of intellect and public opinion over
rank and monopoly. "Changes so vast," writes Sir Archibald Alison,
"could not fail to exercise a powerful influence on the course of
events in future times. The magnitude of the change appeared in the
most decided manner when the Ministerial explanations usual in such
cases took place in Parliament. Both Houses were crowded to excess,
both in the highest degree excited, but the excitement in the two
was as different as the poles are asunder: in the Commons it was the
triumph of victory, in the Peers the consternation of defeat. So
clearly was this evinced that it obliterated for a time the deep lines
of party distinction, and brought the two Houses, almost as hostile
bodies united under different standards, into the presence of each
other. The Commons rang with acclamations when the new Premier made
his triumphant explanation from the head of the Ministerial bench;
but they were still louder when Mr. Peel, from the cross benches, out
of office, said, 'They may call me illiberal and Tory, but it will be
found that some of the most necessary measures of useful legislation
of late years are inscribed with my name.' The tide of reform had
become so strong that even the avowed Tory leaders in the Lower House
were fain to take credit by sailing along with it. In the House of
Lords, on the other hand, the feeling of the majority was decidedly
hostile to the new Administration, and that not merely on the Tory
benches, where it might naturally have been looked for, but among the
old Whig nobility, who had long considered Government as an appendage
of their estates. It was hard to say whether the old peers on both
sides responded more strongly to the Duke of Wellington's and Lord
Eldon's explanation of their reasons for declining to hold office, or
to Earl Grey's powerful and impassioned attack on the new Premier. The
division of the two Houses was clearly pronounced; the one presaged its
approaching triumph, the other its coming downfall. The secret sense of
coming change had raised their numbers in unwonted combinations, and
the vital distinction of interest and order had for the time superseded
the old divisions of party."

Mr. Canning had now attained the highest summit to which the ambition
of a British subject can aspire. With the acclamation of the
country and of the House of Commons, he had taken the first place
in the Government of the empire, to which he had raised himself by
his talents and his merit alone, surmounting as he rose the most
formidable impediments, aristocratic antipathies, class interests, and
royal dislike. He was the idol of the nation, and not only in Great
Britain, but throughout the world, his fame shone brightest of all
the public men of his age. His name was associated with the triumph
of Liberal principles throughout Europe and America; he was at the
head of a strong Government, and he had conciliated the good-will of
his Sovereign. Such a combination of what are usually regarded as the
elements of human happiness has rarely, if ever, been known in the
history of England, where alone such a phenomenon could occur. As a man
of genius, as an orator, as a political leader, he enjoyed a reputation
and a degree of success which in any one of these capacities would be
regarded by the majority of men as the acme of human felicity. But
in addition to these he enjoyed a position and wielded a power with
which many great men have been content, without the brilliant halo of
glory with which, in Canning's case, they were surrounded. But it is a
singular and humbling illustration of the vanity of human wishes and
human glory, that this great man was, after all, unhappy, and that the
political enemies he had vanquished had the power of bringing him to
an early grave. The Whig and Tory lords studied in every way to wound
the proud spirit, which they knew to be extremely sensitive. They
scowled upon him with looks of resentment and vengeance. Old friends
averted their eyes from the affectionate companion of earlier days;
the cordial pressure of his hand was not returned; his associates
and supporters in office and in Parliament were, for the most part,
his former opponents in many a political battlefield. The odium of
being a convert to Liberal principles settled upon his noble spirit
like a fatal blight, the animosity with which intolerance pursues the
honest and generous lover of truth and right pierced his susceptible
nervous system like a keen, pitiless, persistent east wind. This was
more than his delicate organism could long bear. The state of his mind
affected his bodily health. The charm of his conversation made him the
delight of his friends in private society, in which he found a solace
and a welcome relaxation from the toils of office. It was natural,
though to be regretted, that with such a susceptible, enjoying, and
genial temperament, delighting in wit and humour, and diffusing
pleasure around him by the coruscations of his own genius, he should
have lingered longer in convivial parties than was prudent for his
health. The consequence was an inflamed and irritable state of the
system. Thus predisposed to disease, he caught cold by sitting under
a tree, after being heated with walking, while on a visit with Lord
Lyndhurst at Wimbledon. Attacked with inflammation of the kidneys, he
went to Chiswick, on the advice of his doctors, and there, on the 8th
of August, after a brief period of intense suffering, he died in the
villa of the Duke of Devonshire, and in the same room in which a man of
kindred genius, the illustrious Charles James Fox, breathed his last.

[Illustration: LORD LIVERPOOL. (_After the Portrait by Sir T. Lawrence,
P.R.A._)]

The Ministerial changes consequent on the death of Mr. Canning were
announced on the 17th of August. Viscount Goderich, afterwards Earl
of Ripon, became the First Lord of the Treasury, the Duke of Portland
President of the Council, Mr. Herries Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Mr. Huskisson Colonial Secretary, and Mr. C. Grant President of the
Board of Trade. On the 22nd the Duke of Wellington was gazetted as
Commander-in-Chief. He accepted this office at the earnest request of
the king, and it was universally felt that he was the fittest man for
the post; but those who, with Lord Eldon, earnestly wished for the
speedy downfall of the new Ministry--which they regarded as almost
exclusively Canningite--lamented that he should have assumed that
position which would necessarily paralyse his opposition in the House
of Lords, and so far tend to keep in the Administration. There was,
however, little chance of that, for perhaps no Cabinet was ever more
divided. They intrigued man against man, section against section; and
at last, without any external pressure, the Cabinet fell to pieces from
its own weakness. Lord Goderich lost heart, and gave in his resignation
before Parliament met. The king was at Windsor while the work of
dissolution was going on. When it was complete, he said, "If they had
not dissolved themselves by their own acts, I should have remained
faithful to them to the last." They appeared before him on the 8th of
January, 1828, to resign the offices which they had received from his
hands. The Duke of Wellington was then sent for. It was not his wish to
become Prime Minister of England. The reasons which had impelled him,
on a former occasion, to resist the solicitations of his colleagues
induced him now to remonstrate respectfully with the Sovereign; but the
king would take no denial.

[Illustration: DEVONSHIRE VILLA, CHISWICK.]

Lord Goderich acted with great humility. In a letter to the Duke of
Buckingham, shortly after his resignation, he expressed his willingness
to serve under the Duke of Wellington, though it might certainly be
a matter of doubt with him how far, in existing circumstances, he
could with credit accept office. But as the Government was to rest
upon a broad basis, and was not to oppose the principles he had always
advocated, he was ready to consider favourably any offer that might
be made to him. The task which Wellington had undertaken was a most
difficult one, considering the nature of the questions that agitated
the public mind, and the course which he had adopted in reference to
them. The new Government was announced on the 25th of January. It
retained several members of the Goderich Ministry--namely, Lord Dudley,
Mr. Huskisson, and Mr. Herries. The Duke of Wellington was Premier, Mr.
Goulburn Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Aberdeen Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster, and Lord Ellenborough Privy Seal. Mr. Canning's
widow was created a viscountess, with a grant of £6,000 a year, to
be enjoyed after her death by her eldest son, and, in case of his
death, by her second son. The former was in the navy, and perished
accidentally soon after his father's death. The second son, to whom
the family honours descended, was the Governor-General of India during
the most memorable crisis in the history of that empire. The grant was
opposed by Lord Althorp, Mr. Hume, and Mr. Banks, but was carried by a
majority of 161 to 54.

Of all the expectants of office in the Wellington Administration, the
most bitterly disappointed was the ex-Chancellor, Lord Eldon, to whom
official life had from long habit become almost a necessity. He had
enjoyed power long enough in reason to admit of his retirement with a
contented mind; but the passion for it was never stronger than at the
present moment. He hastened to London a few days after Christmas on
account of rumours of a dissolution of the Cabinet. Having so often
done this when there was a talk of a Ministerial crisis, he was called
the "stormy petrel." Believing that he had mainly contributed to bring
about the Ministerial catastrophe, he was dreadfully mortified when he
saw in the newspapers the list of the new Ministers beginning thus:
"Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst." He had not set his heart this time on
the office of Lord Chancellor, he would have been content with the
Presidentship of the Council or Privy Seal; but his name was not found
in the list at all, nor had he been consulted in any way, or informed
about what was going forward during the fortnight that passed before
the Ministerial arrangements were completed. This utter neglect of his
claims excited his anger and indignation to the utmost, and caused him
to indulge in bitter revilings and threats against the new Cabinet.
The great Tory lords shared in his resentment, and felt that they were
all insulted in his person. Referring to the Ministerial arrangements,
he wrote:--"You will observe, Dudley, Huskisson, Grant, Palmerston,
and Lyndhurst (five) were all _Canningites_, with whom the rest were
three weeks ago in most violent contest and opposition; these things
are to me quite marvellous. How they are all to deal with each other's
conduct, as to the late treaty with Turkey and the Navarino battle, is
impossible to conjecture. As the first-fruits of this arrangement, the
Corporation of London have agreed to petition Parliament to repeal the
laws which affect Dissenters."

The Greeks had been struggling to emancipate themselves from the
tyrannical dominion of the Turks, aided in their war of independence
only by the voluntary contributions and personal services of
enthusiastic friends of freedom, like Lord Byron. At length, however,
the sanguinary nature of the contest, and the injury to commerce by
piracy, induced the Great Powers of Europe to interfere in order to
put an end to the war. Accordingly, on the 6th of July, 1827, a treaty
was signed in London by the Ministers of Great Britain, France, and
Russia, for the pacification of Greece. In pursuance of this treaty,
a joint expedition, consisting of British, French, and Russian ships,
entered the Bay of Navarino on the 20th of October, with the object
of compelling the Sultan to concede an armistice, in order that there
might be time for effecting an arrangement. The Sultan, Mahmoud, having
declined the mediation of the combined Powers, and Ibrahim Pasha having
received a large reinforcement of troops from Egypt, he was ordered
to put down the insurrection at every cost by land and sea. He had
accordingly recommenced the war with fanatical fury. All Greeks found
in arms were to be put to the sword, and the Morea was to be laid
waste. The combined fleet of the Allies had received orders to demand
an armistice, and if this were refused by the Turkish admiral, they
were to intercept the Turkish supplies, but not to commit hostilities.
When the Turkish fleet met the Allies, the futility of these
instructions became evident. They found it ranged at the bottom of the
bay, in the form of a crescent. Instead of parleying, the Turks began
to fire, and the battle commenced apparently without plan on either
side. It soon became general. Admiral Codrington, in the _Asia_, opened
a broadside upon the Egyptian admiral, and soon reduced his ship to a
wreck; others in rapid succession shared the same fate. The conflict
lasted with great fury for four hours. When the smoke cleared off, the
enemy had disappeared, and the bay was strewn with the fragments of
their ships. Among the Allies, the loss of the British was greatest,
though not large--only 75 men killed and 197 wounded. The catastrophe
produced immense excitement at Constantinople, and had the Janissaries
(those fierce and bigoted defenders of Mohammedanism whom the Sultan
had so recently extirpated) been still in existence, it would have
fared ill with Christians in that part of the world. The Sultan
demanded satisfaction, which would not be granted, and the European
ambassadors left Constantinople. The battle of Navarino occurred at
the time when the Duke of Wellington assumed the reins of office, our
ambassador having then returned from Constantinople.

Parliament was opened by commission on the 29th of January, four days
after the formation of the Wellington Ministry. The Royal Speech
referred chiefly to the affairs of the East, to the rights of neutral
nations violated by the revolting excesses of the Greeks and Turks, to
the battle of Navarino with the fleet of an ancient ally, which was
lamented as an "untoward event;" but hopes were expressed that it might
not lead to further hostilities. The Speech alluded to the increase of
exports and the more general employment of the people as indications of
returning prosperity. The phrase "untoward" was objected to by Lords
Lansdowne and Goderich. Lord Holland denied that our relations with
Turkey were those of an alliance; but the Duke of Wellington contended
that the Ottoman empire was an ancient ally of Great Britain, that
it formed an essential part of the balance of power, and that the
maintenance of its independent existence was more than ever necessary
as an object of European policy.

The Duke of Wellington had some difficulty in producing due
subordination among the members of his Government at the outset. At
Liverpool, Mr. Huskisson, in addressing his constituents, by way of
apology for serving under a Tory chief, said that in taking office
he had obtained guarantees for the future Liberal course of the
Government. The Duke resented this assertion, and in the House of
Lords, on the 11th of February, with some warmth, contradicted the
statement, and declared that pledges had neither been asked nor given,
and that if they had been asked, they would have been indignantly
refused. Mr. Huskisson explained, in the Commons, that by guarantees he
had meant only that the past conduct and character of his colleagues
furnished pledges for the future course of the Ministry. Another
cause of misunderstanding arose, on the 19th of the same month, with
reference to the disfranchisement of East Retford. A Bill had been
brought in for that purpose. A portion of the Cabinet were for the
enlargement of the constituency by taking in the neighbouring hundred
of Bassetlaw; but the constituency had obtained permission to be heard
by counsel before the Lords, and they produced such an impression that
the Duke of Wellington hesitated about the propriety of the measure.
Another party were for transferring the members to Birmingham. The
course Mr. Huskisson is represented to have taken on this question
seems so tortuous that it is not easy to account for it. The Duke
of Wellington and Mr. Peel were understood to have advocated in the
Cabinet the disfranchisement of East Retford, and the transference of
its members to Birmingham. Mr. Huskisson, conceiving that he was in
honour bound to adhere to an arrangement that Mr. Canning had made,
voted for throwing open the franchise, and carried his point. They
produced their Bill accordingly, and were met, as in the kindred case
of Penryn, with a counter-proposal for transferring the members to
Birmingham. Against this Mr. Huskisson argued, as tending to weaken too
much and too suddenly the agricultural interest. The second reading
was proposed on the 19th of May, and an animated debate ensued, in
which the chief speakers on the Ministerial side were Mr. Peel and
Mr. Huskisson. Nobody appeared to suspect that Mr. Huskisson did not
intend to support with his vote the measure which as a speaker he
had recommended. Such, however, proved to be the fact. A division
took place, and Mr. Huskisson and Lord Palmerston, very much to
the astonishment of all parties, went into the lobby against the
Ministerial proposal. At two o'clock that night Mr. Huskisson wrote a
letter to the Duke, which his Grace received at ten in the morning, in
which he said, "I owe it to you, as the head of the Administration,
and to Mr. Peel, as leader of the House of Commons, to lose no time
in affording you an opportunity of placing my office in other hands."
The Duke very naturally took this as a resignation, but Mr. Huskisson
denied that it was so meant. An irritating correspondence ensued, and
Mr. Huskisson left the Cabinet, as he affirmed, against his will.
All the followers of Mr. Canning went with him--namely, Lord Dudley
from the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston from the War Office, and
Mr. C. Grant from the Board of Control. They were succeeded by Lord
Aberdeen as Foreign Secretary, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald at the Board
of Control, and Sir Henry Hardinge as Secretary at War. Such was
the constitution of the Government, with all its Liberalism thus
expurgated, which repealed the Test and Corporation Acts, and carried
Catholic Emancipation. The king was particularly anxious to have a
strong Government. He was still firm in his resistance to Catholic
Emancipation. The very mention of the subject by his Ministers produced
a degree of excitement and irritation which made their intercourse with
him occasionally unpleasant. The Duke of Wellington seemed, of all men,
the least likely to give way on the subject. In the debate on the Test
and Corporation Acts, he said, "There is no person in this House whose
feelings and sentiments, after long consideration, are more decided
than mine are with respect to the Roman Catholic claims; and I must say
that, until I see a great change in that question, I must oppose it."

On the 28th of February Lord John Russell proposed and carried a
resolution that the House of Commons should go into committee to
inquire into the operation of the Test and Corporation Acts, with a
view to their repeal. From the very foundation of the Established
Church at the Reformation the most stringent measures were adopted to
put down Nonconformity, to render the Church and State identical in
their constituent elements, and to preserve the uniformity and secure
the perpetuity of the faith which had been established. The Dissenters,
however, maintained that the Act of Uniformity had utterly failed to
accomplish its object. They observed that at first the Reformed Church
was Calvinistic in its articles, its clergy, and its preaching; that
it then became Arminian and overcharged with ceremony under Laud;
that it was latitudinarian in the days of William and Anne; that in
more modern times it had been divided into "High Church," and "Low
Church," and "Broad Church;" that subscription did not prevent the
greatest variety and even the most positive contrariety of doctrine
and religious opinion, referring, for illustration, to the rise and
progress of the "Evangelical" and the "Anglican" parties. They further
contended that the Act had failed in one of its main objects--namely,
in keeping all Protestants within the pale of the Church, as, so far
as actual membership or communicants were concerned, the adherents to
the Establishment were now in a minority. In vain, then, were 2,000
clergymen ejected from their parishes, followed by 60,000 earnest
Protestants, who, by fines, imprisonment, or voluntary exile, suffered
on account of their Nonconformity. This persecution had an effect the
opposite of what had been anticipated. If, as Hume remarked, every
martyrdom in the Marian persecution was worth to Protestantism and
liberty a hundred sermons against Popery, so every act of persecution
against the Nonconformists was of value to the religious life of the
nation. In consequence of the development of that life, the Toleration
Act became a necessity; and from the accession of George II. an annual
Indemnity Act was passed.

Sanguine though the Dissenters had been respecting the growth of the
principles of civil and religious liberty, of which the seeds had been
sown in tears by the early Puritan confessors, they did not anticipate
that the harvest was at hand. As their claims were not embarrassed by
any question of divided allegiance or party politics, many members of
Parliament who had not supported the relief of the Roman Catholics
found themselves at liberty to advocate the cause of the Protestant
Nonconformists; while almost all who had supported the greater measure
of Emancipation felt themselves bound by consistency to vote for the
abolition of the sacramental test. Yet the victory was not achieved
without a struggle. Lord John Russell said:--"The Government took
a clear, open, and decided part against us. They summoned their
followers from every part of the empire. Nay, they issued a sort of
'hatti-sheriff' for the purpose; they called upon every one within
their influence who possessed the faith of a true Mussulman to follow
them in opposing the measure. But, notwithstanding their opposition in
the debate, their arguments were found so weak, and in the division
their numbers were found so deficient, that nothing could be more
decided than our triumph."

[Illustration: BATTLE OF NAVARINO: THE "ASIA" ENGAGING THE SHIPS OF THE
CAPITAN BEY AND MOHURREM BEY. (_See p._ 262.)]

Lord John Russell, who introduced the measure, Lord Althorp, Mr. Smith
of Norwich, and Mr. Ferguson pleaded the cause of the Dissenters
with unanswerable arguments. They showed that the Church was not now
in danger; that there was no existing party bent on subverting the
Constitution; that in the cases where the tests were not exacted during
the last half century there was no instance of a Dissenter holding
office who had abused his trust; that though the Test Act had been
practically in abeyance during all that time, the Church had suffered
no harm. Why, then, preserve an offensive and discreditable Act upon
the Statute Book? Why keep up invidious distinctions when there was no
pretence of necessity for retaining them? Why, without the shadow of
proof, presume disaffection against any class of the community? Even
the members of the Established Church of Scotland might be, by those
tests and penalties, debarred from serving their Sovereign unless
they renounced their religion. A whole nation was thus proscribed
upon the idle pretext that it was necessary to defend the church of
another nation. It was asked, Did the Church of England aspire, like
the Mussulmans of Turkey, to be exclusively charged with the defence
of the empire? If so, let the Presbyterians and Dissenters withdraw,
and it would be seen what sort of defence it would have. Take from the
field of Waterloo the Scottish regiments; take away, too, the sons
of Ireland: what then would have been the chance of victory? If they
sought the aid of Scottish and Irish soldiers in the hour of peril,
why deny them equal rights and privileges in times of peace? Besides,
the Church could derive no real strength from exclusion and coercion,
which only generated ill-will and a rankling feeling of injustice.
The Established Church of Scotland had been safe without any Test and
Corporation Acts. They had been abolished in Ireland half a century
ago without any evil accruing to the Church in that country. It was
contrary to the spirit of the age to keep up irritating yet inefficient
and impracticable restrictions, which were a disgrace to the Statute
Book.

Mr. Peel urged that it is dangerous to touch time-honoured institutions
in an ancient monarchy like this, if the Dissenters did not feel the
tests as a grievance; if they did, it would be a very strong argument
for a change. "But," he asked, "are the grievances now brought forward
in Parliament really felt as such by the Dissenters out of doors? So
far from it, there were only six petitions presented on the subject
from 1816 to 1827. The petitions of last year were evidently got up
for a political purpose." He quoted from a speech of Mr. Canning's,
delivered, in 1825, on the Catholic Relief Bill, in which he said,
"This Bill does not tend to equalise all the religions in the State,
but to equalise all the Dissenting sects of England. I am, and this
Bill is, for a predominant church, and I would not, even in appearance,
meddle with the laws which secure that predominance to the Church of
England. What is the state of the Protestant Dissenters? It is that
they labour under no practical grievances on account of this difference
with the Established Church; that they sit with us in this House, and
share our counsels; that they are admissible into the highest offices
of State, and often hold them. Such is the operation of the Test and
Corporation Acts, as mitigated by the Annual Indemnity Act; this much,
and no more, I contend, the Catholics should enjoy." With regard to
Scotland Mr. Peel appealed to the facts that from that country there
was not one solitary petition; that there was not any military or naval
office or command from which Scotsmen were shut out; that, so far
from being excluded from the higher offices of Government, out of the
fourteen members who composed the Cabinet, three--Lord Aberdeen, Lord
Melville, and Mr. Grant--were Scotsmen and good Presbyterians. Even in
England the shutting out, he said, was merely nominal. A Protestant
Dissenter had been Lord Mayor of London the year before. The Acts had
practically gone into desuetude, and the existing law gave merely a
nominal preponderance to the Established Church, which it was admitted
on all hands it should possess.

The restrictions, however, if not to any great extent a practical
grievance, were felt to be a stigma utterly undeserved, and the
necessity for an annual Indemnity Act continually reminded a large,
influential, intelligent, energetic portion of the nation of their
inferiority to the rest of the king's subjects. The Government felt
that public opinion was against them. They therefore allowed the Bill
to go into committee without opposition, and there they adopted it as
their own by carrying certain amendments. It passed the Commons by a
majority of 44, the numbers being 237 to 193. From the tone of the
debate in the Commons it was evident that the Government was not sorry
to be left in a minority. In the House of Lords the measure encountered
more opposition. Lord Eldon, exasperated with the treatment he had
received from the Ministers, denounced it with the utmost vehemence.
When he heard of its success in the Lower House, he was in a state of
consternation.

The prejudiced old man fought with desperation against the measure
in the Lords. He was tremendously severe on the Government. He said,
much as he had heard of the march of mind, he did not believe that
the march could have been so rapid as to induce some of the changes
of opinion which he had witnessed within the last year. His opinions
are now among the curiosities of a bygone age. His idea of religious
liberty may be seen from the following:--"The Sacramental Act, though
often assailed, had remained ever since the reign of Charles II., and
the Annual Indemnity took away all its harshness. The obnoxious Act
did not interfere with the rights of conscience, as it did not compel
any man to take the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of
England, and only deprived him of office if he did not." He concluded
by solemnly saying, "From his heart and soul, 'Not Content.'" He was
effectually answered by the Duke of Wellington, and the Bill was read
a second time, without a division, on the 17th of April. On the 21st
he proposed an amendment to exclude Roman Catholics from the benefit
of the measure by inserting in the declaration the words, "I am a
Protestant." The amendment was negatived by 117 to 55; but so eager
was he to have it adopted, that he renewed it on the third reading
of the Bill, when the Contents were 52, Not Contents 154. Still he
entered on the Journals a violent protest against the Bill, in which
he was joined by the Duke of Cumberland and nine other peers. As soon
as the measure was carried, all the world acknowledged the Duke of
Wellington's sagacity in declining the offer of Lord Eldon to return to
office; for if that sturdy adherent to ancient prejudices had been Lord
Chancellor or President of the Council, the Government must either have
been speedily dissolved by internal dissensions or overthrown by a vain
resistance to the popular voice.

This Act, which repealed the Test Act, provided another security in
lieu of the tests repealed:--"And whereas the Protestant Episcopal
Church of England and Ireland, and the Protestant Presbyterian Church
of Scotland, and the doctrine, discipline, and government thereof
respectively are by the laws of this realm severally established
permanently and inviolably, I., A., B., do solemnly and sincerely,
in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare, upon the true
faith of a Christian, that I will never exercise any power, authority,
or influence which I may possess by virtue of the office of ----, to
injure or weaken the Protestant Church, as it is by law established
in England, or to disturb the said Church, or the bishops and clergy
of the said Church, in the possession of any rights and privileges to
which such Church, or the said bishops and clergy, are or may be by law
entitled."

On the 18th of June a public dinner, to commemorate the abolition of
the Sacramental Test, was given at Freemasons' Hall, when the Duke
of Sussex occupied the chair. The friends of the cause felt that
to secure a meeting of the most opulent, talented, and influential
Dissenters from all parts of the empire was a measure of no common
policy, and it was evident that the illustrious and noble guests felt
at once surprised and gratified to witness the high respectability
and generous enthusiasm of that great company. Mr. William Smith, as
deputy chairman, proposed, in an interesting and appropriate speech,
"the health of the Duke of Sussex, and the universal prevalence of
those principles which placed his family upon the throne." The health
of the archbishops, bishops, and other members of the Established
Church who had advocated the rights of the Dissenters was proposed by
a Baptist minister, the Rev. Dr. Cox. The health of "the Protestant
Dissenting ministers, the worthy successors of the ever memorable two
thousand who sacrificed interest to conscience," having been proposed
by the royal chairman, the Rev. Robert Aspland returned thanks. Another
commemoration of the full admission of Nonconformists to the privileges
of the Constitution was a medal struck by order of the united
committee. The obverse side exhibits Britannia, seated on the right,
presenting to a graceful figure of Liberty the Act of Repeal, while
Religion in the centre raises her eyes to heaven with the expression of
thankfulness for the boon. The inscription on this side is "Sacramental
Test Abolished, May 9th, 1828." The reverse side presents an open
wreath, enclosing the words, "Truth, Freedom, Peace, and Charity."




CHAPTER VII.

THE REIGN OF GEORGE IV. (_concluded_).

    Opinions of the Irish Government on the Catholic Question--Renewal
    of the Catholic Claims by Burdett--Vesey Fitzgerald accepts
    the Board of Trade--O'Connell opposes him for Clare--His
    Reputation--His Backers--Father Murphy's Speech--O'Connell
    to the Front--The Nomination--O'Connell's Speech--The
    Election--Return of O'Connell--Anglesey's Precautions--Peel's
    Reflections on the Clare Election--Anglesey describes the State
    of Ireland--Peel wishes to resign--The Duke wavers--Anglesey
    urges Concession--Insurrection probable--Wellington determines
    on Retreat--Why he and Peel did not resign--The Viceroy's
    Opinion--Military Organisation of the Peasantry--The Brunswick
    Clubs--Perplexity of the Government--O'Connell's "Moral Force"--The
    Liberator Clubs--Dawson's Speech--"No Popery" in England--The
    Morpeth Banquet--The Leinster Declaration--Wellington's Letter
    to Dr. Curtis--Anglesey's Correspondence with O'Connell--The
    Premier Censures the Viceroy--Anglesey dismissed--He is succeeded
    by Northumberland--Difficulties with the King and the English
    Bishops--Peel determines to remain--His Views communicated
    to the King--The King yields--Opening of the Session--Peel
    defeated at Oxford University--Suppression of the Catholic
    Association--The Announcement in the King's Speech--Peel
    introduces the Relief Bill--Arguments of the Opposition--The
    Bill passes the Commons--The Duke's Speech--It passes the Lords
    by large Majorities--The King withdraws his Consent--He again
    yields--His Communication to Eldon--Numbers of the Catholics
    in Britain--The Duke's Duel with Winchilsea--Bill for the
    disfranchisement of "the Forties"--O'Connell presents himself
    to be sworn--He refuses to take the Oaths--He is heard at the
    Bar--Fresh Election for Clare--O'Connell's new Agitation--The Roman
    Catholic Hierarchy--Riots in the Manufacturing Districts--Attempt
    to mitigate the Game Laws--Affairs of Portugal--Negotiations
    with the Canningites--Pitched Battles in Ireland--Meeting
    of Parliament--Debate on the Address--Burdett's Attack on
    Wellington--The Opposition proposes Retrenchments--The Duke's
    Economies--Prosecution of Mr. Alexander--Illness and Death of
    George IV.


The state of opinion among the members of the Government from the early
part of 1828 may be traced in the "Memoirs" of Sir Robert Peel, which
comprise the confidential correspondence on the subject. The Marquis
Wellesley had retired from the Government of Ireland, and was succeeded
by the Marquis of Anglesey. The former nobleman would have given more
satisfaction to the Irish Roman Catholics; but he was overruled, as
they believed, by Mr. Goulburn, his Chief Secretary. His popularity
and the confidence reposed in him were much increased by the fact that
the marchioness was a Roman Catholic, which, however, proportionably
rendered him an object of suspicion to the Orange party.

The noble marquis was regarded by Mr. Peel with the most sincere
respect and esteem, which were cordially reciprocated. In a letter
dated January 30th, 1828, Lord Wellesley wrote to him thus:--"Your most
acceptable letter of the 29th instant enables me to offer to you now
those assurances of gratitude, respect, and esteem which, to my sincere
concern, have been so long delayed. Although these sentiments have not
before reached you in the manner which would have been most suitable to
the subject, I trust that you have not been unacquainted with the real
impressions which your kindness and high character have fixed in my
mind, and which it is always a matter of the most genuine satisfaction
to me to declare. I am very anxious to communicate with you in the same
unreserved confidence so long subsisting between us on the state of
Ireland."

The main subject for consideration at that moment was the policy of
continuing the Act for the suppression of the Catholic Association,
which was to expire at the end of the Session of 1828. In connection
with this subject a letter from Lord Anglesey came under the Ministry's
consideration. "Do keep matters quiet in Parliament," he said, "if
possible. The less that is said of Catholic and Protestant the better.
It would be presumptuous to form an opinion, or even a sanguine hope,
in so short a time, yet I cannot but think there is much reciprocal
inclination to get rid of the bugbear, and soften down asperities. I
am by no means sure that even the most violent would not be glad of
an excuse for being less violent. Even at the Association they are
at a loss to keep up the extreme irritation they had accomplished;
and if they find they are not violently opposed, and that there is
no disposition on the part of Government to coercion, I do believe
they will dwindle into moderation. If, however, we have a mind to
have a good blaze again, we may at once command it by re-enacting the
expiring Bill, and when we have improved it and rendered it perfect,
we shall find that it will not be acted upon. In short, I shall back
Messrs. O'Connell's and Sheil's, and others' evasions against the Crown
lawyers' laws."

[Illustration: LORD BYRON.]

Mr. Lamb, the Chief Secretary, wrote to Mr. Peel to the same effect.
The Act, he said, had failed in fulfilling its main object, as well
as every other advantageous purpose. To re-enact it would irritate
all parties, and expose the Ministry to odium. He alluded to sources
of dissension that were springing up in the Roman Catholic body,
particularly the jealousy excited in the Roman Catholic prelates by
the power which the Association had assumed over the parochial clergy.
On the whole, his advice was against renewing the Statute. On the 12th
of April Lord Anglesey wrote a memorandum on the subject, in which
he pointed out the impolicy of any coercive measure, which, to be
effective, must interfere with the right of public meeting, and make a
dangerous inroad on the Constitution, at the same time displaying the
weakness of the Government, which is shown in nothing more than passing
strong measures which there was not vigour to enforce. His information
led him to believe that the higher orders of the Roman Catholic clergy
had long felt great jealousy of the ascendency that the leaders of the
Association had assumed over the lower priesthood. Besides, many of
the most respectable of the Catholic landlords were irritated at their
tenantry for continuing to pay the Catholic rent, contrary to their
injunctions; and sooner or later he believed the poorer contributors
must consider the impost as onerous, arbitrary, and oppressive. These
matters he regarded as seeds of dissolution, which would be more than
neutralised by any coercive attempt to put down the Association. He
felt confident that no material mischief could result from allowing
the Act quietly to expire, supported as the Government was by "the
powerful aid of that excellent establishment, the constabulary force,
already working the greatest benefit, and capable of still further
improvement, and protected as this force was by an efficient army, ably
commanded."

In answer to some queries submitted to the Attorney-General, Mr. Joy,
he stated that when the old Association was suppressed, the balance of
Catholic rent in the treasury was £14,000. He showed how the existing
Act had been evaded, and how useless it was to attempt to prevent the
agitation by any coercive measure. They held "fourteen days' meetings,"
and it was amusing to read the notices convening those meetings, which
always ran thus:--"A fourteen days' meeting will be held, pursuant
to Act of Parliament"--as if the Act had enjoined and required such
meetings. Then there were aggregate meetings, and other "separate
meetings," which were manifestly a continuation of the Association. The
same members attended, and the same routine was observed. They also
held simultaneous parochial meetings, by which the people were gathered
into a solid and perilous confederacy.

On the 8th of May the Catholic claims were again brought forward by Sir
Francis Burdett, who moved for a committee of the whole House, "with a
view to such a final and conciliatory adjustment as may be conducive
to the peace and strength of the United Kingdom, to the stability of
the Protestant Establishment, and to the general satisfaction and
concord of all classes of his Majesty's subjects." The debate, which
was animated and interesting, continued for three days. On a division,
the motion for a committee was carried by 272 against 266, giving a
majority of six only. But in the preceding Session a similar motion
had been lost by a majority of four. On the 16th of the same month
Sir Francis moved that the resolution be communicated to the Lords in
a free conference, and that their concurrence should be requested.
This being agreed to, the conference was held, and the resolution was
reported to the Lords, who took it into consideration on the 9th of
June. The debate, which lasted two days, was opened by the Marquis of
Lansdowne. The Duke of Wellington opposed the resolution, which was
lost by a majority of 181 to 137.

Mr. Lamb had retired with Mr. Huskisson, sending in his resignation
to the Duke of Wellington, and was succeeded as Chief Secretary by
Lord Francis Gower, afterwards Lord Ellesmere. Among the offices
vacated in consequence of the recent schism in the Government, was
that of President of the Board of Trade, which was accepted by
Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, one of the members for the county Clare. He
was consequently obliged to offer himself for re-election to his
constituents, and this led to the memorable contest which decided the
question of Catholic Emancipation.

This contest excited universal interest. Mr. O'Connell, the Roman
Catholic candidate, was not unknown in England. He had come to London
as the leading member of a deputation to urge the concession of
Catholic Emancipation upon the Government and the legislature, when
he met a number of the leading statesmen of the day at the house of
the Duke of Norfolk. He had been examined by a committee of the Lords,
together with Dr. Doyle, in 1825, on which occasion the ability he
displayed, his extensive and accurate knowledge, his quickness in
answering, and the clearness with which he conveyed information,
excited the admiration of all parties. In the appeal case of Scully
_versus_ Scully he pleaded before Lord Eldon. It was the first time
he had appeared in his forensic character in England. No sooner had
he risen to address their lordships than it was buzzed about the
precincts of Westminster, and persons of all descriptions crowded
in with anxious curiosity to witness the display, including several
peers and members of Parliament. He addressed their lordships for
nearly two hours, during which the Lord Chancellor paid him great
attention, though he had only thirty-three hours before carried
the House of Lords with him in rejecting the Bill by which the
great advocate would have been admitted to the full privileges of
citizenship. Referring to this subject, Lord Eldon wrote in his diary,
"Mr. O'Connell pleaded as a barrister before me in the House of Lords
on Thursday. His demeanour was very proper, but he did not strike me
as shining so much in argument as might be expected from a man who
has made so much noise in his harangues in a seditious association."
Lord Eldon's opinion was evidently tinged by the recollection of the
"seditious harangues." It is a curious fact that the leading counsel
on that occasion on the same side was Sir Charles Wetherell, then
Solicitor-General. The English admired the rich tones of O'Connell's
voice, his clear and distinct articulation, his legal ingenuity, and
the readiness with which he adapted himself to the tribunal before
which he pleaded. One of the best speeches he ever made was delivered
at the great meeting of the British Catholic Association, the Duke
of Norfolk presiding. He astonished his auditory on that occasion.
In fact, he was regarded as a lion in London. He won golden opinions
wherever he went by his blandness, vivacity, and wit in private, and
his lofty bearing in public. His commanding figure, his massive chest,
and his broad, good-humoured face, with thought and determination
distinctly marked in his physiognomy, showed that he had the _physique_
of a great leader of the masses, while he proved himself amongst
his colleagues not more powerful in body than in mind and will. The
confidence reposed in him in Ireland was unbounded. He was indeed the
most remarkable of all the men who had ever advocated the Catholic
claims; the only one of their great champions fit to be a popular
leader. Curran and Grattan were feeble and attenuated in body, and
laboured under physical deficiencies, if the impulsive genius of the
one or the fastidious pride of the other would have permitted them
to be demagogues; O'Connell had all the qualities necessary for that
character in perfection--unflinching boldness, audacious assertion,
restless motion, soaring ambition, untiring energy, exquisite tact,
instinctive sagacity, a calculating, methodising mind, and a despotic
will. He was by no means scrupulous in matters of veracity, and he was
famous for his powers of vituperation; but, as he was accustomed to say
himself, he was "the best abused man in Ireland."

It was seldom that his name was missed from the leaders of Conservative
journals, and he was the great object of attack at the meetings of
the Brunswick Clubs, which were called into existence to resist the
Catholic Association. But of all his assailants, none dealt him more
terrible blows than the venerable Henry Grattan, the hero of 1782.
"Examine their leader," he exclaimed, "Mr. O'Connell. He assumes a
right to direct the Catholics of Ireland. He advises, he harangues,
and he excites; he does not attempt to allay the passions of a warm
and jealous people. Full of inflammatory matter, his declamations
breathe everything but harmony; venting against Great Britain the
most disgusting calumny, falsehood, and treachery, equalled only by
his impudence, describing her as the most stupid, the most dishonest
nation that ever existed. A man that could make the speeches he has
made, utter the sentiments he has uttered, abuse the characters he has
abused, praise the characters he has praised, violate the promises he
has violated, propose such votes and such censures as he has proposed,
can have little regard for private honour or for public character; he
cannot comprehend the spirit of liberty, and he is unfitted to receive
it."

There is in all this much of the splenetic jealousy of an aged invalid
towards a vigorous competitor, who has outstripped him in the race.
O'Connell excited much hostility amongst the friends of Emancipation
by his opposition to the veto which they were willing to give to the
British Crown on the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops by the
Court of Rome. But the more antagonists he had, and the more battles
he fought, the greater was his hold on the Roman Catholic priests
and people. His power had arrived at its greatest height when the
Canningites left the Ministry, and Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald came to
Ireland to seek the suffrages of the Clare electors as an influential
member of the Government. At first, no one had the least doubt of his
triumphant return. He had been popular as Chancellor of the Exchequer
in Ireland; he was a steady friend of Catholic Emancipation, for which
he had always voted; he was personally popular; the gentry of the
county were almost to a man devoted to him. It appears that O'Connell
had at first no idea of starting against him. The proposal is said to
have originated with Sir David Roose, who, having accidentally met Mr.
P. V. Fitzpatrick on the 22nd of June, remarked that O'Connell ought
to offer himself for Clare. Mr. Fitzpatrick then recollected having
often heard Mr. John Keogh, of Mount Jerome, who had been the Catholic
leader for many years, express his conviction that Emancipation would
never be granted till a Catholic was elected a member of Parliament.
If, when returned by a constituency, he was not permitted to take his
seat because he would not violate his conscience by swearing what he
did not believe, John Bull, who is jealous of constitutional rights,
would resent this wrong, and would require the oath to be altered for
the sake of the constituency. The moment this thought occurred to Mr.
Fitzpatrick, he ran to O'Connell and begged of him to stand for Clare.
They went to the office of the _Dublin Evening Post_, and there, in
presence of Mr. F. W. Conway, the address to the electors was written.
Still O'Connell shrank from the contest on account of the enormous
cost. "You know," he said, "that, so far from being in circumstances
to meet that outlay from my own resources, I am encumbered with
heavy liabilities beyond my power of discharging. You are the only
person with whom I am acquainted who knows intimately the Catholic
aristocracy and men of wealth. Would you undertake to sound them as
to funds for the contest?" Fitzpatrick answered, "I will undertake
it, and I am confident of success." Within an hour he got three men
of wealth to put down their names for £100 each. The four then went
round to the principal Catholics of Dublin, and during the day they
got £1,600 from sixteen persons. The country followed the example of
the metropolis so liberally that £14,000 was raised within a week, and
money continued to flow in during the contest. The supplies, however,
were not sufficient for the enormous demand, and in the heat of the
contest a messenger was sent posthaste to Cork, and in an incredibly
short space of time returned with £1,000 from Mr. Jerry Murphy, who
himself subscribed £300, and got the remainder from its patriotic
inhabitants. The sum of £5,000 had been voted by the Association for
the expenses of the election. They had been very anxious to get a
candidate to oppose Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, and a popular Protestant,
Major Macnamara, had been requested to come forward, but he declined on
the ground of his personal obligations to the Ministerial candidate.
Indeed, there were few of the smaller gentry in the county on whom he
had not conferred favours by the liberal distribution of places among
their sons. The Roman Catholic gentry were quite as much indebted to
him as the Protestants, and they were not ungrateful, for they stood
by him on the hustings almost to a man. Mr. O'Connell was preceded by
two friends, Tom Steel and O'Gorman Mahon; the former a Protestant,
the other a Roman Catholic: both men remarkable for their chivalrous
bearing, and a dashing, reckless spirit, which takes with the Irish
peasantry. A third agitator entered the field in the person of honest
Jack Lawless, another leading member of the Association, and one of
its most effective speakers. This band was soon joined by Father Tom
Maguire, a famous controversialist, from the county of Leitrim, who
had just been engaged in a discussion with the Rev. Mr. Pope, and was
hailed by the peasantry as the triumphant champion of their faith.
There was also a barrister, Mr. Dominick Ronayne, who spoke the Irish
language, and who, throwing an educated mind into the powerful idiom
of the country, produced great effects upon the passions of the
people. Mr. Sheil, second only to O'Connell in energy and influence,
and superior to him in the higher attributes of the orator, in the
fiery temperament and imaginative faculty which constitute genius,
flung himself into the arena with the greatest ardour. On the Sunday
previous to the election each of these agitators was dispatched to
a chapel situated in a district which was the stronghold of one or
other of the most popular landlords, for the purpose of haranguing the
people after mass, and rousing their enthusiasm to the highest pitch.
Mr. Sheil went to a place called Corrofin, situated in a mountainous
district, the property of Sir Edward O'Brien, father of Mr. Smith
O'Brien, who drove to the place in his carriage, drawn by four horses.
There he saw the whole population congregated, having advanced from
the rocky hills in large bands, waving green boughs, and preceded by
fifes and pipers. The hitherto popular landlord was received in solemn
silence, while his antagonist, Mr. Sheil, was hailed with rapturous
applause. Sir Edward O'Brien consequently lost heart, and, leaving
his phaeton opposite the chapel-door, went to church. Mr. Sheil gives
a graphic description of Father Murphy, the priest of this rudely
constructed mountain chapel. His form was tall, slender, and emaciated;
"his ample hand was worn to a skinny meagretude; his face was long,
sunken, and cadaverous, but was illuminated by eyes blazing with all
the fire of genius and the enthusiasm of religion; his lank black hair
fell down in straight lines along a lofty forehead. The sun was shining
with brilliancy, and rendered his figure, attired as it was in white
garments, more conspicuous. The scenery about was in harmony--it was
wild and desolate." This priest met the envoy of the Association on
the threshold of his mountain temple, and hailed him with a solemn
greeting. After mass the priest delivered an impassioned harangue. The
spirit of sarcasm gleamed over his features, and shouts of laughter
attended his description of a miserable Catholic who should prove
recreant to the great cause by making a sacrifice of his country to his
landlord. "The close of his speech," says Mr. Sheil, "was peculiarly
effective. He became inflamed by the power of his emotions, and, while
he raised himself into the loftiest attitude to which he could ascend,
he laid one hand on the altar and shook the other in the spirit of
almost prophetic admonition, and, while his eyes blazed and seemed
to start from his forehead, thick drops fell down his face, and his
voice rolled through lips livid with passion and covered with foam.
It is almost unnecessary to say that such an appeal was irresistible.
The multitude burst into shouts of acclamation, and would have been
ready to mount a battery roaring with cannon at his command. Two days
afterwards the results were felt at the hustings, and while Sir Edward
O'Brien stood aghast, Father Murphy marched into Ennis at the head of
his tenantry, and polled them to a man in favour of Daniel O'Connell."

The way having been thus prepared, Mr. O'Connell proceeded to the
scene of the contest. On the day of his departure his carriage, with
four horses, drove into the yard of the Four Courts, where he had been
engaged on an important trial. Having concluded his address to the
judges, he put off his wig and gown, and proceeded through the hall,
where he was followed by the lawyers and the persons from the different
courts, so that the judges were deserted. Stepping into his open
barouche, accompanied by Mr. P. O'Gorman, secretary of the Association,
Mr. R. Scott, solicitor, and Father Murphy, the celebrated parish
priest of Corrofin, he drove off amidst the cheers of all present. The
greatest possible excitement prevailed along the whole route, and he
enjoyed an ovation at every town he passed through. At Ennis, though he
entered the town by daybreak, the traders and the inhabitants turned
out in procession to meet him. Priests swarmed in all the streets,
and in every face there was an unconcealed expression of joyous and
exulting triumph.

[Illustration: THE CLARE CONTEST: FATHER MURPHY LEADING HIS TENANTS TO
THE POLL. (_See p._ 273.)]

The court-house on the day of nomination presented a striking scene.
On the left hand of the sheriff stood a Cabinet Minister, attended
by the whole body of the aristocracy and gentry, Protestant and
Catholic, of the county Clare. On the right stood Mr. O'Connell, with
scarcely a single gentleman by his side. But he was "the man of the
people" and of the priests, and so he was master of the situation.
Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald was proposed by Sir Edward O'Brien, and seconded
by Sir A. Fitzgerald. The Ministerial candidate first addressed the
freeholders. He was an accomplished gentleman and an excellent speaker.
Mr. Sheil, who was present, remarked that he delivered one of the
most effective and dexterous speeches it had ever been his fortune to
hear. His venerable father, who had voted against the Union in the
Irish Parliament, was now on his death-bed, and the knowledge of the
contest had been kept from him, lest the excitement should hasten his
departure. In alluding to him, and to his own services to the county,
Mr. Fitzgerald's eyes filled with tears, and there were few amongst his
opponents, excited as they were against him, who did not give the same
evidence of emotion; and when he sat down, although the great majority
of the audience were strongly opposed to him, and were enthusiasts
in favour of the rival candidate, a loud and unanimous burst of
acclamation shook the court-house.

Mr. O'Connell rose to address the people in reply. It was manifest that
he considered great exertion to be requisite in order to do away with
the impression which his antagonist had produced. It was clear, to
those who were acquainted with the workings of his physiognomy, that
he was collecting all his might. Mr. O'Connell bore Mr. Fitzgerald
no sort of personal aversion, but he determined, in this exigency,
to have little mercy on his feelings, and to employ all the power of
vituperation of which he was possessed against him. "This," remarks Mr.
Sheil, "was absolutely necessary; for if more dexterous fencing had
been resorted to by Mr. O'Connell, many might have gone away with the
opinion that, after all, Mr. Fitzgerald had been thanklessly treated
by the Catholic body. It was, therefore, disagreeably requisite to
render him for the moment odious. Mr. O'Connell began by awakening the
passions of the multitude in an attack on Mr. Fitzgerald's allies. Mr.
Gore had lauded him highly. This Mr. Gore is of Cromwellian descent,
and the people detest the memory of the Protector to this day. There
is a tradition (I know not whether it has the least foundation) that
the ancestor of this gentleman's family was a nailer by trade in the
Puritan army. Mr. O'Connell, without any direct reference to the fact,
used a set of metaphors, such as 'striking the nail on the head,'
'putting a nail into a coffin,' which at once recalled the associations
which were attached to the name of Mr. Gore, and roars of laughter
assailed that gentleman on every side. Mr. Gore has the character of
being not only very opulent, but of bearing regard to his possessions
proportionate to their extent. Nothing is so unpopular as prudence
in Ireland; and Mr. O'Connell rallied Mr. Gore to such a point upon
this head, and that of his supposed origin, that the latter completely
sank under the attack. He next proceeded to Mr. Fitzgerald, and having
thrown in a picture of the late Mr. Perceval, he turned round, and
asked of the rival candidate with what face he could call himself their
friend, when the first act of his political life was to enlist himself
under the banners of 'the bloody Perceval'? This violent epithet was
sent into the hearts of the people with a force of expression and a
furious vehemence of will that created a great sensation amongst the
crowd, and turned the tide against Mr. Fitzgerald."

It was necessary that Roman Catholic electors should take an oath
and obtain a certificate of their having done so from a magistrate.
The friends of Mr. Fitzgerald insisted that this oath should be
taken, which caused considerable delay; but a magistrate having been
obtained, the freeholders were sworn _en masse_. Brought into a yard,
enclosed within four walls, twenty-five voters were placed against
each wall, and thus the oath was simultaneously taken. The effects of
this machinery upon the poll soon became manifest. Mr. O'Connell ran
ahead of his opponent, and on the second day the result was no longer
doubtful. Mr. Fitzgerald would have abandoned the contest, but the
landlords resolved that the last man whom they could command should
be polled out. They exerted themselves to the utmost to prevent the
defection of their tenantry. The most influential of them had their
freeholders mustered in a body, and came forward to the hustings at
their head, exhorting, promising, threatening, reminding them of past
favours, and hinting at the consequences of forsaking their best
friends and natural protectors; but the moment O'Connell or a priest
appeared--shouting: "Vote for your country, boys!" "Vote for the old
religion!" "Down with Vesey!" "Hurrah for O'Connell!"--they changed
sides to a man, with a wild, responsive cheer. One priest, Father
Coffey, adhered to Mr. Fitzgerald. "But," says Mr. Sheil, "the scorn
and detestation with which he was treated by the mob clearly proved
that a priest has no influence over them when he attempts to run
counter to their political passions. He can hurry them on in the career
in which their own feelings impel them, but he cannot turn them into
another course." The generality of the orators were heard with loud
and clamorous approbation; but at a late hour one evening, when it
was growing rapidly dark, a priest came forward on the platform, who
addressed the multitude in Irish. Ten thousand peasants were assembled
before the speaker, and a profound stillness hung over the almost
breathless mass. For some minutes they continued thus deeply attentive,
and seemed to be struck with awe as he proceeded. Suddenly the priest
and the whole multitude knelt down with the precision of a regimental
evolution. Priest and people were both silent, but they were offering
up a mental prayer for mercy on the soul of one of Vesey Fitzgerald's
voters, who had died that day, and had been accused of taking a bribe.
The polling, which lasted five days, at length closed. The court-house
was again crowded, as on the first day. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald appeared
again at the head of the aristocracy, and Mr. O'Connell at the head
of the priests and the "Forties." The moment the latter was declared
by the sheriff duly elected, the first Roman Catholic M.P. since
the Revolution, a friend presented him with a letter to be franked.
Addressed to a member of the House of Commons, it was posted that
night, and when it arrived at its destination it was handed about
amongst the members, exciting curiosity and astonishment. It was said
also to have found its way to the king, who probably felt thankful that
his brother, the Duke of York, did not live to see "Daniel O'Connell,
M.P." Mr. O'Connell made a speech, distinguished by just feeling and
good taste, and begged that Mr. Fitzgerald would forgive him if he had
on the first day given him any sort of offence. Mr. Fitzgerald came
forward, and unaffectedly assured him that whatever was said should
be forgotten. He was again hailed with universal acclamation, and
delivered an admirable speech. During the progress of the election he
could not refrain from repeatedly expressing his astonishment at what
he saw, and from indulging in melancholy forebodings of events of which
these incidents were perhaps but the heralds. "Where is all this to
end?" was a question frequently put in his presence, and from which he
seemed to shrink.

There was, however, no violation of the peace, which Lord Anglesey had
taken effective measures to preserve. He had placed at the disposal of
Major Warburton 47 artillery, with two 6-pounders; 120 cavalry, and 415
infantry. These were at Clare Castle, close at hand; within a few miles
there were 183 cavalry, and 1,313 infantry; within thirty-six miles, 28
cavalry, 1,367 infantry, and two 6-pounders; and at a farther distance
there was a regiment of cavalry and above 800 infantry. There were
besides, on duty at Ennis, 300 of the constabulary.

Mr. Peel's reflections on the Clare election are deeply interesting.
"It afforded," he writes, in his Memoirs, "a decisive proof, not only
that the instrument on which the Protestant proprietor had hitherto
mainly relied for the maintenance of his political influence had
completely failed him, but that, through the combined exertions of
the agitator and the priest--or, I should rather say, through the
contagious sympathies of a common cause among all classes of the Roman
Catholic population--the instrument of defence and supremacy had
been converted into a weapon fatal to the authority of the landlord.
However men might differ as to the consequences which ought to follow
the event, no one denied its vast importance. It was seen by the most
intelligent that the Clare election would be the turning-point in the
Catholic question--the point--

    "'Partes ubi se via findit in ambas.'"

The Home Secretary thus refers to a letter of Lord Eldon, written to
his daughter soon after the event, as follows:--"After observing,
'Nothing is talked of now which interests anybody the least in the
world, except the election of Mr. O'Connell,' he makes these memorable
remarks:--'As Mr. O'Connell will not, though elected, be allowed to
take his seat in the House of Commons unless he will take the oaths,
etc. (and that he won't do unless he can get absolution), his rejection
from the Commons may excite rebellion in Ireland. At all events, this
business must bring the Roman Catholic question, which has been so
often discussed, to a crisis and a conclusion. The nature of that
conclusion I do not think likely to be favourable to Protestantism.' It
is clear, therefore," continues Mr. Peel, "that Lord Eldon was fully
alive to the real character and magnitude of the event."

Mr. Peel publishes the letters that passed between him and Mr.
Fitzgerald while the election was pending, and from these it would
appear that the latter thought the contest would be violent and
exasperated. After the fight was over, he said he had polled the
gentry to a man, and all the fifty-pound freeholders. The organisation
which had been shown was so complete and formidable that no man could
contemplate without alarm what was to follow in that wretched country.
Mr. Peel observes:--"The last letter of Mr. Fitzgerald is especially
worthy of remark. Can there be a doubt that the example of the county
would have been all-powerful in the case of every future election in
Ireland for those counties in which a Roman Catholic constituency
preponderated? It is true that Mr. O'Connell was the most formidable
competitor whom Mr. Fitzgerald could have encountered; it is possible
that that which took place in Clare would not have taken place had
any other man than Mr. O'Connell been the candidate; but he must be
blind, indeed, to the natural progress of events, and to the influence
of example, in times of public excitement, on the feelings and passions
of men, who could cherish the delusive hope that the instrument of
political power, shivered to atoms in the county of Clare, would still
be wielded with effect in Cork or Galway.

"The Clare election supplied the manifest proof of an abnormal and
unhealthy condition of the public mind in Ireland--the manifest proof
that the sense of a common grievance and the sympathies of a common
interest were beginning to loosen the ties which connect different
classes of men in friendly relations to each other, to weaken the force
of local and personal attachments, and to unite the scattered elements
of society into a homogeneous and disciplined mass, yielding willing
obedience to the assumed authority of superior intelligence hostile
to the law and to the Government which administered it. There is a
wide distinction (though it is not willingly recognised by a heated
party) between the hasty concession to unprincipled agitation and
provident precaution against the explosion of public feeling gradually
acquiring the strength which makes it irresistible. 'Concede nothing
to agitation,' is the ready cry of those who are not responsible--the
vigour of whose decisions is often proportionate to their own personal
immunity from danger, and imperfect knowledge of the true state
of affairs. A prudent Minister, before he determines against all
concession--against any yielding or compromise of former opinions--must
well consider what it is that he has to resist, and what are his powers
of resistance. His task would be an easy one if it were sufficient to
resolve that he would yield nothing to violence or to the menace of
physical force. In this case of the Clare election, and of its natural
consequences, what was the evil to be apprehended? Not force, not
violence, not any act of which law could take cognisance. The real
danger was in the peaceable and legitimate exercise of a franchise
according to the will and conscience of the holder. In such an exercise
of that franchise, not merely permitted, but encouraged and approved
by constitutional law, was involved a revolution of the electoral
system in Ireland--the transfer of political power, so far as it was
connected with representation, from one party to another. The actual
transfer was the least of the evil; the process by which it was to be
effected--the repetition in each county of the scenes of the Clare
election--the fifty-pound free-holders, the gentry to a man polling
one way, their alienated tenantry another--all the great interests of
the county broken down--'the universal desertion' (I am quoting the
expressions of Mr. Fitzgerald)--the agitator and the priest laughing to
scorn the baffled landlord--the local heaving and throes of society on
every casual vacancy in a county--the universal convulsion at a general
election--this was the danger to be apprehended; those were the evils
to be resisted. What was the power of resistance? 'Alter the law, and
remodel the franchise,' was the ready, the improvident response. If it
had been desired to increase the strength of a formidable confederacy,
and, by rallying round it the sympathies of good men and of powerful
parties in Great Britain, to insure for it a signal triumph, to
extinguish the hope of effecting an amicable adjustment of the Catholic
question, and of applying a corrective to the real evils and abuses of
elective franchise, the best way to attain these pernicious ends would
have been to propose to Parliament, on the part of the Government, the
abrupt extinction of the forty-shilling franchise in Ireland, together
with the continued maintenance of civil disability."

"I well know that there are those upon whom such considerations
as these to which I have been adverting will make but a faint
impression. Their answer to all such appeals is the short, in their
opinion the conclusive, declaration--'The Protestant Constitution
in Church and State must be maintained at all hazards, and by any
means; the maintenance of it is a question of principle, and every
concession or compromise is the sacrifice of principle to a low and
vulgar expediency.' This is easily said; but how was Ireland to be
governed? How was the Protestant Constitution in Church and State to
be maintained in that part of the empire? Again I can anticipate the
reply--'By the overwhelming sense of the people of Great Britain; by
the application, if necessary, of physical force for the maintenance of
authority; by the employment of the organised strength of Government,
the police and the military, to enforce obedience to the law.'"

[Illustration: DANIEL O'CONNELL. (_After the Portrait by Sir David
Wilkie._)]

Then--by a process of argument so close, so logical, as to amount to
a demonstration--Sir Robert Peel meets this objection, and shows that
the proposals of the Conservative party afforded no solution of the
real difficulty. Granted that the overwhelming sense of the people of
Great Britain was against concession, what aid could they afford in the
daily, practical administration of the law in Ireland? If seditious
libels were to be punished, or illegal confederacies, dangerous to the
public peace, to be suppressed, the offenders could only be corrected
and checked through the intervention of an Irish jury, little disposed,
if fairly selected, to defer in times of political excitement to the
authority of English opinion. But the real difficulty to be surmounted
was not the violation of the law; it lay, rather, in the novel exercise
of constitutional franchises, in the application of powers recognised
and protected by the law, the power of speech, the power of meeting
in public assemblies, the systematic and not unlawful application of
all these powers to one definite purpose--namely, the organisation of
a force which professed to be a moral force, but had for its object
to encroach, step by step, on the functions of regular government,
to paralyse its authority, and to acquire a strength which might
ultimately render irresistible the demand for civil equality. If, then,
Irish agitation could not be repressed through the action of Irish
juries, if the agitators kept strictly within the letter of the law,
so that even a conviction by an Irish jury might be pronounced, by
the highest legal authorities in England, an Act making trial by jury
"a mockery, a delusion, and a snare," how was the public opinion of
England and Scotland to be brought to bear in putting down the popular
will in Ireland? It could be done only through the Imperial Parliament,
by having a law passed to suspend or abolish the Constitution in
Ireland. But the existing Parliament could not be got to pass any such
measure, for the House of Commons had just voted that the proper way
to put down agitation in Ireland was to grant Catholic Emancipation;
and that the remedy of establishing civil equality ought to be tried
without delay. Was there any hope that a dissolution of Parliament
would produce different results? No; for at the general election of
1826, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, and Devonshire
sent representatives to Parliament, a majority of whom voted against
the maintenance of Protestant ascendency in Ireland. The members for
London, for Liverpool, for Norwich, for Coventry, for Leicester, were
equally divided on the question; while the members for Westminster,
Southwark, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Preston, Chester, and Derby voted
unanimously for concession. Now, the Parliament which assumed this
Liberal complexion had been elected in circumstances calculated to
call forth the strongest manifestation of Protestant feeling; for it
was only the previous year that, after long discussion and a severe
contest, the Commons had sent up to the Lords, by a majority of
twenty-one, a Bill for the repeal of Roman Catholic disabilities. Then,
with regard to Ireland, what would have been the effect of a general
election there? Would not the example of Clare have been imitated in
every county and borough where the Roman Catholic electors were the
majority? And what would have been the effect of such an attempt on the
public peace? Probably, to involve the whole island in the horrors of
a civil and religious war; to be followed by another penal code.

Referring to the means at the disposal of Government for putting
down the agitations by military force, Peel has this remarkable
passage:--"This is a very delicate matter to discuss; but why have I
deferred for twenty years this vindication of my conduct? Why have
I consented to submit for that long period to every reproach which
malice, or mistake, or blindness to the real state of affairs could
direct against me, except in the hope that the time would come (I cared
little whether I were in the grave or not when it should come) when
delicate matters might safely be discussed, and when, without prejudice
to the public interests, or offence to private feelings, the whole
truth might be spoken? I deliberately affirm that a Minister of the
Crown, responsible at the time of which I am speaking for the public
peace and the public welfare, would have grossly and scandalously
neglected his duty if he had failed to consider whether it might not
be possible that the fever of political and religious excitement
which was quickening the pulse and fluttering the bosom of the whole
Catholic population--which had inspired the serf of Clare with the
resolution and energy of a free man--which had, in the twinkling of
an eye, made all considerations of personal gratitude, ancient family
connection, local preferences, the fear of worldly injury, the hope of
worldly advantage, subordinate to the all-absorbing sense of religious
obligation and public duty--whether, I say, it might not be possible
that the contagion of that feverish excitement might spread beyond the
barriers which, under ordinary circumstances, the habits of military
obedience and the strictness of military discipline opposed to all such
external influences."

The chief governor of Ireland, at that time, was no timid civilian.
He was a brave and distinguished soldier--a man of chivalrous honour
himself, and therefore not prone to entertain doubts injurious to
the honour of the profession of which he was an ornament. But Lord
Anglesey was also capable of estimating the force of popular contagious
influences on military discipline and fidelity in an extraordinary
national crisis; and he was so alarmed at the state of things
developed by the Clare election, that he wrote confidentially to Mr.
Peel, cautioning him against supposing that Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald,
from vexation and disappointment, should exaggerate the danger of
the crisis, and telling him that he would send Major Warburton on
a secret mission, known only to his private secretary, to explain
to the Government in London the state of affairs. Major Warburton,
a very intelligent and trustworthy officer, was at the head of the
constabulary, and commanded the force at Clare during the election.
He testified, as the result of his observation there, that, even in
the constabulary and the army, the sympathies of a common cause,
political and religious, could not be altogether repressed, and that
implicit reliance could not long be placed on the effect of discipline
and the duty of obedience. On the 20th of July Lord Anglesey wrote
as follows:--"We hear occasionally of the Catholic soldiers being
ill-disposed, and entirely under the influence of the priests. One
regiment of infantry is said to be divided into Orange and Catholic
factions. It is certain that, on the 12th of July, the guard at the
Castle had Orange lilies about them." On the 26th of July the Viceroy
wrote another letter, from which the following is an extract:--"The
priests are using very inflammatory language, and are certainly working
upon the Catholics of the army. I think it important that the depôts
of Irish recruits should be gradually removed, under the appearance of
being required to join their regiments, and that whatever regiments are
sent here should be those of Scotland, or, at all events, of men not
recruited from the south of Ireland. I desired Sir John Byng to convey
this opinion to Lord Hill."

In the meantime, Mr. Peel had, in the previous month, communicated
with the Duke of Wellington, and intimated his wish to retire from
the Cabinet, and from the leadership of the House of Commons, in
consequence of his being in the minority upon a question which, of all
others, most deeply affected the condition and prospects of Ireland,
with the government of which he was charged as Home Secretary. The
Duke of Wellington's sentiments did not differ from his as to the
embarrassment that must arise from divided counsels in the Cabinet.
The Duke also acted upon the earnest advice of Mr. Peel not to take a
course which would preclude an early settlement of the question. In the
debate on Lord Lansdowne's motion, on the 9th of June, that the Lords
should concur in the resolution passed by the House of Commons, the
Duke and Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst took part in the debate, and, though
they did not concur in the resolution, which was rejected by a majority
of 44, the general tenor of their speeches and of those of the bishops
led Lord Lansdowne to observe, in reply, that he thought the noble
lord on the woolsack and the noble duke must have had the intention of
conceding the Catholic claims, for no one knew better than they did the
danger of holding out expectations which could not be realised. The
Session of 1828 was closed by a Speech from the Throne on the 28th of
July. As only three weeks of the Session had to elapse after the Clare
election, Mr. O'Connell did not offer to take his seat, preferring to
make the most of the "M.P." in the work of agitation till the meeting
of Parliament in the spring. And, besides, he was probably aware that
he would have no opportunity of making a speech. If he appeared, the
Speaker would desire him to take the oaths required by law; and if he
declined, he would treat him as a stranger and intruder, and listen
to nothing he had to say. He could not be summoned to the House, and
compelled to attend, because he was not returned at a general election;
and it was thought better to let him enjoy his senatorial honours
unmolested for six months, than to enter, at the close of the Session,
into an irritating and protracted contest.

On the 2nd of July, in a letter to Lord Francis Leveson Gower, the
Viceroy gave his opinion of the state of Ireland in these terms:--"I
begin by premising that I hold in abhorrence the Association, the
agitators, the priests, and their religion; and I believe that not
many, _but that some_, of the bishops are mild, moderate, and anxious
to come to a fair and liberal compromise for the adjustment of the
points at issue. I think that these latter have very little, if any,
influence with the lower clergy and the population.

"Such is the extraordinary power of the Association, or, rather, of
the agitators, of whom there are many of high ability, of ardent
mind, of great daring (and if there was no Association, these men are
now too well known not to maintain their power under the existing
order of exclusion), that I am quite certain they could lead on the
people to open rebellion at a moment's notice; and their organisation
is such that in the hands of desperate and intelligent leaders they
would be extremely formidable. The hope, and indeed the probability,
of present tranquillity rests upon the forbearance and the not very
determined courage of O'Connell, and on his belief, as well as that
of the principal men amongst them, that they will carry their cause
by unceasing agitation, and by intimidation, without coming to blows.
I believe their success inevitable; that no power under heaven can
arrest its progress. There may be rebellion--you may put to death
thousands--you may suppress it, but it will only be to put off the
day of compromise; and, in the meantime, the country is still more
impoverished, and the minds of the people are, if possible, still
more alienated, and ruinous expense is entailed upon the empire. But
supposing that the whole evil was concentred in the Association, and
that, if that was suppressed, all would go smoothly, where is the man
who can tell me how to suppress it? Many cry out that the nuisance
must be abated--that the Government is supine--that the insolence of
the demagogues is intolerable; but I have not yet found one person
capable of pointing out a remedy. All are mute when you ask them to
define their proposition. All that even the most determined opposers
to Emancipation say is, that it is better to leave things as they are
than to risk any change. But will things remain as they are? Certainly
not. They are bad; they must get worse; and I see no possible means
of improving them but by depriving the demagogues of the power of
directing the people; and by taking Messrs. O'Connell, Sheil, and the
rest of them, from the Association, and placing them in the House of
Commons, this desirable object would be at once accomplished.

"The present order of things must not, cannot last. There are three
modes of proceeding: first, that of trying to go on as we have done;
secondly, to adjust the question by concession, and such guards as may
be deemed indispensable; thirdly, to put down the Association, and to
crush the power of the priests. The first I hold to be impossible. The
second is practicable and advisable. The third is only possible by
supposing that you can reconstruct the House of Commons, and to suppose
that is to suppose that you can totally alter the feelings of those
who send them there. I believe nothing short of the suspension of the
Habeas Corpus Act and martial law will effect the third proposition.
This would effect it during their operation, and, perhaps, for a short
time after they had ceased, and then every evil would return with
accumulated weight. But no House of Commons would consent to these
measures until there is open rebellion, and therefore till that occurs
it is useless to think of them. The second mode of proceeding is, then,
I conceive, the only practicable one; but the present is not propitious
to effect even this. I abhor the idea of truckling to the overbearing
Catholic demagogues. To make any movement towards conciliation under
the present excitement and system of terror would revolt me; but I do
most conscientiously, and after the most earnest consideration of the
subject, give it as my conviction that the first moment of tranquillity
should be seized to signify the intention of adjusting the question,
lest another period of calm should not present itself."

Lord Anglesey had expressed himself so strongly in his communications
with the Government, that he was afraid of being regarded by them as
a partisan. He deprecated giving the executive any additional powers,
though not without apprehensions of a rebellion, which he believed he
had sufficient force to quell, even in the improbable event of foreign
aid, upon which some of the Irish people might, however rashly, rely
for success. On the 20th of July he wrote: "It appears not improbable
there may be an attempt to introduce arms, and finally insurrection. I
am quite sure the disaffected are amply organised for the undertaking.
They are partially, but ill, armed. Pikes, however, to any amount, and
at very short notice, would be easily manufactured, if they are not
already made and secreted. Still, I cannot bring myself to believe
that the ruling characters are at all inclined to put their cause
to the test of arms; and if they do, I cannot imagine how, without
foreign aid--of which there appears no fear--they can calculate upon
success." The priests had become all silent and reserved, even
towards those with whom they had hitherto maintained confidential
intercourse. No money would tempt them to make a single disclosure, and
there was a general impression among them that some great event was
at hand. The law officers of the Crown had been consulted as to the
expediency of prosecuting some of the agitators for the most violent
of their speeches; but their advice was, that it could not be done
with any prospect of success, because their most exciting stimulants
were accompanied by declarations that they wished only to guard the
Government against insurrection, which only concession could prevent.
Such being the condition of Ireland, the position of the Government
was in the highest degree perplexing. The House of Commons was for
Emancipation; the Lords were opposed to it; the king was opposed to it.
The strength of political parties was nicely balanced in Parliament,
and strong political excitement prevailed on both sides of the Irish
Sea. Peel, in view of this state of affairs, says: "I maturely and
anxiously considered every point which required consideration, and
I formed a decision as to the obligation of public duty, of which I
may say with truth that it was wholly at variance with that which the
regard for my own personal interests or private feelings would have
dictated." His intention was to relinquish office; but he resolved not
to do so without placing on record his opinion that a complete change
of policy was necessary, that the Catholic question should no longer be
an open question, and that the whole condition of Ireland, political
and social, should be taken into consideration by the Cabinet,
precisely in the same manner in which every other question of grave
importance was considered, and with the same power to offer advice upon
it to the Sovereign. He also gave it as his decided opinion that there
was less evil and less danger in conceding the Catholic claims than in
persevering in the policy of resistance. He left London for Brighton
soon after the close of the Session, having made a previous arrangement
with the Duke of Wellington that he should send him a memorandum
explanatory of his views on the state of Ireland and on the Catholic
question, and that he should write to the Duke fully in reply. On the
9th of August the Duke wrote to him as follows:--"I now send you the
memorandum which I sent to the king on the state of Ireland, a letter
which I sent to him at the same time, his answer, a memorandum upon
the Roman Catholic question which I have since drawn up, and a letter
which I wrote yesterday to the Lord Chancellor."

[Illustration: THE FOUR COURTS, DUBLIN.]

The result of the Duke's deliberations upon the crisis and the duty
of Government respecting it was stated at length in an unpublished
manuscript, left in his own handwriting, and is probably a copy of the
memorandum sent to the king. The following is the substance of the
Duke's reflections as given in Mr. Gleig's "Life of Wellington":--

"The Government, if it should determine under existing circumstances
to maintain the statutes excluding Roman Catholics from power, must
ask for new laws, the old having quite broken down. They must bring
in a Bill requiring candidates for seats in Parliament to take at the
hustings the oaths of supremacy and allegiance; otherwise they could
not prevent Roman Catholics from contesting every vacant county and
borough in the United Kingdom, and from becoming _ipso facto_ members
of Parliament, should constituencies see fit to elect them. Practically
speaking, there might be small risk that either in England or Scotland
this result would follow--at least, to any extent. But what was to
be expected in Ireland? That every constituency, with the exception,
perhaps, of the university and city of Dublin, and of the counties and
boroughs of the north, would, whenever the opportunity offered, return
Roman Catholics; and that the members so returned being prevented
from taking their seats, three-fourths, at least, of the Irish people
must remain permanently unrepresented in Parliament. Was it possible,
looking to the state of parties in the House of Commons, that such
a measure, if proposed, could be carried? For many years back the
majorities in favour of repeal had gone on increasing, Session after
Session. Even the present Parliament, elected as it had been under a
strong Protestant pressure, had swerved from its faithfulness. The
small majority which threw out Lord John Russell's Bill in 1827 had
been converted, in 1828, into a minority; and among those who voted on
that occasion with Mr. Peel, many gave him warning that hereafter they
should consider themselves free to follow a different course.

"But perhaps it might be possible to get a Bill passed to disfranchise
the Irish forty-shilling freeholders--a class of voters who, as they
had been created for acknowledged purposes of corruption in the
Irish Parliament, would have nobody to stand up for them in high
places, now that they refused to play their patrons' game. This was
quite as improbable an issue as the other. The disfranchisement of
forty-shilling freeholders had, indeed, been talked of in former years;
but, if effected at all, it was to be in connection with a measure
of Catholic Emancipation. To propose it now for the avowed purpose
of rendering Catholic Emancipation impossible would be to insure the
rejection of the Bill. That plan, therefore, fell at once to the
ground; and there remained but two others.

"The Minister might ask Parliament for power to suspend the Habeas
Corpus Act, and to place all Ireland under military law. To ask for
less would be ridiculous; because the Act against unlawful assemblies
had failed, and, on account of its helplessness, was suffered to
expire. Now, would Parliament grant such extensive powers to any
Government merely that the Government might be enabled to debar his
Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects a little longer from enjoying
equal political privileges with Protestants? The issue was very
doubtful--perhaps it was not doubtful at all. Parliament would never
grant such powers. But, assuming that the powers were given, what must
follow?--a general insurrection, to be put down after much bloodshed
and suffering, and then a return to that state of sullen discontent
which would render Ireland, ten times more than she had ever been, a
millstone round the neck of Great Britain, and by-and-by, when military
law ceased, and the same measure of personal liberty was granted to
Irishmen which the natives of England and Scotland enjoyed, a renewal
of agitation, only in a more hostile spirit, and the necessity of
either reverting again and again to measures of coercion, or of
yielding at last what, upon every principle of humanity and common
sense, ought not to have been thus far withheld. But the Minister, if
the existing Parliament refused to give him the powers which he asked,
might dissolve, and go to the country with a strong Protestant cry; and
this cry might serve his purpose in England and Scotland. Doubtless;
but what would occur in Ireland?--the return of Roman Catholic members
in the proportion of four to one over Protestants, and the virtual
disfranchisement thereby of four-fifths of the Irish people. Would
Ireland submit quietly to any law carried against herself in a House
of Commons so constituted? Was it not much more probable that a
dissolution would only lead to the same results which had been shown to
be inevitable in the event of the existing Parliament acquiescing in
the Ministers' views? And was there not, at all events, a chance that
the electors, even, of England and Scotland, might refuse to abet a
policy so pregnant with danger to themselves and to the commonwealth?
But why move at all? Mr. O'Connell had been elected by the priests
and rabble of Clare to represent them in Parliament. Let him retain
this empty honour; or, better still, let him be summoned by a call of
the House to the bar, and, on his refusal to take the oaths, issue a
new writ, and go to a new election. In the first place, Mr. O'Connell
could not be forced to attend to a call of the House, such call being
obligatory only on members chosen at a general election; and in the
next, if he did attend, what then? As soon as the new writ was issued,
he would take the field again as a candidate, and again be elected; and
so the game would continue to be played, till a dissolution occurred,
when all those consequences of which we have elsewhere spoken would
inevitably come to pass."

Two courses were now open to the Duke of Wellington and to Peel--to
resign, in order that Emancipation might be carried by the statesmen
who had always been its advocates, and who might therefore carry
it without any violation of consistency or of their own political
principles. It was for not adopting this course that they were exposed
to all the odium which they so long endured. But the question was,
whether Lord Grey or Lord Lansdowne could have carried Catholic
Emancipation even with the aid of the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel
in opposition--could have overcome the repugnance of the Sovereign and
the resistance of the House of Lords. It was their decided conviction
that they could not, especially with due regard to the safety of the
Established Church. But being convinced that the time had come when
the question ought to be settled, the Duke examined the second course
that was open to him, and embraced it. It was this: that postponing all
other considerations to what he believed to be a great public duty, he
should himself, as Prime Minister, endeavour to settle the question.

Peel has been even more severely censured than the Duke of Wellington
for the part he took on this memorable occasion. He wrote a long
letter to the Duke, in which he earnestly protested against taking
charge of the Emancipation Bill in the House of Commons, offering,
at the same time, to give it his earnest support. He also offered to
resign, as a means of removing one obstacle to the adjustment which the
interests of the country demanded. The letter concluded as follows:
"I do not merely volunteer my retirement at whatever may be the most
convenient time, I do not merely give you the promise that out of
office (be the sacrifices that I foresee, private and public, what they
may) I will cordially co-operate with you in the settlement of this
question, and cordially support your Government; but I add to this my
decided and deliberate opinion that it will tend to the satisfactory
adjustment of the question if the originating of it in the House of
Commons and the general superintendence of its progress be committed
to other hands than mine." And in his "Memoirs" he remarks: "Twenty
years have elapsed since the above letter was written. I read it now
with the full testimony of my own heart and conscience to the perfect
sincerity of the advice which I then gave, and the declarations which
I then made; with the same testimony, also, to the fact that that
letter was written with a clear foresight of the penalties to which
the course I resolved to take would expose me--the rage of party,
the rejection by the University of Oxford, the alienation of private
friends, the interruption of family affections. Other penalties, such
as the loss of office and of royal favour, I would not condescend to
notice if they were not the heaviest in the estimation of vulgar and
low-minded men, incapable of appreciating higher motives of public
conduct. My judgment may be erroneous. From the deep interest I have
in the result (though now only so far as future fame is concerned), it
cannot be impartial; yet, surely, I do not err in believing that when
the various circumstances on which my decision was taken are calmly
and dispassionately considered--the state of political parties--the
recent discussions in Parliament--the result of the Clare election,
and the prospects which it opened--the earnest representations and
emphatic warnings of the chief governor of Ireland--the evils, rapidly
increasing, of divided counsels in the Cabinet, and of conflicting
decisions in the two Houses of Parliament--the necessity for some
systematic and vigorous course of policy in respect to Ireland--the
impossibility, even if it were wise, that that policy should be one of
coercion--surely, I do not err in believing that I shall not hereafter
be condemned for having heedlessly and precipitously, still less for
having dishonestly and treacherously, counselled the attempt to adjust
the long litigated question, that had for so many years precluded the
cordial co-operation of public men, and had left Ireland the arena for
fierce political conflicts, annually renewed, without the means of
authoritative interposition on the part of the Crown."

The state of Ireland continued to excite the greatest alarm from the
prorogation of Parliament to the end of the year. The language of the
speakers in the Association became more violent, and the harangues
of the priests more inflammatory. In the counties of Tipperary and
Limerick large bodies of men were accustomed to assemble on Sundays,
and to parade in military order, carrying banners. These bands were
regularly organised and admirably commanded. The Irish Government, from
time to time, reported the progress of this formidable organisation.
In one place as many as 700 "cavalry" would assemble, with thousands
of infantry, and go through military evolutions. These were surrounded
by thousands of the peasantry. Amongst the persons thus paraded were
some of the most abandoned characters in the country, men who had
notoriously been concerned in the perpetration of murder, and for the
apprehension of whom large rewards had been offered in vain by the
Government. These demonstrations, as might be expected, excited the
greatest alarm among the Protestants of the south, as well as the
peaceably disposed Roman Catholics. One ominous circumstance connected
with them was the fact that the dissuasions of the priests against the
meetings in military array were disregarded. Mr. Lawless, an active
member of the Association, marched northward at the head of 10,000
Roman Catholics. In the county of Monaghan, the Orangemen, apprised
of their approach, took possession of the town of Ballyhay in large
numbers, prepared to encounter the southern invaders of Ulster. As the
Orangemen were well armed, and excited to the utmost, a bloody battle
would have ensued, had not Lawless beaten a timely retreat. Getting out
of his carriage, and mounting a swift horse, he galloped off, amidst
the indignant shouts of his followers.

The formidable organisation of the Roman Catholics led to a counter
organisation of the Protestants, in the form of Brunswick Clubs. This
organisation embraced the whole of the Protestant peasantry, north and
south, the Protestant farmers, and many of the gentry. They, too, held
their regular meetings, had their exciting oratory, and passed strong
resolutions, condemnatory of the inaction of the Government, which
was charged with neglecting its first and most imperative duty--the
protection of society from lawless violence. The Brunswickers, as
well as the Emancipators, had their "rent" to bear the expenses of
the agitation. They alleged that they were obliged to organise in
self-defence, and in defence of the Constitution. In Ulster the country
was divided into two camps, Catholic and Protestant. Notwithstanding
the difference in numbers, the Protestants of Ulster were eager to
encounter their antagonists in the field, and had not the slightest
doubt of being able to beat them. They had all the proud confidence
of a dominant race, and regarded the military pretensions of their
antagonists as scornfully as the Turks would have regarded similar
pretensions on the part of the Greeks. The feeling on both sides was
such, that an aggression upon the Protestants in the south would have
called forth 100,000 armed men in the north; and an aggression upon
the Catholics in Ulster would have produced a similar effect among
the Catholics in Munster. The number of Protestants in favour of
Emancipation constituted but a small minority. The great mass were
against concession. They believed that an insurrection would be the
most satisfactory solution of the difficulty. With the aid of the army
they felt that they were able to crush the "Papists," as they had been
crushed in 1798, and then they hoped they would be quiet for at least
another generation, resuming what they considered their proper position
as "sole-leather." They forgot, however, the increase in their numbers,
their property, and their intelligence. They forgot the growth of a
middle class amongst them; the increased power and influence of the
hierarchy, and the formidable band of agitators supplied by the Roman
Catholic bar, whose members, many of them men of commanding abilities
and large practice, were excluded by their creed from the Bench; which
exclusion filled the minds of the ambitious with a burning sense of
wrong, and made it their interest to devise all possible modes of
evading the law, while keeping the country on the verge of insurrection.

So successful were they in this endeavour that the Government was
in a state of the greatest possible perplexity. Lord Anglesey,
the Viceroy, and Lord Leveson Gower, the Chief Secretary, were in
continual correspondence with the Home Secretary as to the propriety
of adopting measures of repression. Lord Anglesey was decided in his
conviction that Emancipation ought to be immediately granted. He
was naturally reluctant to employ force, unless it was imperatively
necessary, and then he felt with Mr. Peel that it ought to be used
effectively, whatever might be the consequences. Neither the Irish nor
the English Government concealed from itself what those consequences
would probably be--namely, an open rebellion, a sanguinary civil war;
which, however, they had no doubt of being able to put down. The law
officers of the Crown, both in England and Ireland, were called upon
for their opinions as to the illegality of the proceedings of the
agitators, as to the likelihood of success in case of prosecution, and
whether the Government would be warranted, by statute or common law, in
dispersing the popular assemblages by force. They agreed on both sides
of the channel that the case was not sufficiently clear to justify
the Government either in legal proceedings or military repression.
The English law officers came to this conclusion although at the time
Sir Charles Wetherell was Attorney-General. It is evident, however,
from the tone of the correspondence published by Sir Robert Peel's
executors, that the Home Secretary was far from being satisfied with
the conduct of Lord Anglesey. It was believed that he did not always
act with sufficient discretion, and that he sometimes did and said
things which made the agitators believe that they had his countenance
and support. For example, he went on a visit to Lord Cloncurry, who,
though a Protestant, was a member of the Catholic Association, and
who a few days after entertaining the representative of the king,
attended a meeting of that body. The excuse of Lord Anglesey was, that
Lord Cloncurry went for the purpose of preventing the passing of a
resolution in favour of exclusive dealing. The opinion of the English
Government was shared by Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald and many other Liberal
statesmen who sympathised with the irritation of the Irish Protestants
at the supineness of the Irish executive. Looking at the state of
things at this distance of time, every impartial person must agree that
Peel was right. He had urged the propriety of issuing a proclamation by
the Lord-Lieutenant in council, warning the people against assembling
in large bodies in military array, as exciting alarm in the public
mind, and threatening to disturb the peace. When at last Lord Anglesey
was induced to adopt this course, it proved successful. The agitators
became cowed and cautious, and it was quite evident that nothing was
further from their wishes than to come to blows, either with the
troops or the Brunswickers. Thus, in November, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald
wrote to Mr. Peel: "The sentiment is universal of disgust, indignation,
and alarm at the proceedings of Lord Anglesey's Government, and at
the tone of his partisans and his press. Whether the collision will
happen so soon as is contemplated I know not. I rather think not. The
Association is frightened; and if the demonstrations of the south are
interrupted, and Mr. Lawless's progress in the west be not persevered
in, it is possible, and it is to be hoped, that the hostile parties may
not come to an effusion of blood. But can we read the reports of the
meetings that are taking place and expect that before the winter is
over the gentry of the country, Emancipators as well as Brunswickers,
will not call on the Government to take a part, and to save us from
these horrors?" Mr. Leslie Foster, a leading Irish statesman, wrote
in the same month: "Depend upon it, let Parliament do what they may,
the Catholics will not rebel. Their leaders are more deeply convinced
than you are of the utter and immediate ruin that would be the result
of any insurrectionary movement; and in every rank among them, down to
the lowest, there is a due fear of the power of England, the facilities
of a steam invasion, the character of the Duke, and not least, perhaps
above all, the readiness of the Ulster Protestants for battle. It is
further to be borne in mind that in no period within our memory was
the condition of the people so rapidly improving, or their employment
so great, as at the present moment; and there is a real, substantial
disinclination in consequence, amongst all ranks above the mere rabble,
to hazard any course that would involve the country in confusion."

[Illustration: THE FLIGHT OF LAWLESS. (_See p._ 283.)]

Mr. O'Connell's avowed principle of action was "moral force." He was
in the constant habit of asserting that "the man who commits a crime
gives strength to the enemy;" and that no political advantages, however
great, should be obtained at the expense of "one drop of Christian
blood." Nevertheless, the letters which he was in the habit of
addressing to "the people of Ireland," and which were remarkable for
their clearness, force, and emphatic tautology, had always prefixed to
them, as a standing motto, Byron's couplet--

    "Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not,
    Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?"

There is no doubt that his great object was through life to inspire his
Roman Catholic countrymen with a consciousness of their physical power,
supplanting the slavish spirit that had been inspired by the penal
code. He was accustomed to say that for every shilling of "rent" there
was a man, and the man could grasp a weapon, and put forth a power that
slumbered in his right arm. In fact, this mighty political conjurer
produced all his spells by invoking this phantom of physical force;
nor did he invoke it in vain, for it was that phantom that ultimately
terrified the most determined supporters of the Protestant ascendency
into surrender to the principle of civil equality. The Catholic
Association, in its origin, was treated with contempt, and even
Catholics themselves spoke of it with derision; but as it proceeded in
its operations, the speeches that were weekly delivered produced an
effect which daily increased. The Catholic aristocrat was made to feel
that his ancient blood, which slavery had made stagnant in his veins,
was of no avail; the Catholic merchant was taught that his coffers
filled with gold could not impart to him any substantial importance,
when every needy corporator looked down upon him from the pedestal of
his aristocratic religion; the Catholic priest was informed that he had
much occasion to put the lessons of humility inculcated by the Gospel
into practice, when every coxcomb minister of the Establishment could,
with impunity, put some sacerdotal affront upon him. In short, from the
proudest nobleman down to the meanest serf, the whole body of Roman
Catholics were rendered sensible of their inferior place in the State.
The stigma was pointed at--men became exasperated at their grievances
when they were roused to their perception; a mirror was held up to
Ireland, and when she beheld the brand upon her forehead, she began to
burn. Reviled as the Catholic demagogues have been, still did they not
accomplish great things when they succeeded in marshalling and bringing
the whole population of the country into array? The English people
had been previously taught to hold the Irish Catholics in contempt;
but when they saw that such an immense population was actuated by one
indignant sentiment, and was combined in an impassioned, but not the
less effectual, organisation, and, above all, when they perceived
£1,000 a week pouring into the exchequer, their alarm was excited, and,
although their pride was wounded, they ceased to despise where they had
begun to fear. The wonders which were achieved in Waterford, in Armagh,
in Monaghan, and in Louth, may be referred to the system of energy
which had been adopted.

Shortly before the Clare election Mr. O'Connell established the order
of "Liberators," as a mode of expressing the gratitude and confidence
of the people for past services. Its objects were to prevent the
formation or continuance of secret societies; to conciliate all classes
in one bond of brotherhood and affection, "so that all religious
animosities may cease among Irishmen;" to bury in total and eternal
oblivion all ancient animosities and reproaches; to prevent feuds
and riots, and faction fights at fairs and markets; to promote the
collection of a national fund for national purposes; to protect
voters from the vengeance of their landlords, and to watch over their
registration; "to promote the system of dealing exclusively with the
friends of civil and religious liberty, Protestant and Catholic,
with the selection, where choice can be made, of Protestant friends,
being the most disinterested of the two; also, to prevent, as much as
possible, all dealing with the enemies of Ireland, whether Protestant,
Orangemen, or Orange Catholics, the worst of all Orangists; to promote
the exclusive use of articles the growth and manufacture of Ireland."

The system of exclusive dealing thus recommended was a system of social
corruption and social persecution, while the attempt to serve Ireland
by the exclusive use of articles of Irish produce only showed Mr.
O'Connell's ignorance of political economy. The system, however, was
soon abandoned.

The impression among the Roman Catholics after the Clare election
was that Emancipation was virtually won. So strong was the feeling
of exultation that immediately after, the Catholic rent reached the
sum of £2,704 in one week; the next week it was £1,427; and though
it soon after sank to £500 a week, it showed the strength of the
popular enthusiasm. Liberator Clubs were established in every part of
the country. They were branches of the Association; but each had its
own peculiar organisation, its internal management, and its working
committees. By means of this machinery the whole population of the
country could be moved at any moment, and in any direction. This is
a very remarkable fact, taken in connection with the theory of the
impulsive and fickle character of the Celtic race, their averseness
from order and method, and the difficulty of getting them to pursue any
course systematically. O'Connell, a man of Celtic blood, was one of
the greatest methodisers of his day; and there is scarcely an example
in history of any popular leader having wrought an oppressed race,
consisting of six millions of people, always prone to division, into
an organisation so compact that he could wield the fierce democracy at
his will, and bid defiance to the most powerful state in the world to
suppress the voluntary system of government he had established. This
is, perhaps, the most singular and instructive fact in the whole career
of the great agitator.

An impression got abroad, soon after the Clare election, that the Duke
of Wellington and Mr. Peel were wavering on the Catholic question; and
in the month of August a profound sensation was produced by a speech
made by Mr. Dawson, one of the members for Londonderry. Mr. Dawson was
the brother-in-law of the Home Secretary. The latter represented Oxford
University, having beaten Canning out of the field, as the champion of
Protestant ascendency. The former represented the greatest stronghold
of Protestantism in Ireland, the very last of all its constituencies to
tolerate a departure from its own inspiring watchword, "No Surrender."
Mr. Dawson had been a most uncompromising antagonist of the Catholic
claims. We cannot wonder, then, at the startling effect, which ran like
an electric shock through the country, when such a man--a member of the
Government--at a public banquet, in the midst of the local chiefs of
Conservatism within the walls of Derry, surrounded by all the memorials
of the glorious Revolution of 1688, pronounced the word "_Surrender_."
He was described as the "pilot balloon," to show the direction in which
the wind blew in high quarters. Thus, there was a complete accordance
between Mr. Sheil, the eloquent agitator, and Mr. Dawson, one of
the ablest and most loyal supporters of the Government, as to the
victorious power of the Catholic Association. But to have its triumphs
thus proclaimed on the very spot where Protestant ascendency had been
established 140 years before, and which had ever since remained its
greatest stronghold, was more than could be borne by men who had just
been drinking with enthusiasm "The glorious, pious, and immortal memory
of William III." Mr. Dawson was, therefore, reviled and execrated;
he was burned in effigy, and for years his name was almost as odious
to the Orangemen as Lundy the traitor. Hitherto, the agitation on
both sides had been little better than child's-play. The Protestant
party rested satisfied in the persuasion that "the Constitution in
Church and State" was safe in the keeping of a thoroughly Conservative
Government--a House of Lords which would not change the laws of
England, and a Sovereign who would not violate his coronation oath. But
when they found their standard-bearers fainting, and their most trusted
commanders parleying with the enemy, their exasperation knew no bounds.
The Brunswickers were now terribly in earnest. Their blood was up, and
they longed for the arbitrament of the sword.

The agitation extended to England, where also the "No Popery" cry
was effectually raised. The Duke of Newcastle, Lord Winchilsea, and
Lord Kenyon led the way in the formation of Brunswick Clubs. A great
demonstration was got up on Penenden Heath--a monster meeting of
English Brunswickers. To counteract its effects, it was determined that
some of the leading advocates of the Catholic cause, being freeholders
of Kent, should go to the meeting. Among those who attended were Lord
Darnley, Mr. Cobbett, Serjeant Shee, and Mr. Sheil; but none of them
could obtain a hearing. Mr. Sheil had come prepared with a grand
speech, carefully written out, as was his custom, and committed to
memory, but not so strictly as to exclude such extemporaneous additions
as might be necessary to adapt the oration to the actual circumstances.
When he arrived at the meeting, the reporter from the _Sun_ asked him
for his manuscript, which he gave, with the understanding that he
must make it correspond with his speech as delivered. The reporter,
taking it for granted that it would be delivered all right, made all
possible haste to get it into type. The speech appeared _in extenso_;
but it unfortunately happened that, owing to the uproar and continued
interruptions, it was not delivered. The circumstance became the
subject of remark, eliciting comments by no means flattering to the
Irish orator. The intended speech, however, was as able as any he had
ever delivered. It consisted chiefly of an elaborate defence of the
Roman Catholic Church from the charge of persecution. It admitted that
it did persecute like every other church when in power; but that it was
an incident of its establishment, not the natural result of its spirit
and principles.

In the meantime, the Catholic Association was pursuing its work with
increasing vigour and determination. It resolved thenceforth to
support no candidate who should not pledge himself to oppose every
Government that did not make Emancipation a Cabinet measure. Provincial
meetings were held in Clonmel, Kilkenny, and Mullingar; the chair at
the last place being occupied by the Marquis of Westmeath. Between
the two extreme parties there were many moderate men, of high social
position, anxious for something like a compromise. Some of these were
in confidential communication with Lord Anglesey's Government, and it
was thought desirable to establish a Liberal platform, with a view to
moderating the violence of Catholics and Brunswickers.

[Illustration: SCENE AT THE "SURRENDER" BANQUET IN DERRY. (_See p._
287.)]
It was with this object that Mr. Pierce Mahony got up the celebrated
"Leinster declaration," so called from the signature of Ireland's
only duke. But the experiment served only to reveal the weakness
of the moderate party, for after lying for signature in Latouche's
Bank for two months, only forty-two names were attached to it within
that period. When, however, the struggle between the two parties
was on the point of having a bloody issue, the alarm spread through
the ranks of moderate men on both sides, and the document rapidly
received signatures. The declaration set forth that the disqualifying
laws which affected Roman Catholics were productive of consequences
prejudicial in the highest degree to the interests of Ireland--the
primary cause of her poverty--the source of political discontents
and religious animosities--destructive alike of social happiness and
national prosperity. Unless the legislature should speedily apply a
remedy to those evils, they must in their rapid progression assume
such a character as would, perhaps, render their removal impossible.
It was stated, therefore, to be a matter of paramount importance that
the whole subject should be taken into immediate consideration by
Parliament, "with a view to such a final conciliatory adjustment as may
be conducive to the peace and strength of the United Kingdom, to the
stability of our national institutions, and to the general satisfaction
and concord of all classes of his Majesty's subjects."

As winter approached, the state of things assumed a more portentous
aspect. The leading agitators were themselves dismayed when they looked
down the precipice to the edge of which they had brought the nation.
O'Connell at the end of September issued an address, urging the people
to discontinue their assemblies, and they obeyed. His lieutenants
were exceedingly anxious that the Liberal Protestants should take an
active part as mediators in order, if possible, to avert a disastrous
collision. A good occasion was offered by the visit of Lord Morpeth to
Ireland. This enlightened and accomplished nobleman--always the friend
of civil and religious liberty, destined to preside over the Government
of Ireland, as Viceroy, when the _régime_ of civil equality was fully
established, and to be the congenial interpreter of its spirit--was
then invited to a great banquet, which was attended by all the leading
friends of civil and religious liberty in and about Dublin, Protestant
and Catholic. The Duke of Leinster was in the chair, and Mr. Sheil
appealed to him, in the most eloquent terms, by all that was patriotic
and glorious in the history of his ancestors the Geraldines--which for
seven hundred years formed a great part of the history of Ireland,
and who were in past times considered more Irish than the Irish
themselves--to put himself at the head of the Liberal party.

[Illustration: THE MARQUIS OF ANGLESEY. (_After the Portrait by Sir
Thomas Lawrence._)]

Dr. Curtis, the Roman Catholic Primate, was an old friend of the Duke
of Wellington, whom he had known during the war in the Peninsula, and
with whom he had kept up a confidential correspondence on the subject
of the Catholic claims, on the state of the country, on the disposition
of the Roman Catholics in the army, and other matters of the kind. On
the 11th of December the Duke, in answer to a letter urging the prompt
settlement of the Catholic question, wrote to Dr. Curtis as follows:
"I have received your letter of the 4th instant, and I assure you that
you do me justice in believing that I am sincerely anxious to witness
the settlement of the Roman Catholic question, which, by benefiting the
State, would confer a benefit on every individual belonging to it. But
I confess that I see no prospect of such a settlement. Party has been
mixed up with the consideration of the question to such a degree, and
such violence pervades every discussion of it, that it is impossible to
expect to prevail upon men to consider it dispassionately. If we could
bury it in oblivion for a short time, and employ that time diligently
in the consideration of its difficulties on all sides (for they are
very great), I should not despair of seeing a satisfactory remedy."

After the reports that had gone abroad, to the effect that the
Government were about to settle the question, and that they had even
prepared a Bill on the subject, this letter from the Prime Minister
to the Roman Catholic Primate was most disappointing. Besides, it was
absurd to expect that the subject could be buried in oblivion. The
Duke, no doubt, had in his mind the difficulty with the king, and the
excitement of Protestant feeling in England, which was exasperated
by the violence of the debates in the Catholic Association, and the
tone of menace and defiance which that body had assumed. This obstacle
was not lessened by the letter in question, the purport of which
was communicated to Mr. O'Connell, and also to the Lord-Lieutenant.
The latter wrote an admirable letter in reply, which led to serious
consequences. On the 22nd of December Dr. Curtis sent him the Duke's
letter, and a copy of his own answer to it. He acknowledged that
it conveyed information which he had not himself received, though
entitled, from his position, to receive it first. He then frankly
offered his opinion as to the course which it behoved the Catholics
to pursue. He was perfectly convinced that the final and cordial
settlement of the question could alone give peace, harmony, and
prosperity to all classes of his Majesty's subjects. He advised that
the Duke of Wellington should by every means be propitiated; for if
any man could carry the measure, it was he. All personal and offensive
insinuations should therefore be suppressed, and ample allowance
should be made for the difficulties of his situation. "Difficult,"
said Lord Anglesey, "it certainly is; for he has to overcome the very
strong prejudices and the interested motives of many persons of the
highest influence, as well as allay the real alarm of many of the more
ignorant Protestants." As to burying in oblivion the question for a
short time, the Viceroy considered the thing utterly impossible, and,
if possible, not at all desirable. He recommended, on the contrary,
that all constitutional means should be used to forward the cause,
coupled with the utmost forbearance, and the most submissive obedience
to the law. Personality offered no advantage. It offended those who
could assist, and confirmed predisposed aversion. "Let the Catholic,"
said his lordship, "trust to the justice of his cause, and to the
growing liberality of mankind. Unfortunately, he has lost some friends,
and fortified enemies, during the last six months, by unwearied and
unnecessary violence. Brute force, he should be assured, can effect
nothing. It is the legislature that must decide this great question,
and my anxiety is that it should be met by the Parliament under the
most favourable circumstances, and that the opposers of Catholic
Emancipation shall be disarmed by the patient forbearance as well as by
the unwearied perseverance of its advocates."

This letter, though marked "private and confidential," was, like the
Duke's letter to the same prelate, made public, and became the subject
of comment in the Association and in the press, which tended still
more to embarrass the question by irritating the king and the Duke,
and furnishing exciting topics to the enemies of the Catholic cause.
The Marquis of Anglesey, indeed, from the time he went to Ireland,
held the strongest language to the Government as to the necessity of
carrying the measure. At a subsequent period he expressed a wish that
his opinions should be made fully known to the king and his Ministers,
because they could then better judge of his fitness for carrying into
effect the measures they might decide upon adopting. On the 31st of
July he wrote:--"I will exert myself to keep the country quiet, and
put down rebellion under any circumstances; but I will not consent to
govern this country much longer under the existing law."

There was a radical difference in spirit between the Viceroy and the
Premier. The former sympathised warmly with the Roman Catholics in
their struggles for civil equality, feeling deeply the justice of their
cause. The Duke, on the other hand, yielded only to necessity, and
thought of concession not as a matter of principle, but of expediency;
he yielded, not because it was right to do so, but because it was
preferable to having a civil war. The feeling of Mr. Peel was somewhat
similar; it was with him, also, a choice of evils, and he chose the
least.

In Ireland the administration of the law was becoming daily more
difficult. Mr. Steele and Mr. O'Gorman Mahon were magistrates, and
yet they were actively engaged in exciting the people to the very
highest pitch, and urging them to defy the constituted authorities.
On a day when a riot was expected at Ennis, county Clare, and the
high sheriff made preparations to prevent it, both these gentlemen
appeared there, decorated with the order of "Liberators," and followed
by a mob. Mr. O'Gorman Mahon held very improper language to the high
sheriff in presence of the troops. All this was certified to by sixteen
magistrates, and by the commanding officer; yet Lord Anglesey, with the
advice of the Lord Chancellor, decided on not depriving them of the
commission of the peace. This conduct greatly disappointed the Duke of
Wellington, and on the 11th of November he wrote a strong letter to
him, in which he said: "I cannot express to you adequately the extent
of the difficulties which these and other occurrences in Ireland create
in all discussions with his Majesty. He feels that in Ireland the
public peace is violated every day with impunity by those whose duty
it is to preserve it; that a formidable conspiracy exists; and that
the supposed conspirators--those whose language and conduct point them
out as the principal agitators of the country--are admitted to the
presence of his Majesty's representative, and equally well received
with the king's most loyal subjects." The Duke also, as we have already
observed, strongly censured the conduct of the Viceroy and the Lord
Chancellor for visiting Lord Cloncurry, a member of the Association,
remarking, "The doubts which are entertained respecting the loyalty
of the Roman Catholic Association, the language which has been held
there respecting the king himself, his Royal Family, the members of
his Government, your colleagues in office, and respecting nearly
every respectable member of society, and the unanimously expressed
detestation of the violence of the Association, might be deemed reasons
for omitting to encourage any of its members by the countenance or
favour of the king's representative."

Lord Anglesey replied to these sharp rebukes with great spirit. "Up
to this moment," he said, "I have been left entirely in ignorance,
not only as to your intentions with regard to this country, but also
as to your sentiments regarding my policy. They are now developed,
and I shall know how to act." He then entered into details of all the
occurrences alluded to, in order to show "how entirely his Majesty had
been misinformed." Having done so, he added, "If those who arraign
my conduct will obtain information from an uninterested source, I
feel the most perfect confidence that I shall obtain the applause
of my Sovereign, and the goodwill and good opinion of his Majesty's
Ministers with whom I serve." He denied that the Government had lost
its power, that the Association had usurped its functions, or that the
laws were set at defiance. He asserted, on the contrary, that the law
was in full vigour; and if it authorised, or expediency demanded, the
suppression of the Catholic Association and of the Brunswick Clubs, and
the disarming of the yeomanry at the same time, he would undertake to
effect it almost without the loss of a life. But he did not think such
a course expedient, and he deprecated the teasing system of attacking
every minor offence, of which the issue upon trial would be doubtful,
and which would produce irritation without effecting a salutary lesson
and permanent good. He had no object, he said, in holding his post
but that of pleasing his king and serving his country; and if, in his
zealous and unwearied efforts to effect the latter object, he had
incurred the displeasure of the king and lost his Majesty's confidence,
he ought not to remain in Ireland. He was therefore ready to depart
whenever they found it convenient to recall him. The Duke became testy
under this resistance and antagonism. In replying to the last letter he
becomes more personal in his accusations. "I might," said the Premier,
"at an earlier period have expressed the pain I felt at the attendance
of gentlemen of your household, and even of your family, at the Roman
Catholic Association. I could not but feel that such attendance must
expose your Government to misconstruction. I was silent because it was
painful to mention such things; but I have always felt that if these
impressions upon the king's mind should remain--and I must say that
recent transactions have given fresh cause for them--I could not avoid
mentioning them to you in a private communication, and to let you know
the embarrassment which they occasion."

The Viceroy rejoined with unabated spirit, replying to all the fresh
matter introduced by the Duke in a lofty tone of self-justification.
There is caustic irony in the following allusion to the king, as an
apology for his conciliatory policy:--"I have, in fact, been most
anxious to imitate, as far as my humble faculties would permit, the
example of his Majesty himself during his visit to Ireland, and have
scrupulously attended to the king's benign and paternal admonition,
when his Majesty quitted the kingdom, to inculcate good fellowship
and cordiality among all classes, and to promote conciliation." It is
dangerous to use the _argumentum ad hominem_ with a king--still more
so to make his conduct the object of sarcastic allusions; and it was
evident that Lord Anglesey could not long remain in the position of a
representative of his Majesty. There was certainly an animosity against
him in the highest quarters, which appeared in the construction put
upon the accidental dropping in of his son and some of his household,
from curiosity, to witness, as they thought unnoticed, the debates of
the Association--a circumstance which he had long ago explained, and
with which he thought it particularly unfair that he should be now
upbraided.

This memorable controversy between the Prime Minister and the
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, exhibiting a painful conflict of opinion
and feeling between the two personages more particularly charged with
the government of the country in the midst of a dangerous crisis, was
brought to a close by a letter from the Duke of Wellington on the 28th
of December. The following is a copy:--

    "London, December 28, 1828.

    "MY DEAR LORD ANGLESEY,--I have been very sensible, since I
    received your last letter, that the correspondence which that
    letter terminated had left us in a relation towards each other
    which ought not to exist between the Lord-Lieutenant and the
    king's Minister, and could not continue to exist without great
    inconvenience and injury to the king's service. I refrained from
    acting upon this feeling till I should be able to consult with my
    colleagues, and I took the earliest opportunity which the return
    to town of those who were absent afforded to obtain their opinion,
    which concurred with my own. Under these circumstances, having
    taken the king's pleasure upon the subject, his Majesty has desired
    me to inform you that he intends to relieve you from the Government
    of Ireland. I will shortly notify the arrangements which will
    become necessary in consequence.

    "Believe me, ever yours most sincerely,
    (Signed)
    "WELLINGTON.

    "His Excellency the Marquis of
    Anglesey, K.G."

The marquis answered that he had received his letter, informing him of
the king's intention to release him from the Government of Ireland, and
that he held himself in readiness to obey his Majesty's commands the
moment he received them. He did receive them, on the 10th of January,
in a formal letter of recall from the Home Secretary.

The removal of this popular and "chivalrous" Viceroy caused
universal expressions of grief among the Roman Catholic party. In
the Association, O'Connell and Sheil spoke in the most glowing terms
of his character and his administration. He quitted Ireland on the
19th of January, 1829, followed from the Castle gates to the pier at
Kingstown by an immense concourse of people. In a letter to Dr. Curtis
Lord Anglesey gave an extraordinary parting advice for a chief ruler
of Ireland, "Agitate--agitate--agitate!" He was succeeded by the Duke
of Northumberland, a man not at all likely to trouble his chief with
controversy about anything. His appointment, however, brought back
the Conservative aristocracy to the Castle, and had a soothing effect
on the Protestant mind, while his administration was mild towards the
other party.

While these matters were going on in Ireland, Mr. Peel was applying his
mind, in the most earnest manner, to the removal of the difficulties
that stood in the way of Emancipation.

The chief difficulty was the king. At the commencement of the month of
January, 1829, his Majesty had not yet signified his consent that the
whole subject of Ireland, including the Catholic question, should be
taken into consideration by his confidential servants. In his interview
with the Duke of Wellington in the course of the autumn the king had
manifested much uneasiness and irritation, and had hitherto shown no
disposition to relax the opposition which (of late years, at least) he
had manifested to the consideration by his Government of the claims of
the Roman Catholics. In all the communications which Mr. Peel had with
the king on this subject, his determination to maintain the existing
laws was most strongly expressed. In November, 1824, the king wrote,
"The sentiments of the king upon Catholic Emancipation are those of his
revered and excellent father; and from these sentiments the king never
can, and never will, deviate." All subsequent declarations of opinion
on his part were to the same effect; and the events which were passing
in Ireland, "the systematic agitation, the intemperate conduct of
some of the Roman Catholic leaders, the violent and abusive speeches
of others, the acts of the Association, assuming the functions of
government, and, as it appeared to the king, the passiveness and want
of energy in the Irish executive, irritated his Majesty, and indisposed
him the more to recede from his declared resolution to maintain
inviolate the existing law."

[Illustration: LORD ANGLESEY LEAVING IRELAND: SCENE AT KINGSTOWN. (_See
p._ 292.)]

In the early part of January, 1829, the Duke of Wellington had an
interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London,
and the Bishop of Durham, for the purpose of laying before them the
state of affairs in Ireland, in the hope of convincing them that
the interests of the Church required the settlement of the Catholic
question. It was thought that a favourable opinion expressed by them
would have had great influence on the mind of the king; but the Duke's
arguments utterly failed to convince them. They informed him that they
could not lend their sanction to the proposed course of proceeding,
but must offer a decided opposition to the removal of Roman Catholic
disabilities. On New Year's Day the Bishop of Oxford wrote to Mr. Peel,
that he had just returned from Addington, and that he found the three
bishops decidedly hostile to all concessions, refusing to consent to
them in any form. He considered that matter, therefore, as settled. Mr.
Peel now began to feel that the difficulties in the way of Emancipation
were almost insuperable. There was the declared opinion of the king,
of the House of Lords, and of the Church, all decidedly hostile to the
proposed measure. What the Home Secretary chiefly apprehended at that
moment was, that the king, hearing the result of the Duke's conference
with the bishops, would make some public and formal declaration of
his resolution to maintain, as a matter of conscience and religious
obligation, the existing laws; and would then take a position in
reference to the Catholic question similar to that in which his father
had stood, and which it might be almost impossible for him, however
urgent the necessity, afterwards to abandon.

The meeting of Parliament was approaching, and it was necessary to
come to some final decision. Sir Robert Peel had a thorough conviction
that if the Duke of Wellington should fail in overcoming the king's
objections, no other man could succeed. It might have been that the
high and established character of Earl Grey, his great abilities,
and great political experience, would have enabled him to surmount
these various difficulties. In addition to these high qualifications,
he had the advantage of having been the strenuous and consistent
advocate of the Roman Catholic cause; the advantage also of having
stood aloof from the Administrations of Mr. Canning and Lord Ripon,
and of having strong claims on the esteem and respect of all parties,
without being fettered by the trammels of any. Sir Robert Peel had,
however, the strongest reasons for the conviction that Lord Grey could
not have succeeded in an undertaking which, in the supposed case of
his accession to power, would have been abandoned as hopeless by the
Duke of Wellington, and abandoned on the ground that the Sovereign
would not adopt the advice of his servants. The result of the whole is
thus summed up by Sir Robert Peel:--"Being convinced that the Catholic
question must be settled, and without delay; being resolved that no
act of mine should obstruct or retard its settlement; impressed with
the strongest feelings of attachment to the Duke of Wellington, of
admiration of his upright conduct and intentions as Prime Minister,
of deep interest in the success of an undertaking on which he had
entered from the purest motives and the highest sense of public duty,
I determined not to insist upon retirement from office, but to make to
the Duke the voluntary offer of that official co-operation, should he
consider it indispensable, which he scrupled, from the influence of
kind and considerate feelings, to require from me."

The Home Secretary once more submitted his views to the Duke, in a
memorandum dated January 12th, that was written with a view to being
submitted to the king, in which he put the inevitable alternative of
a Cabinet united in the determination to carry Catholic Emancipation,
or a Cabinet constructed on exclusively Protestant principles; and he
came to the conclusion that no Cabinet so constructed could possibly
carry on the general administration of the country. The state of the
House of Commons appeared to him to be an insuperable obstacle to the
successful issue of that experiment. Since the year 1807 there had
been five Parliaments, and in the course of each of these, with one
exception, the House of Commons had come to a decision in favour of
the consideration of the Catholic question. The present Parliament
had decided in the same manner. A dissolution, were it practicable,
would not result in an election more favourable to the Protestant
interest, if an exclusively Protestant Government were formed. Even
should there be an increase of anti-Catholic members in England, it
would not compensate for the increased excitement in Ireland, and
the violent and vexatious opposition that would be given by fifty or
sixty Irish members, returned by the Catholic Association and the
priests. Then there would be the difficulty about preserving the peace
in Ireland. During the last autumn, out of the regular infantry force
in the United Kingdom, amounting to about 30,000 men, 25,000 men were
stationed either in Ireland or on the west coast of England, with a
view to the maintenance of tranquillity in Ireland, Great Britain
being then at peace with all the world. What would be the consequence
should England be involved in a war with some foreign Power? Various
other considerations were urged, upon which Mr. Peel founded his
advice to the king, which was--that he should not grant the Catholic
claims, or any part of them, precipitately and unadvisedly, but that
he should, in the first instance, remove the barrier which prevented
the consideration of the Catholic question by the Cabinet, and permit
his confidential servants to consider it in all its relations, on the
same principles on which they considered any other question of public
policy, in the hope that some plan of adjustment could be proposed,
on the authority and responsibility of a Government likely to command
the assent of Parliament and to unite in its support a powerful weight
of Protestant opinion, from a conviction that it was a settlement
equitable towards Roman Catholics and safe as it concerned the
Protestant Establishment.

The paper was communicated to the king by the Duke of Wellington,
who wrote, on the 17th of January, that he entirely concurred in the
sentiments and opinions contained in it; and, referring to Mr. Peel's
request to be allowed to retire from the Government, the Duke said:--"I
tell you fairly, I do not see the smallest chance of getting the better
of these difficulties, if you should not continue in office. Even if I
should be able to obtain the king's consent to enter upon the course
which it will probably be found the wisest to adopt--which it is almost
certain that I shall not if I should not have your assistance in
office,--the difficulties in Parliament will be augmented tenfold in
consequence of your secession, while the means of getting the better of
them will be diminished in the same proportion. I entreat you, then, to
reconsider the subject, and to give us and the country the benefit of
your advice and assistance in this most difficult and important crisis."

The Duke brought this letter to Mr. Peel, who read it in his presence,
and then at once told him that he would not press his retirement, but
would remain in office, and would propose, with the king's consent,
the measures contemplated by the Government for the settlement of
the Catholic question. Immediately after this decision was taken he
attended a meeting of the Cabinet and announced his determination to
his colleagues. One of these, Lord Ellenborough, could not refrain from
writing to express his admiration of his conduct, dictated by true
statesmanlike wisdom; adding that he had acted nobly by the Government,
and in a manner which no member of it would forget. On the day that
the king got the paper, those of the Ministers who had uniformly voted
against the Catholic question had each a separate interview with the
king, and individually expressed their concurrence in the course Mr.
Peel recommended. The Ministers were--the Duke of Wellington, Lord
Lyndhurst, Lord Bathurst, Mr. Goulburn, and Mr. Herries. The king,
after this interview, intimated his consent that the Cabinet should
consider the whole state of Ireland, and submit their views to him, not
pledging himself, however, to adopt them, even if they should concur
unanimously in the course to be pursued. The king was not convinced by
Mr. Peel's arguments. He admitted it to be a good statement, but denied
that it was an argumentative one.

Parliament was opened by commission on the 5th of February, 1829. The
state of Ireland was the chief topic of the Royal Speech. The existence
of the Catholic Association was referred to as inimical to the public
peace; and its suppression was recommended, as a necessary preliminary
to the consideration of the disabilities affecting the Roman Catholics.
This part of the Speech excited much interest, as preluding the
great contest of the Session. On the 4th Mr. Peel had written to the
Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, resigning his seat for the University,
which he had won from Canning on the strength of his anti-Catholic
principles. He need not have resigned, but he acted the more honourable
part. Having offered himself for re-election, he was opposed by Sir
Robert Inglis, who, after a contest which lasted three days, during
which 1,364 votes were polled, was elected by a majority of 146. As
one of the most numerous convocations ever held in Oxford had, in the
previous year, by a majority of three to one, voted against concession
to the Roman Catholics, it was a matter of surprise that the Home
Secretary was not defeated by a larger majority. He secured a seat
with some difficulty at Westbury. On the 10th, Mr. Peel, while still
member for Oxford, introduced the first of the three measures intended
for the pacification of Ireland--a Bill for the suppression of the
Catholic Association. As it was known to be an essential condition of
granting Emancipation, there was little opposition to it either in
Parliament or in Ireland. By it the Lord-Lieutenant was empowered to
disperse the meetings of any association he thought dangerous to the
public peace. The Bill quickly passed both Houses, and in a few days
received the Royal Assent. Anticipating the action of the executive,
the Association, on the 12th of February, dissolved itself, with the
unanimous concurrence of the bishops, Mr. Sheil stating at the meeting
that he was authorised to throw twenty-two mitres into the scale.

In the Royal Speech his Majesty recommended that, when this special
object was accomplished, Parliament should take into their deliberate
consideration the whole condition of Ireland, and that they should
review the laws which imposed disabilities upon Roman Catholics, to see
whether their removal could be effected "consistently with the full and
permanent security of our establishments in Church and State, with the
maintenance of the Reformed religion established by law, and of the
rights and privileges of the bishops and of the clergy of this realm,
and of the churches committed to their charge."

Great was the excitement when, in pursuance of this recommendation, Mr.
Peel introduced the Emancipation Bill on the 5th of March. Everywhere
the Protestant press teemed, and the Protestant pulpit rang, with
denunciations of Wellington and Peel as arch-traitors. From the highest
pinnacle of popularity the Duke fell to the lowest depth of infamy; the
laurels won in so many glorious fields were withered by the furious
breath of popular execration. Petitions were poured into the House
of Commons from all parts of the United Kingdom, and "the pressure
from without" was brought to bear against the two Ministers, who were
considered the chief delinquents, with a force and vehemence that would
have deterred a man of weaker nerves than the Duke of Wellington; but
he felt that he had a duty to discharge, and he did not shrink from the
consequences. Nor did Mr. Peel. His speech, in introducing the measure,
went over the ground he had often traversed in privately debating the
question with his friends. Matters could not go on as they were. There
must be a united Cabinet to carry on the king's Government effectually.
It must be united either on the principle of Catholic Emancipation
or Catholic exclusion. It must either concede the Catholic claims,
or recall existing rights and privileges. This was impossible--no
Government could stand that attempted it; and if it were done, civil
war would be inevitable. The House of Commons, trembling in the nice
balance of opinion, had at length inclined to concession. Ireland had
been governed, since the Union, almost invariably by coercive Acts.
There was always some political organisation antagonistic to the
British Government. The Catholic Association had just been suppressed;
but another would soon spring out of its ashes if the Catholic question
were not settled. Mr. O'Connell had boasted that he could drive a
coach-and-six through the former Act for its suppression; and Lord
Eldon had engaged to drive "the meanest conveyance, even a donkey
cart, through the Act of 1829." The new member for Oxford (Sir Robert
Inglis) also stated that twenty-three counties in Ireland were prepared
to follow the example of Clare. "What will you do," asked Mr. Peel,
"with that power, that tremendous power, which the elective franchise,
exercised under the control of religion, at this moment confers upon
the Roman Catholics? What will you do with the thirty or forty seats
that will be claimed in Ireland by the persevering efforts of the
agitators, directed by the Catholic Association, and carried out by
the agency of every priest and bishop in Ireland?" Parliament began to
recede; there could be no limit to the retrogression. Such a course
would produce a reaction, violent in proportion to the hopes that had
been excited. Fresh rigours would become necessary; the re-enactment
of the penal code would not be sufficient. They must abolish trial by
jury, or, at least, incapacitate Catholics from sitting on juries. Two
millions of Protestants must have a complete monopoly of power and
privilege in a country which contained five millions of Catholics, who
were in most of the country four to one--in some districts twenty to
one--of the Protestants.

The chief speakers on the other side were Sir Robert Inglis, Mr.
Bankes, and Mr. Sadler. They contended that the evils on which the Home
Secretary had dwelt--the disturbed state of Ireland, the difficulty
of governing the empire with a divided Cabinet, the impossibility of
getting on with a House of Commons which left the Administration in
a minority--would not be removed or prevented by Emancipation. Ever
since the first relaxation of the penal code, concession but added
fuel to the fire of agitation. What, then, was to be expected from
throwing open the portals of the legislature to the Catholic body?
What but this--that the advanced work thus gained would become the
salient angle from which the fire would be directed on the body of
the fortress; and the work of agitation, having its leaders in both
Houses of Parliament, would be carried on with increased vigour, for
the purpose of overthrowing the Protestant Establishment, the severance
of the Union, and the dismemberment of the empire? The manner of the
concession would encourage the policy of aggression. It was not, they
asserted, produced by the gradual and quiet growth of public opinion.
"It was the victory of force, driving former enemies into desertion by
intimidation. It openly told the Catholic agitators that they were too
strong for the Government of Great Britain; that whatever they asked
would be conceded, even to the giving up of the Constitution, provided
only it was asked with sufficient clamour and violence. The solid
ground of right had been abandoned for the selfish and tortuous path
of expediency--expediency, the pretext for so many crimes. In France
expediency destroyed the church--expediency murdered the king."

Leave was given to bring in the Bill by a majority of 188; the numbers
being 348 for the motion, and 160 against it. This astounding result
was the signal for pouring into the House a flood of Protestant
petitions, which, in the interval between the first and second reading,
amounted to nearly 1,000; but an organisation like the Brunswick Clubs
could easily get up any number of petitions. Considering the number
of parishes in England, it is surprising, not that the number was so
great, but that it was not greater. On the 18th the second reading was
carried by a majority of 353 to 180; and on the 30th the third reading
by a majority of 320 to 142, giving a majority of 178.

The same day it was carried by the Home Secretary to the House of
Lords, accompanied by an unusual number of members. In introducing the
measure in the Upper House the Duke of Wellington spoke with great
force, and with all the directness and simplicity for which he was
remarkable. One memorable passage deserves to be recorded in this
history:--"It has been my fortune," said the Duke, "to have seen much
of war--more than most men. I have been constantly engaged in the
active duties of the military profession from boyhood until I have
grown grey. My life has been passed in familiarity with scenes of death
and human suffering. Circumstances have placed me in countries where
the war was internal--between opposite parties in the same nation; and
rather than a country I loved should be visited with the calamities
which I have seen--with the unutterable horrors of civil war--I would
run any risk, I would make any sacrifice, I would freely lay down
my life. There is nothing which destroys property and prosperity as
civil war does. By it the hand of man is raised against his neighbour,
against his brother, and against his father! The servant betrays his
master; and the master ruins his servant. Yet this is the resource
to which we must have looked--these are the means which we must have
applied--in order to have put an end to this state of things, if we
had not embraced the option of bringing forward the measure for which
I hold myself responsible."

[Illustration: APSLEY HOUSE, HYDE PARK CORNER, LONDON.]

The Archbishop of Canterbury moved the rejection of the Bill; and was
supported by the Archbishops of York and Armagh, the Bishops of London,
Durham, and Salisbury; Lords Winchilsea, Berkeley, Tenterden, and
Eldon. The chief defenders of the measure were Lords Grey, Lansdowne,
Plunket, Goderich, and Lyndhurst. On a division, the second reading
was carried by 217 against 112. On the 10th of April the Bill was read
a third time, by a majority of 104; the numbers being 213 for it,
and 109 against it. The sweeping majorities in the Lords were still
more astounding than those in the Commons; and they spread the utmost
consternation through the ranks of the Conservatives, who felt as
if the very foundations of society were giving way, and the pillars
of the Constitution were falling. The Lords had hitherto thrown out
the Emancipation Bills as fast as they came to them, by majorities
varying from forty to fifty. Lord Eldon was their prophet, and the
old Conservative peers had followed his guidance implicitly for a
quarter of a century; but during that time a generation of hereditary
legislators had grown up, who had as thorough a contempt for the
ex-Chancellor's antiquated prejudices as he had for their youth and
inexperience. Lord Eldon had, however, some compensation for being thus
deserted in the House of Peers by many of his followers, and having
his authority as a statesman disregarded, as well as for the marked
neglect of him by the Ministry, in the sympathy and confidence of the
distressed king, who was shocked beyond measure at the conduct of the
House of Lords. When a reluctant consent was wrung from his Majesty to
have the measure brought forward by the Cabinet, he felt, after all,
that he was doing nothing very rash; he had the strongest assurance
that the Bill would never pass the Lords. He told Lord Eldon that,
after the Ministers had fatigued him by many hours' conversation on
the painful subject, he simply said, "Go on." But he also produced
copies of letters which he had written, in which he assented to their
proceeding with the Bill, adding, certainly, very strong expressions
of the pain and misery the consent cost him. In his perplexity he
evidently wished to avail himself of Eldon's casuistry to get out
of the difficulty by retracting; but the latter was constrained to
tell him "it was impossible to maintain that his assent had not been
expressed, or to cure the evils which were consequential."

The large majorities in the House of Lords were to be ascribed chiefly
to the unparalleled influence of the Duke of Wellington. But the
public at the time were little aware of the difficulties that great
man had to deal with in overcoming the opposition of the king, who was
much under the influence of the Duke of Cumberland. When the storm
of Conservative violence reached its height, after the rejection of
Peel in Oxford, and his return, not without a struggle, for Westbury;
and when, on the 3rd of March, he gave notice that he would draw the
attention of the House to the clause of the Royal Speech referring
to Ireland, the king, greatly excited and alarmed, sent the same
evening to desire that the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, and
the Chancellor should wait upon him next day. He had already seen the
Chancellor once, and the Duke twice separately. The king received his
three Ministers, when they presented themselves at the palace, kindly
but gravely; he looked anxious and embarrassed while he requested them
to make him acquainted with the details of their Bill. It was explained
to him that it would relieve Roman Catholics from the necessity of
making a declaration against the doctrine of transubstantiation; whilst
it so far modified in their case the oath of supremacy, as to omit
all notice of the king's authority in things spiritual. "What!" he
exclaimed, "do you mean to alter the ancient law of supremacy?" It was
to no purpose he was shown that the alteration applied only to Roman
Catholics, who would be dispensed from swearing what they could not
believe; but he appealed to his own coronation oath, in reference to
which he could not recognise the dispensing power of his Ministers.
The king was condescending in the extreme. He seemed deeply grieved
at the dilemma to which they had been brought. He acknowledged that
possibly he had gone too far on former occasions, though he had acted
entirely through misapprehension. But now he trusted that they would
see, with him, that it had become a point of conscience, and that there
was no alternative left him except to withdraw his assent. In the most
respectful manner they acquiesced in his Majesty's determination,
allowing, without a murmur, that he had a perfect right to act as he
proposed. But when he went on further to ask what they intended to do,
the Duke's answer was explicit: they must retire from his Majesty's
service, and explain to Parliament that unexpected obstacles had arisen
to the accomplishment of the policy which they were engaged to pursue.
To this Mr. Peel added, that as the Bill for the suppression of the
Catholic Association had been carried on the understanding that other
and more comprehensive measures would follow, it would be necessary to
make Parliament generally aware of the causes which operated to prevent
the bringing forward of those measures. The king heard all this to an
end, without attempting to interrupt, or argue with, his Ministers.
He admitted, on the contrary, that it was impossible for them to take
any other course, and then bade them farewell, kissing each of them
on both cheeks. They set off from Windsor immediately, and arrived at
Lord Bathurst's, where their colleagues were waiting dinner for them.
They made a full report of all that had occurred, and announced that
the Government was at an end. The party broke up, believing themselves
to be out of office; but early next morning, before any decisive steps
had been taken, a special messenger arrived at Apsley House with a
letter from the king. It was guardedly expressed, for it went no
further than to state that his Majesty had found greater difficulties
than he expected in forming a new Cabinet, and was therefore desirous
that the present Ministry should go on. The moment was critical, and
the position of the Government delicate and in some sense insecure. No
doubt, his Majesty's letter might be read as implying an abandonment
of the objections which he had taken to the policy of his Ministers
overnight, but it was certainly capable of a different interpretation.
It appeared, therefore, to the Duke, that before proceeding further it
would be necessary to come to a clear understanding with the king as to
his Majesty's real intentions, and Mr. Peel concurring in this opinion,
the Duke was requested to write to the king on the subject. He did so,
with all the candour and loyalty which were natural to him; and the
result was an unequivocal declaration from the Sovereign that he would
accept the measures of his Ministers as his own.

With Lord Eldon, however, he held different language, complaining
bitterly of the difficulties in which the Ministers had involved him.
He is represented as struggling desperately in meshes from which he
found it impossible to extricate himself; and, as usual with weak
minds, he threw all the blame of his misery on others. In reference
to an interview, Lord Eldon remarks: "I was not sent for afterwards,
but went on Thursday, the 9th of April, with more addresses. In the
second interview, which began a little before two o'clock, the king
repeatedly--and with some minutes intervening between his repeated
declarations, musing in silence in the interim--expressed his anguish,
pain, and misery that the measure had ever been thought of, and as
often declared that he had been most harshly and cruelly treated--that
he had been treated as a man whose consent had been asked with a pistol
pointed to his breast, or as obliged, if he did not give it, to leap
down from a five-pair-of-stairs window. What could he do? What had
he to fall back upon?" After relating much more in the same strain,
Lord Eldon adds: "Little more passed, except occasional bursts of
expression, 'What can I do? What can I now fall back upon? What can I
fall back upon? I am miserable, wretched. My situation is dreadful;
nobody about me to advise with. If I do give my consent, I will go to
the baths after all, and from thence to Hanover. I'll return no more
to England. I'll make no Roman Catholic peers; I will not do what
this Bill will enable me to do. I'll return no more. Let them get a
Catholic king in Clarence! [I think he also mentioned Sussex.] The
people will see that I did not wish this.' There were the strongest
appearances, certainly, of misery. He more than once stopped my leaving
him. When the time came that I was to go, he threw his arms around my
neck, and expressed great misery. I left him at about twenty minutes
or a quarter before five. I certainly thought when I left him that he
would express great difficulty, when the Bill was prepared for the
Royal Assent, about giving it." The writer adds, sarcastically:--"I
fear that it seemed to be given as a matter of course." Next day, Lord
Eldon wrote to his daughter: "The fatal Bill received the Royal Assent
yesterday afternoon. After all I had heard in my visits, not a day's
delay. God bless us and His Church." At Windsor, on the 13th of April,
the king pronounced over the Bill that he so hated the words--"_Le Roy
le veult_."

The number of Catholics in Britain at the time of passing the Relief
Bill was estimated by themselves at nearly 1,000,000, scattered, in
various proportions, through England, Scotland, and Wales. Of these,
200,000 were resident in London. The most Catholic counties in England
were Lancashire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Cheshire,
Northumberland, Durham, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent. In Ireland the
Roman Catholics were estimated at five millions and a half; and the
Protestants, of all denominations, at one million and three-quarters.
By the removal of the disabilities eight English Catholic peers were
enabled to take their seats by right in the House of Lords. The
Catholic baronets in England were then sixteen in number. In Ireland
there were eight Roman Catholic peers; in Scotland, two. The system of
religious exclusion had lasted 271 years, from the passing of the Acts
of Supremacy and Uniformity in 1559.

During the excitement that followed the passing of the Emancipation
Act incessant attacks were made upon the character of the Duke of
Wellington. Perhaps the most violent of these was published in the
_Standard_ by the Earl of Winchilsea, one of the most ardent of the
anti-Catholic peers, who charged the Premier with disgraceful conduct.
The offence was contained in a letter addressed by Lord Winchilsea to
Mr. Coleridge, secretary to the committee for establishing the King's
College, London. He said he felt rather doubtful as to the sincerity
of the motives which had actuated some of the prime movers in that
undertaking, "when he considered that the noble duke at the head of
his Majesty's Government had been induced on this occasion to assume
a new character, and to step forward himself as the public advocate
of religion and morality." He then proceeded:--"Late political events
have convinced me that the whole transaction was intended as a blind
to the Protestant and High Church party; that the noble duke, who
had, for some time previous to that period, determined upon breaking
in upon the Constitution of 1688, might the more effectually, under
the cloak of some outward show of zeal for the Protestant religion,
carry on his insidious designs for the infringement of our liberties,
and the introduction of Popery into every department of the State."
The Duke having obtained from Lord Winchilsea an avowal of the
authorship, demanded a retractation or apology, which was refused. The
matter was then referred to friends, and a hostile meeting was agreed
upon. "It is," says Mr. Gleig, "a curious feature in this somewhat
unfortunate occurrence, that when the moment for action arrived it
was found that the Duke did not possess a pair of duelling-pistols.
Considering the length of time he had spent in the army, and the
habits of military society towards the close of the last century, that
fact bore incontestable evidence to the conciliatory temper and great
discretion of the Duke. Sir Henry Hardinge, therefore, who acted as his
friend, was forced to look for pistols elsewhere, and borrowed them at
last--he himself being as unprovided as his principal--from Dr. Hume,
the medical man who accompanied them to the ground. The combatants met
in Battersea Fields, now Battersea Park. Lord Winchilsea, attended by
the Earl of Falmouth, having received the Duke's fire, discharged his
pistol in the air. A written explanation was then produced, which the
Duke declined to receive unless the word 'apology' was inserted; and
this point being yielded, they separated as they had met, with cold
civility."

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON'S DUEL WITH LORD WINCHILSEA.
(_See p._ 300.)]

[Illustration: LORD ELDON. (_After the Portrait by Sir Thomas
Lawrence._)]

A third Bill yet remained to be carried, in order to complete the
Ministerial scheme of Emancipation, and supply the security necessary
for its satisfactory working. This was the Bill for disfranchising
the forty-shilling freeholders, by whose instrumentality, it may
be said, Emancipation was effected. It was they that returned Mr.
O'Connell for Clare; it was they that would have returned the members
for twenty-three other counties, pledged to support his policy. It
is true that this class of voters was generally dependent upon the
landlords, unless under the influence of violent excitement, when they
were wrested like weapons from their hands by the priests, and used
with a vengeance for the punishment of those by whom they had been
created. In neither case did they exercise the franchise in fulfilment
of the purpose for which it was given. In both cases those voters were
the instruments of a power which availed itself of the forms of the
Constitution, but was directly opposed to its spirit. Disfranchisement,
however, in any circumstances, was distasteful to both Conservative
and Liberal statesmen. Mr. Brougham said he consented to it in this
case "as the price--almost the extravagant price"--of Emancipation; and
Sir James Mackintosh remarked that it was one of those "tough morsels"
which he had been scarcely able to swallow. The measure was opposed by
Mr. Huskisson, Lord Palmerston, and Lord Duncannon, as not requisite,
and not calculated to accomplish its object. But although Mr. O'Connell
had repeatedly declared that he would not accept Emancipation if the
faithful "forties" were to be sacrificed, that he would rather die on
the scaffold than submit to any such measure, though Mr. Sheil had
denounced it in language the most vehement, yet the measure was allowed
to pass through both Houses of Parliament without any opposition worth
naming; only seventeen members voting against the second reading in
the Commons, and there being no division against it in the Lords.
Ireland beheld the sacrifice in silence. Mr. O'Connell forgot his
solemn vows, so recently registered, and, what was more strange, the
priests did not remind him of his obligation. Perhaps they were not
sorry to witness the annihilation of a power which landlords might
use against them and which agitators might wield in a way that they
could not at all times control. There had been always an uneasy feeling
among the prelates and the higher clergy at the influence which Mr.
O'Connell and the other lay agitators had acquired, because it tended
to raise in the people a spirit of independence which rendered them
sometimes refractory as members of the Church, and suggested the idea
of combination against their own pastors, if they declined to become
their leaders in any popular movement. The popular leaders in Ireland,
however, consoling themselves with the assurance that many of the class
of "bold peasantry" which they had glorified would still enjoy the
franchise as ten-pound freeholders, consented, reluctantly of course,
to the extinction of 300,000 "forties." They considered the danger
of delay, and the probability that if this opportunity were missed,
another might not occur for years of striking off the shackles which
the upper classes of Roman Catholics especially felt to be so galling.

When Emancipation was carried, the Catholics did not forget the
claims of Mr. O'Connell, who had laboured so hard during a quarter of
a century for its accomplishment. A testimonial was soon afterwards
got up to reward him for his services. Mr. C. O'Laughlin, of Dublin,
subscribed £500; the Earl of Shrewsbury 1,000 guineas, and the less
grateful Duke of Norfolk the sum of £100. The collection of the
testimonial was organised in every district throughout Ireland, and a
sum of £50,000 sterling was collected. Mr. O'Connell did not love money
for its own sake. The immense sums that were poured into the coffers
of the Catholic Association were spent freely in carrying on the
agitation, and the large annuity which he himself received was mainly
devoted to the same object. One means, which had no small effect in
accomplishing the object, was the extremely liberal hospitality which
was kept up, not only at Derrynane Abbey, but at his town residence in
Merrion Square; and he had, besides, a host of retainers more or less
dependent upon his bounty.

There was one irritating circumstance connected with the Emancipation
Act: the words, "thereafter to be elected," were introduced for the
purpose of preventing O'Connell from taking his seat in virtue of the
election of 1828. The Irish Roman Catholics considered this legislating
against an individual an act unworthy of the British Senate--and,
as against the great Catholic advocate, a mean, vindictive, and
discreditable deed. But it was admitted that Wellington and Peel
were not to blame for it; that on their part it was a pacificatory
concession to dogged bigotry in high places. Mr. Fagan states that
Mr. O'Connell was willing to give up the county of Clare to Mr. Vesey
Fitzgerald, and to go into Parliament himself for a borough, adding
that he had absolutely offered 3,000 guineas to Sir Edward Denny for
the borough of Tralee, which had always been regularly sold, and was,
in point of fact, assigned as a fortune under a marriage settlement.
Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, however, rather scornfully rejected the offer,
and Mr. O'Connell himself appeared in the House of Commons on the 15th
of May, to try whether he would be permitted to take his seat. In the
course of an hour, we are told, the heads of his speech were arranged,
and written on a small card. The event was expected, and the House
was crowded to excess. At five o'clock the Speaker called on any new
member desiring to be sworn to come to the table. O'Connell accordingly
presented himself, introduced by Lords Ebrington and Duncannon. He
remained for some time standing at the table, pointing out the oaths he
was willing to take, namely, those required by the new Act, and handing
in the certificate of his return and qualifications. His refusal to
take the oaths of supremacy and abjuration having been reported to the
Speaker, he was directed to withdraw, when Mr. Brougham moved that he
should be heard at the bar, to account for his refusal. But on the
motion of Mr. Peel, after a long discussion, the consideration of the
question was deferred till the 18th. The _Times_ of the next day stated
that the narrative of the proceeding could convey but an imperfect
idea of the silent, the almost breathless attention with which he was
received in the House, advancing to and retiring from the table. The
benches were filled in an unusual degree with members, and there was
no recollection of so large a number of peers brought by curiosity
into the House of Commons. The Speaker's expression of countenance and
manner towards the honourable gentleman were extremely courteous, and
his declaration that he "must withdraw," firm and authoritative. Mr.
O'Connell, for a moment, looked round as one who had reason to expect
support, and this failing, he bowed most respectfully, and withdrew.

On Monday, the 18th of May, O'Connell took his seat under the gallery.
Seldom, if ever before, were there in the House so many strangers,
peers, or members. The adjourned debate was resumed, and it was
resolved that he should be heard at the bar. To the bar he then
advanced, accompanied by his solicitor, Mr. Pierce Mahony, who supplied
him with the books and documents, which had been arranged and marked to
facilitate reference. His speech on that occasion is said to have been
one of the most remarkable for ability and argument he ever delivered.
It should be observed that his claim to enter the House without taking
the oaths was supported from the first by the opinion of Mr. Charles
Butler, an eminent English barrister, and a Roman Catholic; but law and
precedent were against him, and he could not be admitted. The House
ordered the Speaker to make out a new writ for Clare.

Thus baffled, he returned to Dublin, where he met with an enthusiastic
reception. A meeting was held the next day to make arrangements for
insuring his return for Clare. On the 1st of June O'Connell started
for Ennis. All the towns he passed through turned out to cheer him on,
with green boughs and banners suspended from the windows. He arrived
at Nenagh in the night, and the town was quickly illuminated. Having
travelled all night, he retired to rest at Limerick; and while he
slept the streets were thronged with people anxious to get a glance
at their "Liberator." A large tree of Liberty was planted before the
hotel, with musicians perched on the branches playing national airs.
The Limerick trades accompanied him in his progress towards Ennis,
where his arrival was hailed with boundless enthusiasm, and where a
triumphal car was prepared for him. Thus terminated a progress, during
which he made twenty speeches, to nearly a million of persons. On the
30th of July O'Connell was a second time returned for Clare, on this
occasion without opposition, and the event was celebrated with the
usual demonstrations of joy and triumph.

Thus was O'Connell driven into a new course of agitation. He did not
conceal, even in the hour of his triumph, that he regarded Catholic
Emancipation as little more than a vantage ground on which he was to
plant his artillery for the abolition of the Legislative Union. After
the passing of the Emancipation Act he appealed as strongly as ever
to the feelings of the people. "At Ennis," he said, "I promised you
religious freedom, and I kept my word. The Catholics are now free,
and the Brunswickers are no longer their masters; and a paltry set
they were to be our masters. They would turn up the white of their
eyes to heaven, and at the same time slily put their hands into your
pockets.... What good did any member ever before in Parliament do
for the county of Clare, except to get places for their nephews,
cousins, etc.? What did I do? I procured for you Emancipation." "The
election for Clare," he said, "is admitted to have been the immediate
and irresistible cause of producing the Catholic Relief Bill. You
have achieved the religious liberty of Ireland. Another such victory
in Clare, and we shall attain the political freedom of our beloved
country. That victory is still necessary to prevent Catholic rights
and liberties from being sapped and undermined by the insidious policy
of those men who, false to their own party, can never be true to us,
and who have yielded not to reason, but to necessity, in granting us
freedom of conscience. A sober, moral, and religious people cannot
continue slaves--they become too powerful for their oppressors--their
moral strength exceeds their physical powers--and their progress
towards prosperity is in vain opposed by the Peels and Wellingtons of
society. These poor strugglers for ancient abuses yield to a necessity
which violates no law, and commits no crime; and having once already
succeeded by these means, our next success is equally certain, if we
adopt the same virtuous and irresistible means." His new programme
embraced not only the Repeal of the Union, but the restoration of the
franchise to the "forties."

The Roman Catholic prelates, however, seem to have been satisfied with
the achievement of Emancipation, and to have received the boon in a
very good spirit. There was one of their number who, more than all
the rest, had contributed to the success of the work. This was Dr.
Doyle, so well known as "J.K.L.," unquestionably the most accomplished
polemical writer of his time. In January, 1830, the Catholic bishops
assembled in Dublin, to deliberate, according to annual custom, on
their own duties and the interests of their Church. Dr. Doyle, at the
close of these deliberations, drew up a pastoral, to which all the
prelates affixed their signatures. It gave thanks to God that the Irish
people not only continued to be of one mind, labouring together in
the faith of the Gospel, but also that their faith was daily becoming
stronger, and signally fructifying among them. Having drawn a picture
of the discord that had prevailed in Ireland before Emancipation, the
pastoral went on to say that the great boon "became the more acceptable
to this country, because among the counsellors of his Majesty there
appeared conspicuous the most distinguished of Ireland's own sons, a
hero and a legislator--a man selected by the Almighty to break the
rod which had scourged Europe--a man raised by Providence to confirm
thrones, to re-establish altars, to direct the councils of England at
a crisis the most difficult; to stanch the blood and heal the wounds
of the country that gave him birth." The pastoral besought the people
to promote the end which the legislature contemplated in passing
the Relief Bill--the pacification and improvement of Ireland. It
recommended that rash and unjust oaths should not be even named among
them, and deprecated any attempt to trouble their repose by "sowers of
discord or sedition." The bishops rejoiced at the recent result of the
protracted struggle, not more on public grounds than because they found
themselves discharged from a duty which necessity alone allied to their
ministry--"a duty imposed on us by a state of times which has passed,
but a duty which we have gladly relinquished, in the fervent hope that
by us or our successors it may not be resumed."

The success of the Duke of Wellington in carrying Emancipation was
fatal to his Government. Almost to a man the Tories fell from him,
and he found no compensation in the adhesion of the Whigs. The
latter were glad that their opponents had been induced to settle the
question, a result which they had long desired, but had not the power
to accomplish. Their gratitude, however, for this great service to
the public was not sufficiently warm to induce them to enlist under
the banner of the Duke of Wellington, though they were ready to come
to his assistance, to protect his Government for a time against the
violent assaults of the party whose feelings and prejudices he had so
grievously outraged. All parties seem, indeed, to have been exhausted
by the violence of the struggle, and there was no desire to attempt
anything important in the way of legislation during the remainder
of the Session. There was nothing extraordinary in the Budget, and
it was accepted without much objection. The subject of distress
among the operatives gave rise to a debate which occupied two days,
and a motion for inquiry into its causes was rejected. The trade
which suffered most at the time was the silk trade. It was stated
that, in 1824, there were 17,000 looms employed in Spitalfields; now
there were only 9,000. At the former period wages averaged seventeen
shillings a week, now the average was reduced to nine shillings. By
the manufacturers this depression was ascribed to the relaxation of
the prohibitory system, and the admission of foreign silks into the
home market. On the other hand, Ministers, and the advocates of Free
Trade, ascribed the depression to the increase of production, and
the rivalry of the provincial towns of Congleton, Macclesfield, and
Manchester. That the general trade had increased was shown by the vast
increase in the quantity of raw silk imported, and in the number of
spindles employed in the silk manufacture. The Government was firm
in its hostility to the prohibitory system, and would not listen to
any suggestion for relief, except a reduction in the duties on the
importation of raw silk, by which the demand for the manufactured
article might be augmented. While these discussions were going on in
Parliament the silk-weavers were in a state of violent agitation, and
their discontent broke forth in acts of lawlessness and destructive
outrage. They were undoubtedly in a very miserable condition. It was
ascertained that there were at Huddersfield 13,000 persons, occupied in
a fancy trade, whose average earnings did not exceed twopence-halfpenny
a day, out of which they had to meet the wear and tear of looms,
etc. The artisans ascribed this reduction to the avarice of their
employers, and they avenged themselves, as was usual in those times,
by combination, strikes, and destruction of property. In Spitalfields
bands of weavers entered the workshops and cut up the materials
belonging to refractory masters. The webs in thirty or forty looms
were sometimes thus destroyed in a single night. The same course was
pursued at Macclesfield, Coventry, Nuneaton, and Bedworth, in which
towns power-looms had been introduced which enabled one man to do the
work of four. The reign of terror extended to Yorkshire, and in several
places the masters were compelled to succumb, and to accept a list of
prices imposed by the operatives. In this way the distress was greatly
aggravated by their ignorance. What they demanded was a restrictive
system, which it was impossible to restore. The result obtained was
simply a reduction of the duties on raw silk.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN WALPOLE INTERCEPTING THE DUKE OF SALDANHA'S
SHIPS. (_See p._ 306.)]

An attempt was made during the Session to mitigate the evils of
the Game Laws, and a Bill for legalising the sale of game passed
the Commons with extraordinary unanimity. In the House of Lords
the Bill met with determined opposition. In vain Lord Wharncliffe
demonstrated the demoralising and disorganising effects of the Game
Laws. Lord Westmoreland was shocked at a measure which he declared
would depopulate the country of gentlemen. He could not endure such
a gross violation of the liberty of the aristocratic portion of the
king's subjects; and he thought the guardians of the Constitution in
the House of Commons must have been asleep when they allowed such
a measure to pass. Lord Eldon, too, who was passionately fond of
shooting, had his Conservative instincts aroused almost as much by the
proposal to abolish the monopoly of killing hares and pheasants, as by
the measure for admitting Roman Catholics into Parliament. The Bill was
read a second time, by a majority of ten; but more strenuous exertions
were called forth by the division, and the third reading of this Bill
to mitigate an iniquitous system was rejected by a majority of two.
Lord Eldon's familiarity with the principles of equity did not enable
him to see the wrong of inflicting damage to the amount of £500,000 a
year on the tenant farmers of the country, by the depredations of wild
animals, which they were not permitted to kill, and for the destruction
caused by which they received no compensation.

On the 24th of June Parliament was prorogued by commission. The Royal
Speech expressed thanks for the attention that had been given to the
affairs of Ireland, and the settlement of the Catholic question,
which the king hoped would tend to the permanent tranquillity of that
country, and to draw closer the bonds of union between it and the rest
of the empire. It was announced that diplomatic relations had been
renewed with the Porte, for which ambassadors from England and France
had taken their departure. But it was with increased regret that his
Majesty again adverted to the condition of the Portuguese monarchy.
He repeated his determination to use every effort to reconcile
conflicting interests, and to remove the evils which pressed so heavily
on a country the prosperity of which must ever be an object of his
solicitude. The condition of that country was, indeed, most deplorable
under the lawless despotism of Dom Miguel, who, on the abdication of
his brother Dom Pedro in favour of Doña Maria da Gloria, had been
appointed regent, but had subsequently assumed the royal title, and
driven his niece from the country. He overruled the decisions of
the courts of justice regarding political prisoners, and inflicted
the punishment of death by his own mere arbitrary order, when only
transportation had been decreed by the judges. He crowded the prisons
with the most distinguished supporters of constitutional government,
confiscated their property, and appropriated it to his own use. Yet
this monster would have been acknowledged by the Duke of Wellington.
Had the Duke been free to follow the dictates of his own judgment, he
would have at once resumed the diplomatic relations which had been
broken off between the two states. But Britain was committed to the
young queen by the policy of the preceding Administration; and the
Duke, though he believed that policy to be unwise, could not break
through it in a moment. It was not without difficulty, however, that
Britain maintained her neutrality between the contending parties. The
Portuguese refugees endeavoured, under various false pretences, to
avail themselves of British hospitality, for the purpose of conveying
arms and ammunition, and bodies of troops into Portugal, to restore
the queen. They asserted that they were sending them to Brazil, but
really conveyed them to Terceira, one of the Azores, where Doña Maria
had been proclaimed. The consequence was that 4,000 Portuguese troops,
which were lying at Plymouth, were ordered to disband, and Captain
Walpole, with a squadron, was sent to watch the Portuguese ships in the
Atlantic, in order to avoid the imputation of violating the neutrality.
His orders were to proceed to the Azores, to intercept any vessels
arriving at those islands, and "should they persist, notwithstanding,
in hovering about or making any attempt to effect a landing, you are
then to use force to drive them away from the neighbourhood." Walpole
intercepted four vessels, containing a force of 650 men under the
command of the Duke of Saldanha. They declined to bring-to, whereupon
he fired a shot which killed one man and wounded another. Saldanha
thereupon declared that he considered himself Walpole's prisoner,
and turned his vessels towards Europe. Walpole, in great perplexity,
followed him, until he was within 500 miles of Scilly, when they parted
company and Saldanha went to Havre. These proceedings were regarded
with indignation in Great Britain, the enemies of the Government
asserting that, in spite of their declarations of neutrality, they had
proved themselves partisans of Dom Miguel. Debates were raised in both
Houses, Lord Palmerston in the Commons making his first great speech
in condemnation of the Duke's foreign policy. It is significant that
Wellington should have written to Lord Aberdeen in a private letter:
"In respect to Portugal you may tell Prince Polignac that we are
determined that there shall be no revolutionary movement from England
or any part of the world."

Parliament having been prorogued, the members retired to their
respective counties and boroughs, many of them out of humour with
themselves and with the Government which they had heretofore
supported, and meditating revenge. An endeavour was made in the
course of the summer to renew the political connection between the
Duke of Wellington and Mr. Huskisson. The friends of the existing
Administration felt the weakness of their position, deprived of their
natural support, and liable to be outvoted at any time. The Tories had
become perfectly rabid in their indignation, vehemently charging the
Duke with violation of public faith, with want of statesmanship, with
indifference to the wishes and necessities of the people, and with a
determination to govern the country as if he were commanding an army.
Their feelings were so excited that they joined in the Whig cry of
Parliamentary Reform, and spoke of turning the bishops out of the House
of Lords. It was to enable the Premier to brave this storm that he was
induced by his friends to receive Mr. Huskisson at his country house.
The Duke was personally civil, and even kind, to his visitor; but
his recollections of the past were too strong to permit of his going
farther. In the following Session negotiations were made with the other
Canningites, but without success, as they had thrown in their lot with
the Whigs.

The year 1829 was distinguished by disturbances in Ireland, as well
as distress in England. The 12th of July, the anniversary of the
battle of the Boyne, was celebrated with unusual manifestations of
defiance by the Orangemen. The country seemed armed for civil war.
In the county Clare there was a conflict between the Protestants and
Catholics, in which one man was killed, and seven or eight wounded on
each side. In Armagh there was a fight, in which ten men lost their
lives. In the county Fermanagh 800 Roman Catholics, armed with scythes
and pitchforks, turned out and attacked the Protestants, killing four
persons and wounding seven. The same party rose in Cavan, Monaghan, and
Leitrim, threatening something like civil war. In Tipperary society was
so convulsed that the magistrates met, and called upon the Government
for a renewal of the Insurrection Act, and for the passing of a law
rendering the possession of fire-arms a transportable offence.

Such was the state of affairs at home and abroad during the recess of
1829. The Government hoped that by the mollifying influence of time
the rancour of the Tory party would be mitigated, and that by the
proposal of useful measures the Whig leaders would be induced to give
them their support, without being admitted to a partnership in power
and the emoluments of office. But in both respects they miscalculated.
The Duke met Parliament again on the 4th of February, 1830. It was
obvious from the first that neither was Tory rancour appeased nor Whig
support effectually secured. The Speech from the Throne, which was
delivered by commission, was unusually curt and vague. It admitted
the prevalence of general distress. It was true that the exports in
the last year of British produce and manufacture exceeded those of
any former year; but, notwithstanding this indication of an active
commerce, both the agricultural and the manufacturing classes were
suffering severely in "some parts" of the United Kingdom. There was
no question about the existence of distress; the only difference was
as to whether it was general or only partial. In the House of Lords
the Government was attacked by Earl Stanhope, who moved an amendment
to the Address. He asked in what part of the country was it that the
Ministers did not find distress prevailing? He contended that the
kingdom was in a state of universal distress, likely to be unequalled
in its duration. All the great interests--agriculture, manufactures,
trade, and commerce--had never at one time, he said, been at so low an
ebb. The Speech ascribed the distress to a bad harvest. But could a
bad harvest make corn cheap? It was the excessive reduction of prices
which was felt to be the great evil. If they cast their eyes around
they would see the counties pouring on them spontaneously every kind
of solicitation for relief; while in towns, stocks of every kind had
sunk in value forty per cent. The depression, he contended, had been
continuous and universal ever since the Bank Restriction Act passed,
and especially since the suppression of small notes took effect in
the beginning of the previous year. Such a universal and continued
depression could be ascribed only to some cause pressing alike upon all
branches of industry, and that cause was to be found in the enormous
contraction of the currency, the Bank of England notes in circulation
having been reduced from thirty to twenty millions, and the country
bankers' notes in still greater proportion. The Duke of Wellington,
in reply, denied that the Bank circulation was less than it had been
during the war. In the former period it was sixty-four millions,
including gold and silver as well as paper. In 1830 it was sixty-five
millions. It was an unlimited circulation, he said, that the Opposition
required; in other words, it was wished to give certain individuals,
not the Crown, the power of coining in the shape of paper, and of
producing a fictitious capital. Capital was always forthcoming when
it was wanted. He referred to the high rents paid for shops in towns,
which were everywhere enlarged or improved, to "the elegant streets and
villas which were springing up around the metropolis, and all our great
towns, to show that the country was not falling, but improving." After
the Duke had replied, the supporters of the amendment could not muster,
on a division, a larger minority than nine. In the House of Commons the
discussion was more spirited, and the division more ominous of the fate
of the Ministry. The majority for Ministers was only fifty-three, the
numbers being 158 to 105. In the minority were found ultra-Tories, such
as Sir Edward Knatchbull, who had proposed an amendment lamenting the
general distress, Mr. Bankes, Mr. Sadler, and General Gascoigne, who
went into the same lobby with Sir Francis Burdett, Lord John Russell,
Mr. Brougham, Mr. Hume, and Lord Althorp, representing the Whigs and
Radicals; while Lord Palmerston, Mr. Huskisson, Mr. Charles Grant, and
Sir Stratford Canning represented the Canning party. No such jumble of
factions had been known in any division for many years.

The Liberals seem to have been strongly inclined to the opinion that
the Duke of Wellington, having won the great victory of Emancipation,
should retire from the field--that he was not fit to lead the van of
progress in Parliament. "The Prime Minister of England," exclaimed
Sir Francis Burdett, "is shamefully insensible to the suffering and
distress which are painfully apparent throughout the land. When,
instead of meeting such an overwhelming pressure of necessity with
some measure of relief, or some attempt at relief, he seeks to stifle
every important inquiry--when he calls that a partial and temporary
evil which is both long-lived and universal,--I cannot look on such
a mournful crisis, in which the public misfortune is insulted by
Ministerial apathy, without hailing any prospect of change in the
system which has produced it. What shall we say to the ignorance
which can attribute our distress to the introduction of machinery and
the application of steam, that noble improvement in the inventions
of man to which men of science and intelligence mainly ascribe our
prosperity? I feel a high and unfeigned respect for that illustrious
person's abilities in the field, but I cannot help thinking that he
did himself no less than justice when he said, a few months before he
accepted office, that he should be a fit inmate for an asylum of a
peculiar nature if he ever were induced to take such a burden upon his
shoulders." On the other hand the Opposition was nearly as disorganised
as the Government, until Lord Althorp was selected to lead it in the
Commons.

On the 12th of February Sir James Graham moved for the reduction of the
salaries of all persons holding offices under Government, in proportion
to the enhanced value of money produced by the Bank Restriction Act,
which added to the weight of all fixed payments while it lowered
wages and the price of provisions. "Hence," he said, "the miserable
state to which the people of this country were now reduced, and the
necessity for rigid, unsparing economy; and in that system of economy
one great source of retrenchment must be the reduction of the salaries
of those who had their hands in the public purse. Justice requires,
necessity demands it." Ministers did not dare to resist this motion
openly. They evaded it by an amendment, which was unanimously adopted,
for an Address to the king, requesting him to order an inquiry to be
made into all the departments of the Civil Government, with a view
of reducing the number of persons employed in the various Services,
and the amount of their salaries. On the 15th Mr. Hume attempted to
carry retrenchment into the Army and Navy, moving a resolution to the
effect that the former should be reduced by 20,000 men, and the latter
by the sum of a million and a half. All the reductions he proposed
would have effected a saving of eight millions annually. But neither
the Whigs nor the Canning party were disposed to go such lengths. The
motion was, therefore, defeated, the minority consisting solely of
Radical reformers, who mustered fifty-seven on the division. Another
assault on the Government was led on by Mr. Poulett Thompson, who
moved for the appointment of a Committee for a Revision of the system
of Taxation with a view to saving expense in the mode of collecting
the revenue. The motion was resisted by Mr Peel on the ground that
such important duties should not be delegated to a fraction of the
members of the House. The motion was rejected by a large majority. A
few days later, however, Ministers sustained a damaging defeat in the
Committee of Supply on the Navy estimates. Two young men, who had been
public servants for a few months only, Mr. R. Dundas and Mr. W. S.
Bathurst, Junior Commissioners of the Navy, had been pensioned off on
the reduction of their offices, the one with £400 and the other with
£500 a year. The arrangement was attacked as a gross job and defended
upon principle, and Ministers after mustering all their strength were
beaten by a majority of 139 to 121, on the motion that those pensions
should be struck off. Several other motions, brought forward with a
view of effecting retrenchments, were rejected by the House. This
movement in the direction of financial reform, no doubt, received an
impulse from the resentment of the leading Whigs, whose claims to take
part in the Government were ignored by the Duke. But this remark does
not apply to the efforts of Mr. Attwood and Mr. Baring, who moved that
instead of a gold standard there should be a gold and silver standard,
and that the Act for prohibiting the issue of small notes should be
repealed. They strengthened their case by an appeal to the facts of the
existing distress and commercial depression arising from a restricted
currency. On the part of the Government, however, it was argued that a
double standard of gold and silver would cause a loss of five per cent,
to creditors if debtors were to pay in the silver standard--that the
whole country would be a scene of confusion and ruin--that silver never
was in practice the standard of the country, and that it never had been
actually in a state to be used as a legal tender. Latterly the law had
enacted that it should not be a legal tender beyond twenty-five pounds.
By weight, indeed, it was a legal tender to any amount, but practically
it had become so depreciated that there was no such thing as a standard
by weight. Mr. Attwood's resolutions on the currency were negatived
without a division.

[Illustration: MR. ALEXANDER'S LEVES IN KING'S BENCH PRISON. (_See p._
310.)]

Though the Duke of Wellington defended him-self against the persevering
attacks of the financial reformers, he was busy making retrenchments
in every department of the Public Service. So effectually did he
employ the pruning-hook, that although the income of the previous year
had fallen short of the estimate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
by £560,000, he was able to present to the House this year a surplus
of £3,400,000 available for the reduction of taxation, still leaving
an excess of income over expenditure of £2,667,000 applicable to the
reduction of debt. There was, consequently, a large remission of
taxation, the principal item of which was the beer duty, estimated
at £3,000,000. At the same time, in order to enable the Chancellor of
the Exchequer to meet these reductions, an addition of one shilling
a gallon was made to the duty on English spirits and of twopence on
Irish and Scottish spirits. This Budget helped to clear the political
atmosphere and brought a brief gleam of popularity to the Government.
The Duke got full credit for an earnest desire to economise, and it
was acknowledged by the Liberal party that he had given the most
important financial relief that the nation had experienced since
the establishment of peace. Notwithstanding, however, the general
satisfaction, and the loud popular applause, the pressure of distress
was not sensibly alleviated. The burden indeed was somewhat lightened,
but what the nation wanted was greater strength to bear financial
burdens, a revival of its industrial energies, and facilities for
putting them forth with profit to themselves and to the country.
Remissions of taxation were but the weight of a feather, compared to
the losses sustained by the action of the currency. For while the
reductions only relieved the nation to the extent of three or four
millions, it was estimated that the monetary laws, by cutting off
at least fifty per cent. from the remuneration of all branches of
industry, commercial and agricultural, had reduced the incomes of the
industrial classes to the extent of a hundred and fifty millions yearly.

Among the other causes which contributed to the unpopularity of the
Duke of Wellington and the weakness of his Administration was the
prosecution by the Attorney-General of Mr. Alexander, the editor of the
_Morning Journal_. A series of articles had appeared in that paper,
which were considered so virulent and libellous, so far surpassing the
bounds of fair discussion, that the Duke felt under the same necessity
of ordering a prosecution that he had felt to fight the duel with Lord
Winchilsea. It was regarded as an inevitable incident of his position,
one of the things required to enable him to carry on the king's
Government. He obtained a victory, but it cost him dear: a sentence
of fine and imprisonment was inflicted upon his opponent, and the
_Morning Journal_ was extinguished; but, in the temper of the times,
the public were by no means disposed to sympathise with the victor in
such a contest. On the contrary, the victory covered him with odium,
and placed upon the head of the convicted the crown of martyrdom. Mr.
Alexander was visited daily in the King's Bench prison by leading
politicians, and a motion was made in the House of Commons with a view
to incriminate the Government who ordered the prosecution. In another
instance also, but of a nature less damaging, the Government received a
warning of its approaching downfall. Mr. Peel, anxious to mitigate the
severity of the criminal code, and to render it less bloody, proposed
to inflict the penalty of death only on persons committing such
forgeries as could not by proper precautions be guarded against. It was
a step in the right direction, but one too hesitating, and stopping
short of the firm ground of sound policy. Sir James Mackintosh,
therefore, on the third reading of the Bill, moved a clause for the
abolition of the penalty of death in all cases of forgery, which was
carried by a majority of 151 against 138. Thus the Session wore on,
in a sort of tantalising Parliamentary warfare, with no decisive
advantages on either side till the attention and interest of Parliament
and the nation were absorbed by the approaching dissolution of George
IV. and the dawning light of a new reign.

For many years the king had been scarcely ever free from gout, but its
attacks had been resisted by the uncommon strength of his constitution.
Partly in consequence of the state of his health, and partly from his
habits of self-indulgence, he had for some time led a life of great
seclusion. He became growingly averse from all public displays and
ceremonials, and was impatient of any intrusions upon his privacy.
During the spring of 1829 he resided at St. James's Palace, where
he gave a ball to the juvenile branches of the nobility, to which
the Princess Victoria and the young Queen of Portugal were invited.
His time was mostly spent within the royal domain at Windsor, where
his outdoor amusements were sailing and fishing on Virginia Water,
or driving rapidly in a pony phaeton through the forest. He was
occasionally afflicted with pains in the eyes and defective vision. The
gout attacked him in the hands as well as in the feet, and towards the
end, dropsy--a disease which had been fatal to the Duke of York, and to
his sister, the Queen of Würtemberg--was added to his other maladies.
In April the disease assumed a decisive character; and bulletins began
to be issued. The Duke of Clarence was at Windsor, and warmly expressed
his sympathy with the royal sufferer. The Duke of Cumberland, and
nearly all the Royal Family, expressed to Sir William Knighton their
anxiety and fears as to the issue. This devoted servant was constantly
by the side of his master. On the 27th of May Sir William wrote to Lady
Knighton: "The king is particularly affectionate to me. His Majesty is
gradually breaking down; but the time required, if it does not happen
suddenly, to destroy his originally fine constitution, no one can
calculate upon." We are assured that Sir William took every opportunity
of calling his Majesty's attention to religious subjects, and had even
placed unordered a quarto Bible, of large type, on the dressing-table,
with which act of attention the king was much pleased, and frequently
referred to the sacred volume. A prayer was appointed for public use
during his Majesty's indisposition, which the Bishop of Chichester
read to him. "With the king's permission," wrote this learned prelate,
"I repeated it on my knees at his bedside. At the close, his Majesty
having listened to it with the utmost attention, three times repeated
'Amen,' with the greatest fervour and devotion. He expressed himself
highly gratified with it, and desired me to convey his approbation of
it to the Archbishop of Canterbury."

About a week before the king died the physician delicately announced
to him the inevitable catastrophe, when he said, "God's will be done."
His sufferings were very great, and during the paroxysms of pain his
moans were heard even by the sentinels in the quadrangle. On the night
of the 25th of June his difficulty of breathing was unusually painful,
and he motioned to his page to alter his position on the couch. Towards
three o'clock he felt a sudden attack of faintness, accompanied by
a violent discharge of blood. At this moment he attempted to raise
his hand to his breast, and ejaculated, "O God, I am dying!" Two or
three seconds afterwards he said, "This is death." The physicians were
instantly called, but before they arrived the breath of life was gone.
A _post mortem_ examination showed ossification of the heart, which
was greatly enlarged, and adhering to the neighbouring parts. The
liver was not diseased; but the lungs were ulcerated, and there were
dropsical symptoms on the skin, on various parts of the body. The king
was an unusually large and, at one time, well-proportioned man; but
he afterwards became very corpulent. He died on the 26th of June, in
the sixty-eighth year of his age and the eleventh of his reign, having
been Prince Regent for ten years. During his last illness the bulletins
had been unusually deceptive. The king was anxious to put away the
idea of dissolution from his own mind, and unwilling that the public
should know that his infirmities were so great; and it was said that
he required to see the bulletins and to have them altered, so that he
was continually announced as being better till the day of his death.
His message to both Houses on the 24th of May, however, put an end to
all delusion on the subject. He wished to be relieved from the pain and
trouble of signing Bills and documents with his own hand. A Bill was
therefore passed to enable him to give his assent verbally, but it was
jealously guarded against being made a dangerous precedent. The stamp
was to be affixed in the king's presence, by his immediate order given
by word of mouth. A memorandum of the circumstances must accompany the
stamp, and the document stamped must be previously endorsed by three
members of the Privy Council; the operation of the Act was limited to
the existing Session. The three Commissioners appointed for affixing
his Majesty's signature were Lord Farnborough, General Sir W. Keppel,
and Major-General A. F. Barnard.

Mr. Walpole has summed up the character of George IV. in words alike
of terrible conciseness and of unmitigating truth--" He was a bad son,
a bad husband, a bad father, a bad subject, a bad monarch, and a bad
friend."




CHAPTER VIII.

REIGN OF WILLIAM IV.

    Character of the new King--Position of the Ministry--Discussion in
    the Lords on a Regency--Brougham's Speech in the Commons--The King
    in London--Brougham's Slavery Speech--The Dissolution--Sketch of
    the July Revolution--Its Effects in England--The Elections--Their
    Results in England and Ireland--Death of Huskisson--Disturbances in
    England--The King's Speech--Declarations of Grey and Wellington on
    Reform--Broughams Notice--Effect of the Duke's Speech---Agitation
    in Ireland--And against the Police--Postponement of the King's
    Visit to the Mansion House--Resignation of Wellington's
    Ministry--Grey forms a Ministry--Brougham's Position--The
    Ministry--Grey's Statement--Agricultural England--Cobbett and
    Carlile--Affairs in Ireland--Lord Anglesey--His Struggle with
    O'Connell--O'Connell's Prosecution dropped--The Birmingham
    Political Union--Preparation of the Reform Bill--It is entrusted
    to Lord John Russell--The Budget--The Bill introduced--The
    First Reading carried--Feeling in the Country--The Second
    Reading carried--Gascoigne's Amendment--A Dissolution agreed
    upon--Scene in the Lords--The Press--The Illuminations and
    Riots--The New Parliament--Discussions on the Dissolution and
    O'Connell--The Second Reform Bill--The Second Reading--The Bill
    in Committee--It is carried to the Lords--Debate on the Second
    Reading--The Bill rejected--Popular Excitement--Lord Ebrington's
    Resolution--Prorogation of Parliament--Lord John Russell's
    Declaration--The Bristol Riots--Colonel Brereton.


William IV. was welcomed to the Throne with great acclamation. Called
"The Sailor King," he was endowed with many of the personal qualities
which make the sailor's character popular with Englishmen. He had been
Lord High Admiral, and in that capacity he had lately been moving about
the coasts, making displays and enjoying _fêtes_, although this was
thought by some to be unseemly in the Heir Presumptive to the Throne,
at a time when its occupant was known to be in a very infirm state
of health. Heavy bills connected with these vainglorious displays
were sent to the Treasury, which the Duke of Wellington endorsed with
a statement that such expenses were not allowed. Although opinions
differed about William very much, not only between the friends of
Reform and the Conservatives, but between the leaders of the Liberal
party themselves, he was esteemed the most popular king since the
days of Alfred. William was certainly a more exemplary character
than his brother. He had indeed formed an attachment to a celebrated
actress, Mrs. Jordan, by whom he had a numerous family, one of whom was
subsequently admitted to the ranks of the nobility with the title of
Earl of Munster, and the others were raised to the dignity of younger
sons of a marquis. He had, however, been married for several years to
the Princess Adelaide, of Saxe-Meiningen, who became Queen of England,
and adorned her exalted station by her virtues and her beneficence.
They had two children, both of whom died in infancy; and as the king
was in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and the queen was not young,
there was no longer any hope of a direct succession to the Throne.
Altogether, Charles Greville's verdict on the king--"something of a
buffoon and more of a blackguard"--is excessively severe. If eccentric
and hot-tempered, William IV. was straightforward and upright. He
had some knowledge of foreign affairs, and thoroughly understood his
position as a constitutional king.

The Ministers and their supporters were complimentary, as a matter of
course, to the new Sovereign, who had graciously continued them in
their offices; and the Whigs, who had ascribed their exclusion from
power to the personal dislike of the king, were resolved that there
should not be again any obstacle of the kind, and that they would keep
upon the best possible terms with the Court. During the previous part
of the Session they had kept up a rapid fire of motions and questions
upon the Government, especially with regard to the public expenditure,
the distress of the operatives, and the necessity of rigid economy
and large retrenchment. The attacks were led by Sir James Graham,
who, though he was always left in a minority in the divisions on his
motions, did much to weaken the Government by exciting public feeling
against them on the ground of their alleged heartless extravagance,
while many of the people were starving and the country was said to
be going fast to destruction. The Duke of Wellington, however, moved
an answer to the Royal Message, declaring that they would forward
the measure necessary to provide for the temporary supply required.
He suggested that as everybody would be occupied about the coming
elections, the best mode of proceeding would be to dissolve at
once. Lord Grey, in the name of the Opposition, complained of this
precipitancy, and delivered a long speech full of solemn warnings of
evil. He supposed that the king might die before the new Parliament
was chosen; the Heir Apparent was a child in fact, though not in law.
No regency existing, she would be legally in the possession of her
full regal power, and this was a situation which he contended would
be fraught with danger. A long, unprofitable wrangle ensued, dull
repetitions dragged out the debate, when at length the Duke wisely
refused to accede to the proposition for a useless interval of delay,
and proved the numerical strength of the Administration. Lord Grey
having moved for an adjournment to allow time for providing a regency,
the motion was lost by a majority of 44, the numbers being 56 against
100.

[Illustration: VIRGINIA WATER.]

In the House of Commons, on the same evening (the 30th of June), Sir
Robert Peel moved an answer to the Address to the same effect. Lord
Althorp, acting in concert with Lord Grey, moved the adjournment of
the House for twenty-four hours to allow time for consideration. The
discussion in the Commons, however, was not without interest, as it
touched upon constitutional questions of vital importance. Mr. Brougham
did his part with admirable tact. He dwelt upon the danger of allowing
the people to learn that Government could go on, and every exigency
of the common weal be provided for, without a king. The Act which had
appointed the late Prince Regent had been passed without the Royal
sanction, the king being insane, and no provision having been made to
meet the calamity that occurred. The Act of Parliament was called a
law, but it was no law; it had not even the semblance of a law; and
the power which it conveyed was in those days called the phantom of
royal authority. The fact, indeed, was that the tendency of that Act
of Parliament, more than any other Act that had ever been passed by
the legislature, was to inflict a blow on the royal authority; to
diminish its influence and weight; to bring it into disrepute with,
and to lessen it in the estimation of, the people at large; and that
fact was in itself a sufficient comment upon the propriety of doing
an act of legislation without having the Crown to sanction it. That,
he said, was his first great and principal reason for proceeding with
this question at once. He showed that one of the greatest advantages
connected with the monarchical form of government was the certainty of
the succession, and the facile and quiet transmission of power from
one hand to another, thus avoiding the inconveniences and dangers of
an interregnum. The question was rendered more difficult and delicate
by the fact that the Duke of Cumberland, the most unpopular man in the
country, was the eldest of the remaining brothers of the king, in the
event of whose death he would be Heir Apparent to the Throne of Great
Britain, and King of Hanover. In the case supposed, the question would
arise whether the next heir to the Throne was of right regent, should
the Sovereign be incompetent, from infancy, insanity, or any other
cause. If that right were established, then the regent, during the
minority of the Princess Victoria, would be a foreign monarch, and one
who was utterly detested by the mass of the people of Britain. Such a
question, arising at a moment when the spirit of revolution was abroad,
might agitate the public mind to a degree that would be perilous to the
Constitution. The contingencies were sufficiently serious, therefore,
to justify the efforts of Lord Grey and Mr. Brougham to have the
regency question settled before the dissolution. They may not have been
sorry to have a good popular case against the Government, but their
conduct was not fairly liable to the imputation of faction or mere
personal ambition. "Can we," asked Mr. Brougham, "promise ourselves a
calm discussion of the subject when there should be an actual accession
of the Duke of Cumberland to the Throne of Hanover, and Parliament is
suddenly called upon to decide upon his election to the regency, to
the supreme rule in this country, to which, according to the principle
of Mr. Pitt, he has a paramount claim, although he has not a strict
legal right?" The motion for adjournment was lost by a majority of
46--the numbers being, for it, 139; against it, 185. After this debate,
on the motion for adjournment, Lord Althorp moved the amendment to
the Address, almost in the words of Lord Grey in the other House. Sir
Robert Peel stated that he meant no disrespect by abstaining from
further discussion, which would be wasting the time of the House, by
repeating the arguments he had already employed. Mr. Brougham, however,
took the opportunity of launching out against the Ministry in a strain
of bitter invective, of sarcasm vehement even to fierceness.

The question of the regency was again brought forward, on the 6th of
July, by Mr. Robert Grant, in pursuance of a notice he had previously
given. The unbounded personal popularity of the king--who, unlike
his predecessor shut up in seclusion and resembling Tiberius, went
about sailor-like through the streets, frank, talkative, familiar,
good-humoured, delighting the Londoners with all the force of
pleasant contrast--rendered it increasingly difficult and delicate
on the part of the Opposition to propose any measure disagreeable
to a Sovereign who was the idol of the multitude, from whom no evil
could be apprehended, and whose death, even in the ordinary course of
Providence, it seemed something like treason to anticipate as likely
to occur within a few months. They were, therefore, profuse in their
declarations of respect, of admiration--nay, almost of veneration--for
a monarch whom a beneficent Providence had so happily placed upon the
Throne of Great Britain. The division on Mr. Grant's motion was still
more decidedly favourable to the Government, the numbers being--Ayes,
93; noes, 247--majority, 154.

On the 13th of July Brougham delivered his speech on slavery, which
produced such an impression upon the public mind that it mainly
contributed, as he himself admitted, to his election a few weeks
afterwards as one of the members for Yorkshire--the proudest position
which a Parliamentary representative could occupy. He proposed "that
this House do resolve, at the earliest practicable period next Session,
to take into its serious consideration the state of the slaves in
the colonies of Great Britain, in order to the mitigation and final
abolition of slavery; and more especially to the amendment of the
administration of justice within the same." Mr. Wilmot Horton brought
forward a series of resolutions, by way of evading the difficulty.
Sir George Murray, the Colonial Secretary, entreated Mr. Brougham to
withdraw his motion, as the public would come to a wrong conclusion
from seeing the small numbers that would vote upon it at that late
period of the Session, and on the eve of a dissolution. Sir Robert
Peel pressed the same consideration, but Mr. Brougham persisted, and
in a very thin House the numbers on the division were--Aye., 27; noes,
56--majority against the motion, 29. This division ended the party
struggles of the Session. On the 23rd of July Parliament was prorogued
by the king in person, and next day it was dissolved by proclamation.
The writs, returnable on the 14th of September, were immediately issued
for a general election, which was expected, and proved to be, the most
exciting and most important political contest at the hustings recorded
in the history of England.

The French Revolution of 1830 exerted an influence so mighty upon
public opinion and political events in England, that it becomes
necessary to trace briefly its rise, progress, and rapid consummation.
When Louis XVIII. was restored to the throne by the arms of the
Allies, it was found that he had learnt little wisdom in his exile.
He was, however, a man of moderation, and affected to pursue a middle
course. His successor, Charles X., who ascended the throne in 1824,
was violent and bigoted, a zealous Catholic, hating the Revolution and
all its results, and making no secret of his feelings. From the moment
he commenced his reign he pursued a course of unscrupulous reaction.
At the general election the prefects so managed as to procure an
overwhelming Ministerial majority, who immediately resolved to extend
the duration of the Chamber of Deputies to seven years. They next
passed a law to indemnify Emigrants, for which they voted an annual
sum representing a capital of thirty millions sterling. In 1827 the
Prime Minister, Villele, adopted the daring measure of disbanding
the National Guard, because it had expressed its satisfaction at the
defeat of a measure for the restriction of the liberty of the press.
He next took the still more dangerous step of dissolving the Chamber
of Deputies. This produced a combination of parties, which resulted
in the defeat of the Ministerial candidates in every direction. The
consequence was the resignation of Villele, on the 5th of January,
1828. He was succeeded by Martignac, whose Government abolished the
discretionary power of re-establishing the censorship of the press,
and adopted measures for securing the purity of the electoral lists
against the frauds of the local authorities. They also issued an
_ordonnance_ on education, guarding society against the encroachments
of the Jesuits, and the apprehension of clerical domination. The
king, taking alarm at these Liberal tendencies, dismissed Martignac
and his colleagues, and in August, 1829, he appointed a Ministry
exclusively and devotedly Royalist, at the head of which he placed
Prince de Polignac, a bigoted Catholic, who, during the Empire, had
engaged in many wild schemes for the restoration of the Bourbons. This
conduct on the part of the king was regarded by the people almost
universally as indicating a design to suppress their constitutional
liberties, which they resolved to counteract by having recourse to
the constitutional remedy against arbitrary power--namely, refusal
to pay the taxes. With this object an association was formed in
Brittany, which established a fund to indemnify those who might suffer
in resisting the levy of imposts. The press was most unanimous in
condemning the new Ministry, and by spirited and impassioned appeals
to the patriotism of the people and their love of freedom, roused them
to a sense of their coming danger. Prince de Polignac was charged with
the design of destroying the Charter; of creating a majority in the
Chamber of Deputies by an unconstitutional addition of aristocratic
members; of calling in foreign armies to overawe the French people;
and of raising military forces by royal _ordonnances_. The _Moniteur_
contained an authorised contradiction of all these imputations and
rumours. Charles was assured, however, by the Royalists that surrounded
him, that there always would be a majority against him in the Chamber,
no matter who the Ministers might be, and that it was impossible to
carry on the Government under the existing system. He was too ready to
listen to such counsels, fondly attached as he was to the priesthood,
the privileged orders, tithes, feudal services, and provincial
administrations.

The Chambers were opened by the king on the 2nd of March, 1830,
with a speech which conveyed a threat to the French nation. "If
culpable manœuvres," he said, "should raise up against my Government
obstacles which I do not wish to foresee, I shall find the power of
surmounting them in my resolution to maintain the public peace, in
my just confidence in Frenchmen, and in the love which they have
always borne to their kings." The Chambers did not hesitate to express
their want of confidence in the Government. The king having declared
that his intentions were immutable, no alternative remained but a
dissolution, as he was resolved to try once more whether a majority
could be obtained by fair means or foul. In this last appeal to public
opinion he was bitterly disappointed. It scarcely required a prophet
to foresee the near approach of some great change; nor could the
result of the impending struggle appear doubtful. Nine-tenths of the
community were favourable to a constitutional system. Not only the
working classes, but the mercantile and trading classes, as well as
the professional classes, and all the most intelligent part of the
nation, were decidedly hostile to the Government. In Paris the majority
against the Ministerial candidates was seven or eight to one. The
press, with scarcely an exception, was vehement in its condemnation of
the policy of the Government, which came to the conclusion that it was
not enough to abolish the Constitution, but that, in order to insure
the success of a purely despotic _régime_, it was absolutely necessary
to destroy the liberty of the press, and to put down journalism by
force. Accordingly, a report on this subject was addressed to the king,
recommending its suppression. It was drawn up by M. Chantelauze, and
signed by De Polignac and five other Ministers.

This report was published in the _Moniteur_ on the morning of Monday,
July 26th. On the same day, and in the same paper, appeared the
famous _Ordonnances_, signed by the king, and countersigned by his
Ministers. By the first the liberty of the press was abolished, and
thenceforth no journal could be published without the authority of
the Government. By the second the Chamber of Deputies, which was
to meet in the ensuing month, was dissolved. By the third a new
scheme of election was introduced, which destroyed the franchise of
three-fourths of the electors, and reduced the number of deputies to
little more than one half. Thus the whole Constitution was swept away
by a stroke of the royal pen. As soon as these _Ordonnances_ became
generally known throughout the city the people were thrown into a
state of violent agitation. The editors and proprietors of twelve
journals assembled, and having resolved that the _Ordonnances_ were
illegal, they determined to publish their papers on the following
day. A statement of their case, signed by thirty-eight persons, was
published in the _Nationale_. They said: "In the situation in which
we are placed, obedience ceases to be a duty. We are dispensed from
obeying. We resist the Government in what concerns ourselves. It is
for France to determine how far her resistance ought to extend." In
pursuance of this announcement the journalists were preparing to issue
their papers when the police entered the offices and began to scatter
the type and break the presses. In some of the offices the workmen
resisted, and the locks of the doors had to be picked; but no smith
could be got to do the work except one whose business it was to rivet
the manacles on galley slaves. There was a meeting of the electors of
Paris, who quickly decided upon a plan of operations. Deputations were
appointed to wait on the manufacturers, printers, builders, and other
extensive employers, requesting them to discharge their workpeople,
which was done, and on the 27th 50,000 men were assembled in different
parts of the town, in groups, crying, "_Vive la Charte!_" About thirty
deputies, who had arrived in town, met at the house of M. Casimir
Perier, and resolved to encourage the rising of the people. The troops
were under arms; and it is stated that without any provocation from
the people except their cries, the military began to sabre the unarmed
multitude. The first shot seems to have been fired out of a house,
by an Englishman, named Foulkes, who was fired on by the military,
and killed. Alarming reports spread through the city that the blood
of the people was being wantonly shed, and that women were not
spared. The black flag was raised in various quarters, ominous of the
desperate nature of the struggle. The night of the 27th was spent in
preparation. The shops of the armourers were visited, and the citizens
armed themselves with all sorts of weapons--pistols, sabres, bayonets,
etc. In every street men were employed digging up the pavements, and
carrying stones to the tops of the houses, or piling them behind the
barricades, which were being constructed of omnibuses and _fiacres_
at successive distances of about fifty paces. The fine trees of the
Boulevards were cut down and used for the same purpose. The garrison
of Paris was commanded by General Marmont. It consisted altogether of
11,500 men. At daybreak on the 28th the citizens were nearly ready
for battle. Early in the morning national guards were seen hastening
to the Hôtel de Ville, amidst the cheers of the people. Parties of
cavalry galloped up and down, and occasionally a horseman, shot from
a window, fell back out of his saddle. At ten o'clock Marmont formed
six columns of attack, preceded by cannon, which were to concentrate
round the Hôtel de Ville. The insurgents retired before the artillery,
and the troops, abandoning the open places, took shelter in the houses
and behind barriers. In the meantime a desperate fight raged at the
Hôtel de Ville, which was taken possession of, and bravely defended
by the National Guard. Their fire from the top of the building was
unceasing, while the artillery thundered below. It was taken and
retaken several times. It appears that hitherto the Government had no
idea of the nature of the contest. The journals had proclaimed open
war. They declared that the social contract being torn, they were bound
and authorised to use every possible mode of resistance, and that
between right and violence the struggle could not be protracted. This
was on the 26th; but at four o'clock p.m., on the 27th, the troops had
received no orders; and when they were called out of barracks shortly
after, many officers were absent, not having been apprised that any
duty whatever was expected. The night offered leisure to arrange and
opportunity to execute all necessary precautions. The circumstances
were urgent, the danger obvious and imminent; yet nothing at all was
done. The contest lasted for three days with varying fortunes. Twice
the palace of the Tuileries was taken and abandoned; but on the third
day the citizens were finally victorious, and the tricoloured flag was
placed on the central pavilion. Marmont, seeing that all was lost,
withdrew his troops; and on the afternoon of the 29th Paris was left
entirely at the command of the triumphant population. The National
Guard was organised, and General Lafayette, "the veteran of patriotic
revolutions," took the command. Notwithstanding the severity of the
fighting, the casualties were not very great. About 700 citizens lost
their lives, and about 2,000 were wounded. It was stated that the
troops were encouraged to fight by a lavish distribution of money,
about a million francs having been distributed amongst them, for
the purpose of stimulating their loyalty. The deputies met on the
31st, and resolved to invite Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, to be
lieutenant-general of the kingdom. He accepted the office, and issued
a proclamation which stated that the Charter would thenceforth be a
truth. The Chambers were opened on the 3rd of August; 200 deputies were
present; the galleries were crowded with peers, general officers of the
old army, the diplomatic body, and other distinguished persons. The
duke, in his opening speech, dwelt upon the violations of the Charter,
and stated that he was attached by conviction to the principles of free
government. At a subsequent meeting the Chamber conferred upon him
the title of the King of the French. He took the oath to observe the
Charter, which had been revised in several particulars. On the 17th
of August Charles X. arrived in England; and by a curious coincidence
there was a meeting that day in the London Tavern, at which an address
to the citizens of Paris, written by Dr. Bowring, congratulating them
on the Revolution of July, was unanimously adopted. Meetings of a
similar kind were held in many of the cities and towns of the United
Kingdom. Feelings of delight and admiration pervaded the public mind
in Britain; delight that the cause of constitutional freedom had so
signally triumphed, and admiration of the heroism of the citizens, and
the order and self-control with which they conducted themselves in
the hour of victory. Thus ended the Revolution of July, 1830. It was
short and decisive, but it had been the _finale_ of a long struggle.
The battle had been fought in courts and chambers by constitutional
lawyers and patriotic orators. It had been fought with the pen in
newspapers, pamphlets, songs, plays, poems, novels, histories. It had
been fought with the pencil in caricatures of all sorts. It was the
triumph of public opinion over military despotism. To commemorate the
three days of July it was determined to erect a column on the Place de
la Bastille, which was completed in 1840.

[Illustration: REVOLUTION IN PARIS: CAPTURE OF THE HÔTEL DE VILLE.
(_See p._ 316.)]

The effect of the issue upon the state of parties in England was
tremendous. The _Morning Chronicle_, then the organ of the Whig party,
said, "The battle of English liberty has really been fought and
won at Paris." The _Times_ thundered the great fact with startling
reverberation throughout the United Kingdom. Mr. Brougham in the House
of Commons spoke of it as that revolution which in his conscience
he believed to be "the most glorious" in the annals of mankind, and
he expressed his heartfelt admiration, his cordial gratitude, to
the patriots of that great nation for the illustrious struggle they
were making. This language expresses the feelings which prevailed
through all classes of the people of Britain, and it may be easily
supposed that the effect was most favourable to the Liberal party
and most damaging to the Tories, especially as the exciting events
occurred at the time of the general election; and Prince de Polignac
being considered the particular friend of the Duke of Wellington, his
Ministry was called in France the Wellington Administration. All these
things were against the Premier: the hostility of the anti-Catholic
party, the alienation of the Whigs, the accession of a liberal monarch,
and the odium of the supposed intimate relationship with the vanquished
despotism of France.

The progress that the electors had made in liberality of sentiment
was evinced especially by two of the elections. Mr. Hume, the Radical
reformer, the cold, calculating economist, the honest, plain-speaking
man of the people, was returned for the county of Middlesex without
opposition; and Mr. Brougham, a barrister, who owed nothing to family
connections--who, by the steadiness of his industry, the force of
his character, the extent of his learning, and the splendour of his
eloquence, devoted perseveringly for years to the popular cause, had
won for himself, at the same time, the highest place in his profession,
and the foremost position in the senate--was returned for Yorkshire.
These counties had hitherto been the preserves of the great landed
proprietors. Lord Fitzwilliam, though the personal friend of Mr.
Brougham, did not like this intrusion of a foreigner into that great
county. Indeed, it had been sufficiently guarded against all but very
wealthy men by the enormous expense of a contest. In 1826, when a
contest was only threatened, and the election ended with a nomination,
Mr. John Marshall's expenses amounted to £17,000; and, on a previous
occasion, it was rumoured that Lord Milton had spent £70,000 in a
contest. No wonder Brougham was a friend of Parliamentary Reform.

The general result of the elections was considered to have diminished
by fifty the number of votes on which Ministers could depend, and
the relation in which they now stood to the more popular part of the
representation was stated to be as follows:--Of the eighty-two members
returned by the forty counties of England, only twenty-eight were
steady adherents of the Ministry; forty-seven were avowed adherents
of the Opposition, and seven of the neutral cast did not lean much
to Government. Of the thirteen popular cities and boroughs (London,
Westminster, Aylesbury, etc.), returning twenty-eight members, only
three seats were held by decidedly Ministerial men, and twenty-four
by men in avowed opposition. There were sixty other places, more or
less open, returning 126 members. Of these only forty-seven were
Ministerial; all the rest were avowed Opposition men, save eight, whose
leaning was rather against the Government than for it. Of the 236
men then returned by elections more or less popular in England, only
seventy-nine were Ministerial votes; 141 were in avowed opposition, and
sixteen of a neutral cast.

The Duke had little to console him in connection with the general
election. In passing the Emancipation Act he had made great sacrifices,
and had converted many of his most devoted friends into bitter enemies.
The least that he could expect was that the great boon which it cost
him so much to procure for the Roman Catholics of Ireland would have
brought him some return of gratitude and some amount of political
support in that country. But hitherto the Emancipation Act had failed
in tranquillising the country. On the contrary, its distracted state
pointed the arguments of the Tories on the hustings during the Irish
elections. O'Connell, instead of returning to the quiet pursuit of his
profession, was agitating for Repeal of the Union, and reviling the
British Government as bitterly as ever. He got up new associations with
different names as fast as the Lord-Lieutenant could proclaim them,
and he appealed to the example of the French and Belgian revolutions
as encouraging Ireland to agitate for national independence. In
consequence of his agitation many Ministerial seats in Ireland were
transferred to the most violent of his followers. During these
conflicts with the Government Mr. O'Connell was challenged by Sir Henry
Hardinge, in consequence of offensive language used by him about that
gentleman, who was then Chief Secretary for Ireland. Mr. O'Connell
declined the combat, on the ground that he had a "vow registered in
heaven" never again to fight a duel, in consequence of his having shot
Mr. D'Esterre. This "affair of honour" drew upon him from some quarters
very severe censure.

On the 15th of September this year the Manchester and Liverpool Railway
was opened. It was the first line opened for passenger traffic in the
British empire. There was much difference of opinion as to the success
of the experiment, and vast crowds attended to see the first trains
running. The Duke of Wellington, Mr. Huskisson, and many persons of
the highest distinction, started in the trains, which travelled on two
lines in the same direction, sometimes nearly abreast. At Parkside
the trains stopped to take in water, and Mr. Huskisson and several
of his friends got out. He was brought round to the carriage where
the Duke of Wellington was seated, who, as soon as he saw him, shook
hands cordially with his old colleague. At this moment the other train
started, when there was a general cry of "Get in, get in!" There was
not time to do this, but Mr. Holmes, who was with Mr. Huskisson,
had sufficient presence of mind to draw himself up close to the
Duke's carriage, by which means he escaped uninjured. Mr. Huskisson,
unfortunately, caught one of the doors, which, struck by the train in
motion, was swung round, and caused him to fall on the other railway,
so that his right leg was passed over and crushed by the engine. The
Duke of Wellington and others ran to his assistance. The only words he
uttered were, "I have met my death. God forgive me!" He was carried to
Eccles, where the best medical advice was obtained, but he survived
only a few hours, bearing his intense pain with great fortitude.

Napoleon's saying about French revolutions was verified in 1830. The
shock of the political earthquake was felt throughout the Continent,
and severed Belgium from Holland. The inhabitants of Brussels began
their revolt by resistance to local taxes, and ended by driving the
Dutch garrison out of the city, and proclaiming the independence of
Belgium. The Duke of Wellington had no difficulty about the prompt
recognition of the _de facto_ Government of France. The change of
dynasty had not been officially communicated to him many hours when
he sent instructions to the British ambassador to enter into friendly
relations with the new Government. He had not, however, the same
facility in recognising the independence of Belgium. He had been
instrumental in establishing the kingdom of the Netherlands; and he
regarded the union as being a portion of the great European settlement
of 1815, which ought not to be disturbed without the concurrence of the
Great Powers by which it was effected. This hesitation on his part to
hail the results of successful revolution added to his unpopularity. In
the meantime a dangerous spirit of disaffection and disorder began to
manifest itself in the south of England. Incendiary fires had preceded
the Revolution in France, especially in Normandy, and they were
supposed to have had a political object. Similar preludes of menaced
revolution occurred during the autumn in some of the English counties
nearest the French coast, in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire.
Night after night, in the most fertile districts, the sky was reddened
with the blaze of burning stack-yards. Crowds of the working classes,
complaining of want of employment, went about throughout the country,
breaking the threshing-machines, which had then come into extensive
use. The Government were compelled to employ force to put down
these disturbances--a fact which supplied inflammatory arguments to
agitators, who denounced the Duke of Wellington as the chief cause of
the distress of the working classes. Such was the state of things when
the new Parliament met on the 26th of October.

Mr. Manners Sutton was again chosen Speaker of the House of Commons,
having already presided over four successive Parliaments, occupying
a period of fourteen years, during which he performed the onerous
duties of his high position to the satisfaction of all parties. A
week was occupied in the swearing-in of members. All the preliminary
formalities having been gone through, the Parliament was opened by
the king in person on the 2nd of November. The Royal Speech, which
was of unusual length, excited the deepest interest, and was listened
to with breathless attention and intense anxiety. The concluding
paragraph of the Speech, while expressing the strongest confidence
in the loyalty of the people, intimated the determination of the
Government to resist Parliamentary Reform. This attitude was regarded
as a defiance to the Opposition; and it roused into excitement the
spirit of hostility, which might have been disarmed by a tone of
conciliation, and by a disposition to make moderate concessions.
Nothing, therefore, could have been more favourable to the aims of
the Whig leaders than the course taken by the Administration; and
if they wanted an excuse for breaking forth into open war, it was
supplied by the imprudent speech of the Duke of Wellington. The Royal
Speech, indeed, suggested revolutionary topics to the Reformers, by
its allusion to Continental politics. The king observed that the
elder branch of the House of Bourbon no longer reigned in France, and
that the Duke of Orleans had been called to the throne. The state
of affairs in the Low Countries--namely, the separation of Belgium
from Holland--was viewed with deep regret; and "his Majesty lamented
that the enlightened administration of the King of the Netherlands"
should not have preserved his dominions from revolt; stating that he
was endeavouring, in concert with his allies, to devise such means of
restoring tranquillity as might be compatible with the welfare and good
government of the Netherlands, and with the future security of other
States.

Earl Grey was not slow to avail himself of these exciting topics in
order to point the lightning of popular discontent against the head
of the Government. "We ought," he said, "to learn wisdom from what is
passing before our eyes; and, when the spirit of liberty is breaking
out all round, it is our first duty to secure our own institutions by
introducing into them a temperate reform. I have been a Reformer all
my life; and on no occasion have I been inclined to go farther than
I am prepared to go now, if an opportunity were to offer. But I do
not found the title to demand it on abstract right. We are told that
every man who pays taxes--nay, that every man arrived at the years
of discretion--has a right to vote for representatives. That right I
utterly deny. The right of the people is to have a good Government, one
that is calculated to secure their privileges and happiness; and if
that is incompatible with universal, or very general suffrage, then the
limitation, and not the extension, is the true right of the people."

This speech, which was regarded as the manifesto of the Reform
party, called forth a reply from the Duke of Wellington, which was
pregnant with revolution, and which precipitated the downfall of his
Administration. He said:--"The noble Earl has recommended us not only
to put down these disturbances, but to put the country in a state to
meet and overthrow the dangers which are likely to arise from the late
transactions in France, by the adoption of something like Parliamentary
Reform. The noble earl has stated that he is not prepared himself
to come forward with any measure of the kind; and I will tell him
farther, neither is the Government.... Nay, I will go yet farther,
and say that if at this moment I had to form a legislature for any
country, particularly for one like this, in the possession of great
property of various descriptions, although perhaps I should not form
one precisely such as we have, I would endeavour to produce something
which would give the same result; namely, a representation of the
people containing a large body of the property of the country, and in
which the great landed proprietors have a preponderating influence.
Further still, I beg to state that not only is the Government not
prepared to bring forward any measure of this description, but, in so
far as I am concerned, while I have the honour to hold the situation
which I now do among his Majesty's counsellors, I shall always feel it
my duty to oppose any such measures when brought forward by others."
When he sat down the hum of criticism was so loud that he asked a
colleague--probably Lord Lyndhurst--the cause. The answer was, "You
have announced the fall of your Government, that is all."

[Illustration: LORD GREY.]

So soon as the House of Commons assembled, and before the Speaker read
the Speech which had been delivered from the Throne, Mr. Brougham made
the first significant move in the game that was about to be played,
by announcing that he would that day fortnight submit to the House
a proposition on the great question of Parliamentary Reform. Having
determined to give notice of his intention when there was a question
before the House, he was enabled to accompany his notice with an
explanation. This was his explanation:--"He had," he said, "by one
party been described as intending to bring forward a very limited, and
therefore useless and insignificant, plan; by another, he was said
to be the friend of a radical, sweeping, and innovating, and, I may
add, for I conscientiously believe it would prove so, a revolutionary
reform." Both these imputed schemes he disavowed. "I stand on the
ancient way of the Constitution." To explain at that moment what the
details of this plan were to be would have then been inconvenient--was,
indeed, impossible. "But," said Mr. Brougham, "my object in bringing
forward this question is not revolution, but restoration--to repair the
Constitution, not to pull it down." This notice was a master-stroke of
policy.

The Duke of Wellington's declaration against Reform had all the effect
of an arbitrary prohibition thrown in the way of a violent passion. The
effect was tremendous; a revolutionary flame was kindled everywhere
at the same instant, as if the whole atmosphere--north, south, east,
and west--was wrapt in a sheet of electric fire. No words from any
statesman in English history ever produced such an impression. The
transports became universal; all ranks were involved; all heads, save
the strongest and most far-seeing, were swept away by the torrent
of excitement. John Bull's patience was gone. Parliamentary Reform
was right; the time was come when it should be granted; and no man,
not even the Duke of Wellington, should be allowed to withstand the
nation's will. The unpopularity of the Duke with his own party swelled
for the moment the current of the movement. High Churchmen declared
that Reform would raise a barrier against Papal aggression, which
they felt to be necessary, as experience had shown that the existing
Constitution afforded no security. The old Tories, in their resentment
on account of the concession to the Catholic claims, appeared to be
ready to support the popular demands, if by so doing they could mortify
or overthrow the Government. The inhabitants of the towns, intelligent,
active, progressive, longed for Parliamentary Reform, because they
believed it would remove the impediments which retarded the advancement
of society. There were only two classes of the community who were
believed at the time to be opposed to the Reform movement: first, the
aristocratic Whigs, because Parliamentary Reform would destroy the
influence by which they had for a century after the Revolution governed
the country, but their accidental position as popular leaders obliged
them for the time to go with the current; second, the class to whom Mr.
Cobbett applied the term "borough-mongers," including all those who had
property in Parliamentary seats, and could sell them, or bestow them,
as they thought proper. The former, it was argued, were obliged to
conceal their attachment to the old system, which had secured to a few
great families a monopoly of government and its emoluments. The latter
had become so odious to the nation that their opposition availed little
against the rapid tide of public feeling and the tremendous breakers of
popular indignation.

O'Connell also wielded against the Government the fierce democracy
of Roman Catholic Ireland. Sir Robert Peel had irritated him by some
contemptuous remarks on his Repeal agitation, and he rose in his own
defence, like a lion in his fury. He proceeded to give a description of
the condition of Ireland, "which," said Mr. Brougham, "if not magnified
in its proportions, if not painted in exaggerated colours, presents to
my mind one of the most dismal, melancholy, and alarming conditions of
society ever heard of or recorded in any State of the civilised world."
Mr. O'Connell thus addressed the Treasury bench:--"Tell the people of
Ireland that you have no sympathy with their sufferings, that their
advocate is greeted with sneers and laughter, that he is an outlaw in
the land, and that he is taunted with want of courage, because he is
afraid of offending his God. Tell them this, and let them hear also
in what language the Secretary of State, who issued the proclamation
to prevent meetings in Ireland, has spoken of Polignac." A powerful
defence of his system of peaceful agitation, and a fierce defiance and
denunciation of the existing Administration, closed this remarkable
speech, whose effect upon the House, Mr. Roebuck said, was great and
unexpected. Its effect upon the Roman Catholics of Ireland, it need not
be added, was immense.

Indeed, the perusal of the debates, in connection with the Royal
Speech, threw the whole United Kingdom into a ferment of agitation.
Public meetings were held to express indignation at the anti-Reform
declaration of the Duke of Wellington. Petitions were presented,
pamphlets were published, harangues were delivered, defiances were
hurled from every part of the country. It was in these circumstances
that the king was invited to honour the City with his presence at the
Lord Mayor's banquet, which was to be held on the 9th of November, the
day on which the new Lord Mayor enters upon his office. It had been
the custom for a new Sovereign to pay this compliment to the City, and
William IV. was advised by his Ministers to accept the invitation.
The Metropolitan Police force had been recently established. It was a
vast improvement upon the old body of watchmen, in whose time thieves
and vagabonds pursued their avocations with comparative impunity. The
new force, as may be supposed, was the object of intense hatred to
all the dangerous classes of society, who had organised a formidable
demonstration against the police, and the Government by which the
force was established, on Lord Mayor's Day. Inflammatory placards
had been posted, and handbills circulated, of the most exciting and
seditious character, of which the following is a specimen:--"To arms!
Liberty or death! London meets on Tuesday next an opportunity not to
be lost for revenging the wrongs we have suffered so long. Come armed;
be firm, and victory must be ours.... We assure you, from ocular
demonstration, 6,000 cutlasses have been removed from the Tower for
the immediate use of Peel's bloody gang. Remember the cursed Speech
from the Throne--these----police are to be armed. Englishmen! will you
put up with this?" Appeals of this kind, and sinister rumours of all
sorts, industriously circulated, created the greatest alarm throughout
London. It was reported that a conspiracy of vast extent had been
discovered--that society was on the eve of a terrible convulsion--that
the barricades would immediately be up in the Strand, and that there
would be a bloody revolution in the streets. The inhabitants prepared
as well as they could for self-defence. They put up iron blinds and
shutters to their windows, got strong bolts to their doors, supplied
themselves with arms, and resolutely waited for the attack. So great
was the public consternation that the Funds fell three-and-a-half per
cent. in two hours. This panic is not a matter of so much astonishment
when we consider that the three days' fighting in the streets of Paris
was fresh in the recollection of the people of London. The Lord Mayor
Elect, Alderman Key, had received so many anonymous letters, warning
him of confusion and riot if his Majesty's Ministers should appear
in the procession, that he became alarmed, and wrote to the Duke of
Wellington, pointing out the terrible consequences of a nocturnal
attack by armed and organised desperadoes in such a crowded city as
London. The Duke, thinking the danger not to be despised, advised the
king to postpone his visit. Accordingly, a letter from Sir Robert Peel,
as Home Secretary, appeared posted on the Exchange on the morning of
the 9th. The multitude of sightseers, disappointed of their pageant,
were excited beyond all precedent, and execrations against the
Government were heard on every side. In fact, this incident, concerning
which no blame whatever attached to the Ministers, exposed the Duke
of Wellington and his colleagues to a hailstorm of popular fury. The
two Houses of Parliament hastily met, in a state of anxiety, if not
alarm. Unable to restrain their feelings until the arrival of Ministers
to give explanations, they broke forth into vehement expressions of
censure and regret. Lord Wellesley more justly described it as "the
boldest act of cowardice of which he had ever heard."

It was quite evident that a Ministry assailed in this manner, and
left almost without defenders in Parliament, while the public out
of doors were so excited against them that no act of theirs could
give satisfaction or inspire confidence, could not long remain in
office. Accordingly, they made up their minds to retire on the first
opportunity. Three important questions stood for discussion, on any one
of which they were sure to be defeated. The Duke selected the question
of the Civil List. In the Royal Speech his Majesty surrendered the
hereditary revenues of the Crown to the disposal of Parliament. The
Opposition could see no merit in that, and Lord Grey contended that
those revenues were not private but public property, assigned by the
State for the purpose of maintaining the dignity of the Sovereign, and
that from this purpose they could not be alienated. The debate came on
upon the 12th of November, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved
that the House do resolve itself into committee on the Civil List, the
scheme which he had brought forward fixing the amount to be settled
at £970,000. Several of the details in this scheme were objected to,
and on the following day Sir H. Parnell moved, as an amendment to
the resolutions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that a select
committee be appointed to take into consideration the estimates and
accounts printed by command of his Majesty regarding the Civil List.
After a short debate the House divided, when the numbers were--for the
amendment, 233; and against it, 204, giving a majority of twenty-nine
against the Government. Mr. Hobhouse immediately asked Sir Robert
Peel whether Ministers intended to retain office after this expression
of the sentiments of the House. To which he gave no answer at the
time; but the next day the Duke in the Upper House, and Sir Robert
in the Lower, announced that they held their offices only till their
successors were appointed. The defeat was brought about, in a great
measure, by the former supporters of the Ministry. The blow was struck,
and none recoiled from it more immediately than the section of angry
Tories who were mainly instrumental in delivering it. They had achieved
their purpose, and stood aghast, for no time was lost with the Duke in
placing his resignation in the hands of the king.

William IV. then sent for the veteran Grey, who formed a Ministry with
unusual ease, chiefly of the Whig and Canningite elements. His chief
difficulty was how to dispose of the volatile Brougham. The king had no
objection to accept him as one of the Ministers, and Brougham himself
wished to be Master of the Rolls, assuming that Sir John Leech was to
become Lord Chancellor of Ireland, with a peerage, and that Mr. Plunket
was to be Lord Chancellor of England. To this arrangement, however, the
king and Lord Grey peremptorily objected. Brougham was then offered the
Attorney-Generalship, which he calmly refused, upon which Lord Grey
declared that his hopes of being able to form an Administration were at
an end, and he waited on his Majesty for the purpose of communicating
to him the failure of his negotiations. "Why so?" inquired the king.
"Why not make him Chancellor? Have you thought of that?" The answer
was, "No; your Majesty's objection to the one appointment seemed to
preclude the other." "Not at all, not at all," replied the king; and
the reasons for one appointment and against the other were very clearly
stated by his Majesty, namely, that Brougham as Master of the Rolls
and member for Yorkshire would be far too powerful. Mr. Brougham was
left in the dark for some time about the intentions of Lord Grey,
for on the 17th of November he said he had nothing to do with the
Administration, except in the respect he bore them, and as a member of
the House. On the 19th he presented petitions, and spoke on them in the
Commons, without intimating any change of position. Hence it may easily
be supposed that he surprised the world, as well as his friends, by
suddenly appearing on November the 22nd in the House of Lords as Lord
Chancellor of England. This was certainly a high office to which he was
elevated, and for which the exigencies of party made him necessary;
but, in accepting it, he sacrificed a great position which seemed to
gratify all the desires of intellectual ambition; and, in order to
induce his compliance, Lord Grey was obliged to appeal to his generous
sympathies, his public spirit, and his devotion to his party. Lord
Brougham and Vaux became, said a wag, "_Vaux et praeterea nihil_."

The celebrated Reform Ministry consisted of the following members:--In
the Cabinet: First Lord of the Treasury, Earl Grey; Lord Chancellor,
Lord Brougham; Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the Commons,
Lord Althorp; President of the Council, Marquis of Lansdowne; Lord
Privy Seal, Earl of Durham; Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne; Foreign
Secretary, Lord Palmerston; Secretary of the Colonies, Lord Ripon;
First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir James Graham; President of the
Board of Control, Mr. Charles Grant; Postmaster-General, Duke of
Richmond; Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Lord Holland; without
office, Lord Carlisle. Not in the Cabinet there were: President of
the Board of Trade, Lord Auckland; Secretary at War, Mr. C. W. Wynn;
Master-General of Ordnance, Sir James Kemp; Paymaster-General of the
Forces, Lord John Russell; Lord Chamberlain, Duke of Devonshire; Lord
Steward, Marquis Wellesley; Master of the Horse, Lord Albemarle;
Groom of the Stole, Marquis of Winchester; First Commissioner of
Land Revenue, Mr. Agar Ellis; Treasurer of the Navy, Mr. Poulett
Thompson; Attorney-General, Sir T. Denman; Solicitor-General, Sir W.
Horne. In Ireland the office-bearers were: Lord-Lieutenant, Marquis
of Anglesey; Lord Chancellor, Lord Plunket; Commander of the Forces,
Sir John Byng; Chief Secretary, Mr. Stanley; Attorney-General, Mr.
Blackburne; Solicitor-General, Mr. Crampton. In Scotland they were:
Lord Advocate, Mr. Jeffrey; Solicitor-General, Mr. Cockburn. The saying
of Lord Grey, that he would stand by his order, has been often quoted
as characteristic of his aristocratic spirit. He certainly did stand
by it on this occasion, for his Cabinet could scarcely have been more
aristocratic than it was. It consisted of thirteen members, of whom
eleven were peers, or sons of peers, one was a baronet, and one an
untitled commoner.

The Ministerial statement was anticipated with great interest. It was
delivered by the new Premier, on the evening of the 22nd, Brougham
presiding as Lord Chancellor. Foremost and most conspicuous in his
programme was the question of Parliamentary Reform; next, economy and
peace. Having gone in detail through the principles of his policy, and
the reforms he proposed to introduce, the noble lord summed up all in
the following words:--"The principles on which I now stand, and upon
which the Administration is prepared to act, are--the amelioration
of existing abuses; the promotion of the most rigid economy in every
branch of the public expenditure; and lastly, every endeavour that can
be made by Government to preserve peace, consistent with the honour and
character of the country. Upon these principles I have undertaken an
office to which I have neither the affectation nor presumption to state
that I am equal. I have arrived at a period of life when retirement
is more to be desired than active employment; and I can assure your
lordships that I should not have emerged from it had I not found--may I
be permitted to say thus much without incurring the charge of vanity or
arrogance?--had I not found myself, owing to accidental circumstances,
certainly not to any merit of my own, placed in a situation in which,
if I had declined the task, I had every reason to believe that any
attempt to form a new Government on principles which I could support
would have been unsuccessful. Urged by these considerations, being
at the same time aware of my own inability, but acting in accordance
with my sense of public duty, I have undertaken the Government of the
country at the present momentous crisis."

[Illustration: MOB BURNING A FARM IN KENT. (_See p._ 325.)]

Lord Grey declared that when he entered office in November, 1830,
he found the counties round London in open insurrection, and that
no measures had been taken by the late Government to put down these
disturbances. This was true so far as incendiary fires were concerned.
A system of outrage commenced in Kent before the harvest was fully
gathered in. The disturbers of the peace did not generally assume the
form of mobs, nor did they seek any political object. Threatening
letters were circulated very freely, demanding higher wages and
denouncing machinery, and the attacks of the rioters were directed
entirely against private property. In the day armed bands went forth,
wrecking mills and destroying machinery, especially threshing-machines.
At night, corn-stacks, hayricks, barns, and farm buildings were seen
blazing in different parts of the county. Even live stock were cruelly
burned to death. In addition to this wholesale destruction the
rioters plundered the houses of the farmers as they went along. These
disorders extended into Hants, Wilts, Bucks, Sussex, and Surrey, and
they continued during the months of October, November, and December.
In fact, life and property in those counties were, to a great extent,
at the mercy of lawless men. Lord Melbourne lost no time in announcing
his determination to punish sternly those disturbers of the peace, and
to restore at every cost the dominion of law and order. He would give
his most anxious attention to measures for the relief of distress, but
it was his determined resolution, wherever outrages were perpetrated
or excesses committed, to suppress them with vigour. In pursuance of
this determination, two special commissions were issued to try the
offenders. They finished their painful duties early in January. On the
9th of that month judgment of death was recorded against twenty-three
persons for the destruction of machinery in Buckinghamshire. In Dorset,
at Norwich, at Ipswich, at Petworth, at Gloucester, at Oxford, at
Winchester, and at Salisbury, large numbers were convicted of various
outrages; altogether, upwards of 800 offenders were tried, and a
large proportion of them capitally convicted. Only four, however,
were executed; the rest were all sentenced to various terms of
transportation or imprisonment. The prosecutions were conducted with
firmness, but with moderation, and they were decidedly successful in
restoring public tranquillity.

The middle classes at that time, bent on the acquisition of
Parliamentary Reform, were anxious that the movement should be
conducted strictly within the bounds of legality, and without producing
any social disorders. There was, however, a class of agitators who
inflamed popular discontent by throwing the blame of the existing
distress on machinery, on capitalists, and on the Government. This
course of conduct served to encourage mobs of thieves and ruffians both
in town and country, who brought disgrace upon the cause of Reform, and
gave a pretext for charging the masses of the people with a lawless
spirit and revolutionary tendencies. Carlile and Cobbett were the chief
incendiaries. Both were brought to trial; Carlile was fined £2,000 and
sentenced to two years' imprisonment, but Cobbett was acquitted as the
jury were unable to agree.

In Ireland there was severe distress prevailing over an extensive
district along the western coast--no unusual visitation, for the
peasantry depended altogether on the potato, a precarious crop, which
sometimes failed wholly, and was hardly ever sufficient to last till
the new crop came in. The old potatoes generally disappeared or became
unfit for human food in June, and from that time till September the
destitution was very great, sometimes amounting to actual famine. There
was a partial failure of the crop in 1830, which, coupled with the
rack-rents extorted by middlemen, gave to agitators topics which they
used with effect in disquieting the minds of the peasantry.

The Irish Viceroy appointed by Lord Grey was the Marquis of Anglesey.
The interval between his two viceroyalties extended over a period of
nearly two years, during which the Duke of Northumberland was at the
head of the Irish Government. The manner in which relief was granted to
Roman Catholics, expressly as a concession to violence wrung from the
fears of the legislature, confirmed the wildest notions of the people
with respect to their own power. The offensive exclusion of O'Connell
by the terms of the Emancipation Act deprived the concession of much of
its grace and power of conciliation; and now negotiations for making
him Master of the Rolls broke down. In consequence of the securities
with which the Emancipation Act was associated, the latter part of
the year 1829 and the whole of 1830 were miserably distinguished in
Ireland by party conflicts and outrages. To the government of the
country thus torn and convulsed Lord Anglesey was again called in
December of the latter year, and, considering his antecedents, no
appointment was likely to prove so popular. "Nevertheless," says Lord
Cloncurry, "neither support nor forbearance were accorded to Lord
Anglesey. From the moment when it was known that he was reappointed,
he was treated by the demagogues as an enemy. And the extraordinary
progress of Liberalism made during his lieutenancy must in candour be
set down to the account of his courage and perseverance in fighting the
cause of the people against both themselves and their enemies." On the
eve of his departure for Ireland he wrote to Lord Cloncurry, saying,
"O'Connell is my avant-courier. He starts to-day with more mischief in
hand than I have yet seen him charged with. I saw him yesterday for
an hour and a half. I made no impression upon him whatever; and I am
now thoroughly convinced that he is bent upon desperate agitation. All
this will produce no change in my course and conduct. For the love of
Ireland I deprecate agitation. I know it is the only thing that can
prevent her from prospering; for there is in this country a growing
spirit to take Ireland by the hand, and a determination not to neglect
her and her interests; therefore, I pray for peace and repose. But if
the sword is really to be drawn, and with it the scabbard is to be
thrown away--if I, who have suffered so much for her, am to become
a suspected character, and to be treated as an enemy--if, for the
protection of the State, I am driven to the dire necessity of again
turning soldier--why, then, I must endeavour to get back into old
habits, and to live amongst a people I love in a state of misery and
distress."

Notwithstanding these apprehensions, the reception actually given to
Lord Anglesey was not at all so disgraceful to the country as he was
led to anticipate. Mr. O'Connell kept out of the way; but a numerous
assemblage of the most respectable citizens greeted his arrival at
Kingstown, and escorted him to Dublin Castle, Lord Cloncurry and Lord
Howth riding at the head of the procession. The populace confined
the expression of their feeling to a few groans for "Dirty Doherty,"
whose promotion to the chief seat of the Court of Common Pleas was the
alleged offence of Lord Anglesey. He was scarcely a week in Ireland,
however, when O'Connell opened the Repeal campaign. A meeting of
the trades of Dublin had been arranged for the 27th of December, to
march in procession from Phibsborough to his residence in Merrion
Square, to present him with an address of thanks for his advocacy of
a domestic legislature. Sworn informations having been laid before
the Lord-Lieutenant to the effect that serious disturbances were
apprehended from this procession, he issued a proclamation on Christmas
Day, forbidding it under the Act for the suppression of dangerous
associations or assemblies. Mr. O'Connell therefore issued a notice,
counter-manding the meeting. On the 4th of January Mr. O'Connell
sent a deputation to Lord Cloncurry, to ask him to preside over a
Repeal meeting, which he declined. "Those who knew Mr. O'Connell,"
writes his lordship, "who recollect what a creature of impulse he was,
how impatiently he bore with any difference from his opinions, and
what a storm was the first burst of his wrath, will not wonder at what
followed. Three very long letters were immediately issued, especially
devoted to the business of vituperating me, but with ample digressions
maledictory of Lord Anglesey." In a few days, he adds, the fever was
brought to a crisis by the arrest of Mr. O'Connell and his agitation
staff, "after a brisk pursuit through a labyrinth of ingenious devices,
whereby he sought to evade the law, in the course of which it was
found necessary to discharge five or six proclamations against him.
To-day, Mr. O'Connell's audience and _claqueurs_ were termed 'The
Society of the Friends of Ireland of all Religious Persuasions.'
To-morrow they were 'The General Association of Ireland for the
Prevention of Unlawful Meetings,' and for the protection and exercise
of the sacred right of petitioning for the redress of grievances. Then,
again, they were a nameless body of persons, in the habit of meeting
weekly at a place called Home's Hotel; and as the hunt continued, they
successively escaped from each daily proclamation under the changing
appellations of 'The Irish Society for Legal and Legislative Relief';
or 'The Anti-Union Association'; 'The Association of Irish Volunteers
for the Repeal of the Union'; 'The Subscribers to the Parliamentary
Intelligence Office, Stephen Street'; until they were fairly run down
at a breakfast party at Hayes Hotel."

At length, then, after all his marvellous doublings, O'Connell was
hunted into the meshes of the law. He was convicted of sedition, having
pleaded guilty, but was not called up for judgment. This was made a
charge against the Government; with how little reason may be seen
from the account of the matter given by Lord Cloncurry. The time at
which he should have been called up for judgment did not arrive till
within a month or two of the expiration of the statute under which
he was convicted, and which he called the "Algerine Act." In these
circumstances, Lord Cloncurry strongly urged upon the Viceroy the
prudence of letting him escape altogether, as his incarceration for
a few weeks, when he must be liberated with the expiring Act, "would
only have the appearance of impotent malice, and, while it might
have created dangerous popular excitement, would but have added to
his exasperation, and have given him a triumph upon the event of his
liberation that must so speedily follow."

On the 1st of February, 1831, the Birmingham Political Union held its
anniversary. It had been established some years, first to denounce
the circulation of a metallic currency, and then for the purpose of
agitating for Reform, organised somewhat on the principle of the Irish
Catholic Association, and exerting a mighty influence on public opinion
in the northern counties. Mr. Attwood stated that at this time it had
on its books 9,000 members, paying from 4s. to £2 2s. a year each.
Other unions of a similar kind were established in many cities and
towns throughout the kingdom.

[Illustration: O'CONNELL'S HOUSE IN MERRION SQUARE, DUBLIN.]

On the 3rd Parliament assembled, and the nation was full of expectation
as to the measures of the Government. The great question of the
day was understood to have been under their anxious consideration
during the winter. It subsequently transpired that the measure of
Reform contemplated by Lord Grey at the close of the year was far
more moderate than the one which was brought forward by Lord John
Russell. The material increase in the amount of concession was said
to be chiefly owing to the growing demands of the people, enlightened
by the discussions in the political unions. Lord Durham was the most
advanced Liberal in the Cabinet, and most strenuously insisted on the
necessity of a very liberal measure. In order that the Bill might be
well matured, and might fully meet the wants of the country, Lord
Grey appointed a committee to consider the whole subject, and report
upon it to the Cabinet. This committee consisted of his son-in-law,
Lord Durham, who was intimately acquainted with his own views; Lord
John Russell, who had represented the Whig party in the House of
Commons in the various proposals that he had made on the subject of
Reform; Sir James Graham, who enjoyed the confidence of the advanced
Liberals, and was considered something more than a Whig; and Lord
Duncannon, who was supposed to be well acquainted with the Irish
corporations. According to the general instructions given to the
committee, they were to prepare the outlines of a measure which should
be sufficiently comprehensive to meet the demands of public opinion,
so as to extinguish the desire for further change. But it must rest
upon property as its basis, and be connected with existing territorial
divisions. He wished that the prerogative of the Crown should be in no
degree diminished, that the peers should lose none of their rights or
privileges; but that, saving these, the democracy should play its due
part in the legislation and government of the country. The committee
began to work as soon as the Administration was organised. They first
discussed the principles involved in the measure, then the details were
separately examined, and when a point was decided and agreed upon, it
was recorded in writing by Lord Durham. Lord John Russell furnished
the materials for Schedules A and B, which were supplied to him by
coadjutors, who were labouring diligently out of doors facilitating
the work. The first draft of the measure, as adopted by the committee,
was explained by Lord Durham in the form of a report to the Cabinet,
showing how the plans thus propounded would fulfil the conditions
required, and, by satisfying all reasonable desires, stop the tendency
to innovation. The scheme, when thus placed before the Cabinet, became
the subject of their anxious deliberation, and was unanimously adopted
by them, with the exception of the ballot, which was rejected owing to
Lord Grey's objections. It was then submitted to the king at Brighton,
a few days from the meeting of Parliament, was discussed with him from
point to point, and sanctioned.

[Illustration: ARREST OF O'CONNELL. (_See p._ 327.)]

As soon as Parliament assembled, Earl Grey in the Upper House, and Lord
Althorp in the Commons, stated what the intentions of the Government
were with regard to the Reform question. Earl Grey announced that they
had prepared a measure which had met with the entire, the unanimous
concurrence of the whole of his Majesty's Government. The measure was
to originate in the House of Commons, and Lord Althorp intimated that
the duty of introducing it had been entrusted to the Paymaster of the
Forces, Lord John Russell, though not then a member of the Cabinet.
This was done because they thought it no more than due to his long
perseverance in the cause of Reform in times when it was unpopular.
When it was difficult to obtain a hearing upon the subject, he had
brought forward plans of partial Reform, and now that the cause was
prosperous, they deemed it due to his perseverance and ability that he
should be the person selected by the Government to bring forward their
plan of full and efficient Reform. The measure was to be introduced on
the 1st of March.

On the 11th of February Lord Althorp brought forward the Budget. Basing
his calculations on the revenue of the previous year, he estimated the
national income at £50,000,000, and the expenditure at £46,850,000,
leaving an anticipated surplus of more than £3,000,000; and it was
proposed to take off taxes to the whole of that amount, and to replace
it to some extent by other taxes, less burdensome to the people. The
principal taxes to be taken off were those on tobacco, sea-borne coal,
tallow candles, glass, printed calicoes, and newspapers. The new taxes
consisted in an increase of the duties on wine, colonial timber, and
raw cotton, a tax on steamboat passengers, and on the transfers of
funded property. The proposed new taxes excited violent opposition,
which obliged the Chancellor of the Exchequer to modify some of them,
and abandon the last two; in fact, the financial scheme was a failure.
Equally unsuccessful were his attempts to introduce retrenchments into
the Civil and Pension Lists. But the Government was borne up by its
great measure, the Reform Bill.

During the interval that elapsed between the opening of Parliament and
the introduction of this measure, society was in a state of nervous
anxiety and suspense, which became at length almost unbearable.
Petitions poured into the House of Commons from every part of the
United Kingdom, conveying the earnest desire of the people for a
real representation, which would put an end to the influence of the
aristocracy in returning its members. They recommended, as the best
means of effecting these objects, that the duration of Parliament
should be shortened, that the suffrage should be extended, and that
elections should be by ballot. They expressed their conviction that a
fair representation of the people would prevent manufacturing distress,
commercial embarrassment, and violent fluctuations in the currency;
that it would prevent unjust and unnecessary wars, and would restrain
the profligate expenditure of the public money on placemen and
pensioners. Itinerant orators were employed by the political unions to
hold meetings for the discussion of all questions of this kind, while
the press put forth its gigantic power with tremendous effect, in the
provinces as well as in the metropolis.

At length the fated 1st of March arrived, when the Paymaster of the
Forces arose amidst profound silence, to state the Bill. Lord John
Russell's speech was remarkable for research, accuracy, and knowledge
of constitutional law, but not for oratory. He showed that the
grievances of which the people complained, in connection with the
Parliamentary representation, were three--first, the nomination of
members by individuals; secondly, elections by close corporations;
and thirdly, the enormous expenses of elections. Sixty nomination
boroughs, not having a population of 2,000 each, were to be totally
disfranchised; 46 boroughs, having a population of not more than
4,000, and returning two members each, would be deprived of one. The
seats thus obtained were to be given to large towns and populous
counties. In boroughs, the elective franchise was to be extended to
householders paying £10 rent; in counties, to copyholders of £10 a
year, and leaseholders of £50. Persons already in possession of the
right of voting were not to be deprived of it, if actually resident.
Non-resident electors were to be disfranchised, and the duration of
elections was to be shortened by increasing the facilities for taking
the poll. No compensation was to be given to the proprietors of the
disfranchised boroughs, which was justified under the precedent
of the forty-shilling freeholders of Ireland, who had received no
compensation for the loss of their votes. The question of the duration
of Parliaments was reserved for future consideration.

Scotland, before the Reform Bill, was ruled by an oligarchy. The
population was two millions and a half, the constituency was only
2,500. The power was to be taken from this small junto, and extended
to the great middle class of that intelligent and loyal people. In
Ireland, a host of rotten boroughs, some without any constituency at
all, was to be swept away. The general result would be an increase
for the United Kingdom of half a million electors, making the whole
number enjoying the franchise 900,000. Of these 50,000 would be found
in the new towns, created into Parliamentary boroughs in England,
110,000 additional electors in boroughs already returning members. For
instance, London would have 95,000; the English counties, 100,000;
Scotland, 60,000; Ireland, 40,000. The House would consist in all of
596 members, being a reduction of sixty-two on the existing number of
658. The number of seats abolished was 168, which reduced the House to
490. Five additional members were given to Scotland, three to Ireland,
one to Wales, eight to London, thirty-four to large English towns, and
fifty-five to English counties.

"No words," says Sir Archibald Alison, "can convey an adequate idea
of the astonishment which the announcement of this project of Reform
created in the House of Commons and the country. Nothing approaching
to it had ever been witnessed before, or has been since. Men's minds
were prepared for a change, perhaps a very considerable one, especially
in the enfranchising of new cities and towns which were unrepresented;
but it never entered into the imagination of any human being out of
the Cabinet that so sweeping and entire a change would be proposed,
especially by the king's Ministers. The Tories had never dreaded such
a revolution; the Radicals had never hoped for it. Astonishment was
the universal feeling. Many laughed outright; none thought the Bill
could pass. It was supposed by many that Ministers neither intended
nor desired it, but wished only to establish a thorn in the side of
their adversaries, which should prevent them from holding power if they
succeeded in displacing them. So universal was this feeling, that it is
now generally admitted that had Sir Robert Peel, instead of permitting
the debate to go on, instantly divided the House, on the plea that the
proposed measure was too revolutionary to be for a moment entertained,
leave to bring in the Bill would have been refused by a large majority.
The Cabinet Ministers themselves are known to have thought at the
time that their official existence then hung upon a thread." Such a
result, however, was most unlikely, as Sir Robert Inglis and other Tory
orators were eager to speak, having collected precedents, arguments,
and quotations against the Bill. These they proceeded to impart to the
House. After a debate of seven nights, the Bill was read a first time,
without a division, and the second reading was set down for the 21st of
March.

In the meantime the nation began to form itself rapidly into two
parties--Reformers and Anti-Reformers. The Tories were all reunited,
driven together by the sense of a common danger; divisions occasioned
by the currency and agricultural distress were all forgotten--all
merged in one mighty current of Conservative feeling. The whole
strength of that party rallied under the leadership of Sir Robert
Peel. His bitterest opponents, such as Lord Winchilsea and Sir Edward
Knatchbull, were among the most ardent and cordial of his allies. On
the other hand, the Reformers were in transports of joy and exultation.
"I honestly confess," said Mr. John Smith, "that when I first heard
the Ministerial proposal, it had the effect of taking away my breath,
so surprised and delighted was I to find the Ministers so much in
earnest." This was the almost universal feeling among Reformers, who
comprised the mass of the middle and working classes. No Bill in the
Parliamentary annals of Britain was ever honoured like this. It was
accepted by universal suffrage as the Charter of Reform. Every clause,
every sentence, every word in it was held sacred; and the watchword
at every meeting was, "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the
Bill." Petitions were got up in every town, and almost every parish,
some of them bearing twenty thousand or thirty thousand signatures,
demanding the passing of the Bill untouched and unimpaired.

On the 21st of March Lord John Russell moved the second reading of this
great Reform Bill. Sir Richard Vivian moved, as an amendment, that it
be read a second time that day six months. There was nothing new in
the debate that followed, though it lasted two nights. On the 22nd the
division occurred. The second reading was carried by a majority of one.
This was hailed with exultation by the Conservatives, as equivalent
to a defeat. But there were prophets who saw something ominous in
this majority of one. They remembered that the first triumph of the
_Tiers Etat_ in the National Assembly, in 1789, when they constituted
themselves a separate Chamber, was carried by one. The House was the
fullest on record up to that time, the numbers being 302 to 301, the
Speaker and the four tellers not included. A remarkable circumstance
connected with the division was, that about two to one of the county
members in England and Ireland were in favour of the Bill. No less
than sixty votes on the same side were for places to be disfranchised
or reduced. Although in the House it was felt that the division was
equivalent to a defeat, the Reformers out of doors were not in the
least disheartened; on the contrary, they became, if possible, more
determined. The political unions redoubled their exertions, and the
country assumed an attitude of defiance to the oligarchical classes
which excited serious alarm, from which the king himself was not
exempt. The pressure from without accumulated in force till it became
something terrific, and it was evident to all reflecting men that the
only alternative was Reform or Revolution.

On the 18th of April Lord John Russell moved that the House should
go into committee on the Bill, stating that he proposed to make
certain alterations in the details of the measure, but none affecting
its principles. General Gascoigne then moved that it should be an
instruction to the committee that the number of members composing the
House of Commons ought not to be reduced. The motion was seconded
by Mr. Sadler, and resisted by Lord Althorp, who declared that the
object of the motion was to destroy the Bill. It was nevertheless
carried, after an animated debate, by a majority of eight against
the Government. Ministers had been placed in a position of peculiar
difficulty--they had to humour the king's vanity and love of popular
applause, in order to prevent his becoming sulky, and refusing to
consent to a dissolution, which they felt to be inevitable. They had
also to proceed with great caution in dealing with the Opposition,
lest, irritated by the threat of dissolution, they should resolve
to stop the supplies, it being impossible to dissolve Parliament in
the present state of the estimates. They had been fortunate enough,
however, to guard against this danger. On the 23rd of March supply had
been moved, and a large portion of the army estimates voted. On the
25th Sir James Graham moved portions of the navy estimates, and on the
same night the Civil List was provided for. Further supplies of various
kinds having luckily been granted, on the 30th the House was adjourned
for the Easter holidays, till the 12th of April.

The affairs of Ireland had been entrusted in the House of Commons to
the vigorous hands of Mr. Stanley (afterwards Earl of Derby), who had
been sent over as Chief Secretary with Lord Anglesey, and whom, from
his firmness in administering the law, Mr. O'Connell denounced as
"scorpion Stanley." On the 24th of March Mr. Stanley moved the first
reading of the Bill to amend the representation of Ireland. A long and
a violent debate ensued, in which Ireland was not so much thought of
as the vast general interests involved in the impending revolution.
In the meantime Ministers had done what they could to make the king
comfortable with regard to his revenue. They proposed £510,000 a
year for the Civil List, instead of £498,480, as recommended by the
committee, while the liberal jointure of £100,000 a year was settled
upon Queen Adelaide. This gratified his Majesty in the highest degree,
and reconciled him to the dissolution, his decision being hastened by
the attempt of the Tories to stop supplies. When the royal carriages
were not ready to take him to the House of Lords, the king said, "Then
call a hackney coach."

An extraordinary scene of confusion was being enacted in the House
of Commons at the moment when the king's reluctance was overcome.
Sir R. Vivian took occasion to arraign Ministers violently for their
intention of dissolving Parliament. Sir Francis Burdett contended
that he was out of order. The Speaker ruled that he was in order. The
Reformers differed from the Chair. Loud cries of "Sir Robert Peel! Sir
Robert Peel!" were answered by counter-cries of "Sir Francis Burdett!
Sir Francis Burdett!" and some wiser cries of "Chair! Chair!" The
Speaker rose and stilled this unprecedented storm--rebuked those who
had disputed his authority, and again called on Sir Robert Peel, who
proceeded thereupon, in undisguised anger, to address the House. But as
the noise of the cannon, which announced the king's approach, boomed
into the House, the Reform members loudly cheered, each discharge
being greeted with overbearing and triumphant shouts. Suddenly Sir
Robert's angry speech, and the loud cheers of the Reformers, were
stilled by the three admonitory taps of the Usher of the Black Rod,
who came to summon the members to attend his Majesty in the House of
Peers. The Speaker at once obeyed, the Commons following. A similar
scene of confusion in the Upper House was interrupted by the approach
of the king. Lord Londonderry said, "I protest my lords, I will not
submit to----." Further than this his speech did not proceed, as the
Lord Chancellor, who heard the king approaching, clutched the seals,
left the woolsack, and darted out of the House. Lord Londonderry, not
yet despairing, moved Lord Shaftesbury again to act as Speaker, and
Lord Mansfield began a furious harangue in a loud and angry voice. In
the meantime the Lord Chancellor met the king entering the House, and
proceeding in procession to the robing-room. As the king advanced, the
noise in the House became distinctly audible. "What's that, my Lord
Chancellor?" said the king. "Only, may it please you, sire, the House
of Lords amusing themselves while awaiting your Majesty's coming." The
king, knowing what was meant, hastily robed, and as hastily entered the
House--cutting short Lord Mansfield's speech, and putting an end to all
chance of passing the resolution under debate. The king ascended the
throne, and commanded the attendance of the Commons. The bar of the
House of Lords was thronged by the mass of members who now entered.
The Speaker addressed the king, stating that the House of Commons
approached the king with profound respect; and that the Commons had at
no time more faithfully responded to the real feelings and interest
of his Majesty's affectionate people; "while it has been," he added,
"their earnest desire to support the dignity and honour of the Crown,
upon which depend the greatness, the happiness, and the prosperity
of this country." The Royal Assent being given to the bills that had
passed, and, among others, to the Civil List Bill, the Chancellor
presented to his Majesty the Speech he was to deliver, and the king,
with the high shrill tone he always employed, but with more than
wonted energy, read the first, which, indeed, was the really important
paragraph of the Speech, and that which alone men cared to listen to or
hear.

[Illustration: WILLIAM IV.]

"My lords and gentlemen," said his Majesty, "I have come to meet you
for the purpose of proroguing this Parliament, with a view to its
instant dissolution." The voice of the king rose, and became still more
shrill and piercing, as he reached the last clause of the sentence;
and a loud buzz and hum, the loudest such a presence permitted,
immediately followed, and nearly drowned all the succeeding sentences.
The dissolution speedily followed the prorogation, and a new Parliament
was summoned to meet on the 14th of June.

The press played a most important part in the agitation for Reform.
A host of the most witty, brilliant, and powerful writers of the day
wielded their pens against monopoly with tremendous effect, assailing
it with argument and ridicule, like a continual storm of shot and
shell. Of these, the most distinguished was the Rev. Sydney Smith, who
mingled argument, sarcasm, humour, and pathos, in his ardent advocacy
of the popular cause, with a power and effect that made him a host in
himself. In answer to the objection that the Reform Bill was a mere
theory, he furnished the most telling illustrations, from life, of the
way in which the existing system kept down merit and damaged the public
service. So far from Reform being a mere theoretical improvement, he
said, "I put it to every man who is himself embarked in a profession,
or has sons in the same situation, if the unfair influence of
borough-mongers has not perpetually thwarted him in his lawful career
of ambition and professional emolument? 'I have been in three general
engagements at sea,' said an old sailor; 'I have twice been wounded;
I commanded the boats when the French frigate _Astrolabe_ was cut out
so gallantly.' 'Then, you were made a post captain?' 'No, I was very
near it, but Lieutenant Thomson cut me out as I cut out the French
frigate; his father is town-clerk of the borough of which Lord F----
is member, and there my chance was finished.' In the same manner all
over England, you will find great scholars rotting on curacies, brave
captains starving in garrets, profound lawyers decayed and mouldering
in the Inns of Court, because the parsons, warriors, and advocates
of borough-mongers must be crammed to saturation before there is a
morsel of bread for the man who does not sell his votes and put his
country up for auction; and though this is of every-day occurrence,
the borough system, we are told, is no practical evil...." Another
witty and brilliant writer, Mr. Fonblanque, rendered important services
to the cause of Reform by his writings in the _Examiner_, which have
been collected under the name of "Seven Administrations." Though
Radical in its tendencies, he wrote, "Ministers have far exceeded our
expectations. The plan of Reform, though short of Radical Reform, tends
to the utter destruction of borough-mongering, and will prepare the
way for a complete improvement. The ground, limited as it is, which it
is proposed to clear and open with popular influence, will suffice,
as the spot desired by Archimedes, for the plant of the power which
must ultimately govern the whole system. Without Reform, convulsion
is inevitable. Upon any Reform further improvement is inevitably
consequent, and the settlement of the Constitution on the democratic
basis certain."[1] At this period the _Times_ was by far the greatest
power of the newspaper press, and its advocacy of the cause of Reform
was distinguished by a vigour and boldness which rendered it obnoxious
to the House of Lords, and provoked an attack on the liberty of the
press that caused a great deal of excitement during the discussions
on the first Reform Bill. Mr. Lawson, the printer, was arrested, but
released after a reprimand.

Such was the state of public feeling that preceded the dissolution
of Parliament. This event was the signal for the wildest exultation
and triumph among the people. There was a general illumination in
London, sanctioned by the Lord Mayor. In Edinburgh and other cities
where the civic authorities did not order it, the Reform Clubs took
upon themselves to guide the people in their public rejoicings. In
many places the populace broke the windows of those who refused to
illuminate; and in some cases those who did comply had their windows
smashed, if suspected of Tory principles. In Scotland the mobs are said
to have been peculiarly violent. Sir Archibald Alison states that the
windows of his brother, Professor Alison, whose life had been devoted
to the relief of the poor, though illuminated, "were utterly smashed
in five minutes, as were those of above a thousand others of the most
respectable citizens." The Lord Provost of Edinburgh was seized by the
mob on the day of the election, who tried to throw him over the North
Bridge, a height of ninety feet--a crime for which the ringleaders were
afterwards convicted and punished by the judiciary court. The military
were called out, but withdrawn at the request of Lord Advocate Jeffrey.
At Ayr, he says, "the Conservative voters had to take refuge in the
Town Hall, from which they were escorted by a body of brave Whigs,
who, much to their honour, had them conveyed to a steamboat." "No
person anywhere in Scotland could give his vote for the Conservative
candidate." At Lanark a dreadful riot occurred, and the Conservative
candidate was seriously wounded in the church where the election
was going forward. At Dumbarton the Tory candidate, Lord William
Graham, only escaped death by being concealed in a garret, where he
lay hidden the whole day. At Jedburgh a band of ruffians hooted the
dying Sir Walter Scott. "I care for you no more," said he, "than for
the hissing of geese." Sir Walter, in his diary, says:--"The mob were
exceedingly vociferous and brutal, as they usually are now-a-days. The
population gathered in formidable numbers--a thousand from Hawick--sad
blackguards. I left the burgh in the midst of abuse and gentle hints
of 'burke Sir Walter!'" In London the windows in the houses of the
leading Anti-Reformers were all broken. The Duke of Wellington was
not spared in this raid against the opponents of popular rights.
The windows of Apsley House were smashed with volleys of stones. It
happened, unfortunately, that the duchess lay dead within at the time.
She had expired just as the booming of the guns in St. James's Park
announced the approach of the king to dissolve Parliament. The crowd
knew nothing of this. The Duke, however, was determined that he would
not suffer an outrage like this another time. He had iron shutters put
up, so as to guard every window which was liable to be assailed, either
from Piccadilly or Hyde Park; and to the day of his death they remained.

The general election brought a large accession of strength to the
Reform Party. The new Parliament met on the 21st of June, and Mr.
Manners Sutton was again elected Speaker. In the Speech from the
Throne the king said, "Having had recourse to the dissolution of
Parliament, for the purpose of ascertaining the sense of my people
on the expediency of a Reform in the Representation, I have now to
recommend that important question to your earliest and most attentive
consideration, confident that, in any measures which you may prepare
for its adjustment, you will adhere to the acknowledged principles
of the Constitution, by which the rights of the Crown, the authority
of both Houses of Parliament, and the rights and liberties of the
people are equally secured." The usual assurances were then given of
the friendly disposition of all foreign Powers; reference was made to
the contest then going on in Poland, to the Belgian Revolution, and
the right of its people to regulate their own affairs, so long as the
exercise of it did not endanger the security of neighbouring States. A
paragraph was devoted to Portugal, lamenting that diplomatic relations
with its Government could not be re-established, though a fleet had
been sent to enforce our demands of satisfaction. Strict economy was
recommended, in the stereotype phraseology of Royal Speeches. Having
referred to reduction of taxation, the state of the revenue, and to the
desire to assist the industry of the country, by legislation on sound
principles, the Speech described the appearance of Asiatic cholera, and
the precautions that had been taken to prevent its introduction into
England. The rest of the Speech was devoted to Ireland, where "local
disturbances, unconnected with political causes," had taken place in
various districts, especially in Clare, Galway, and Roscommon, for the
repression of which the constitutional authority of the law had been
vigorously and successfully applied; and thus the necessity of enacting
new laws to strengthen the executive had been avoided, to avert which,
the king said, would ever be his most earnest desire.

Addresses were agreed to in both Houses without a division. The
only discussion of interest that took place in connection with them
referred to the dissolution, and the circumstances in which it
occurred. The Opposition denounced it as an impolitic proceeding,
bearing the appearance of a revolutionary _coup d'état_. They charged
the Lord Chancellor with making a false statement, in alleging that
the Commons had stopped the supplies, which, if true, was not the
real cause of the dissolution, the Cabinet having previously resolved
upon that measure. Some of the Ministers also, in their addresses to
their constituencies--Sir James Graham, for example--conveyed the
same injurious impression, stating that "the last division, which
had the effect of delaying the supplies, left no alternative but
that of abandoning the Bill or of appealing to the people." With
this "factious" conduct the Tory candidates were taunted at the
elections, and they complained that they suffered in consequence
much unmerited odium. The Chancellor denied the imputation. Not only
had the Ministers decided upon the measure of dissolution, but the
requisite commission had been actually prepared; and Lord Brougham
said, "Knowing this, I must have been the veriest dolt and idiot in
the creation, if I had said what has been attributed to me. I stated a
fact--that the dissolution being resolved upon, if there were wanting
any justification for the step, the conduct of the House of Commons the
night before furnished ample justification for that proceeding." But
the truth is, the Opposition were smarting under the sense of defeat;
they had been out-manœuvred by Lord Grey, and defeated by the use of
their own tactics.

Another ground of attack upon the Government at the opening of
the Session was their conduct in not bringing up Mr. O'Connell
for judgment. It was alleged that they had entered into a corrupt
compromise with the great Irish agitator, in order to avert his
hostility and secure his support at the elections. This was indignantly
denied both by Mr. Stanley and Lord Plunket. They contended that as
the Act expired with the Parliament, so did the conviction, and that
Mr. O'Connell could not be legally punished. This was the opinion of
the law officers of the Crown in Ireland, an opinion in which the
English law officers concurred. Mr. Stanley said:--"Not only was there
no collusion or compromise, but I should have been most glad if Mr.
O'Connell could have been brought up for judgment; but then we have
been told that we ought not to have dissolved Parliament, because by
so doing Mr. O'Connell had escaped. Now, no man can be more sensible
than I am of the importance of showing to the people of Ireland that if
Mr. O'Connell chooses to go beyond the law, he is not above the law;
but, without meaning the slightest disrespect to Mr. O'Connell, I must
say that if I put on the one hand the success of a great and important
measure like the Reform Bill, and on the other the confinement of Mr.
O'Connell in his Majesty's gaol of Kilmainham for three, six, or nine
months, I must say that what became of Mr. O'Connell was as dust in the
balance. Besides, the impression of the supremacy of the law was made
upon the people by the fact of the verdict having been obtained against
him, and an immediate change was wrought in the system of agitation,
which, indeed, ceased. Such being the case, the question of what might
be the personal consequences to any individual by the dissolution
became of still less importance than it was before."

[Illustration: JEDBURGH ABBEY. (_After the Painting by Sir George Reid,
P.R.S.A._)]

On the 24th of June Lord John Russell proposed his second edition of
the Reform Bill, which did not substantially differ from the first.
His speech on this occasion was a perfect contrast to the one with
which he had introduced the measure at first. There was no longer any
hesitation or timidity. He was no longer feeling his way doubtfully on
an untried path, or navigating without compass along a dangerous coast.
He boldly launched out to sea, with his eye steadily fixed on the north
star, certain of his course and confident of the issue. The discussions
of the previous Session had thrown a flood of light upon the whole
question. Sustained by the enthusiasm of the people, and animated by
the sympathy of the majority around him on the Ministerial benches, he
spoke as if a greater and more vigorous mind had taken possession of
his frame. He was strong in argument, cutting in sarcasm, defiant in
tone, powerful in declamation. Borne by the power of public opinion
to a higher and more commanding position, and proudly conscious of the
elevation, he seemed ashamed of the petty proposals of former years,
and felt his heart as well as his intellect expanding to the greatness
of the new position. The Bill was read a first time without opposition,
the discussion being expressly reserved by Sir Robert Peel for the
second reading, which was fixed for the 4th of July. In the meantime
the Irish Bill was brought in by Mr. Stanley on the 30th of June,
Messrs. O'Connell and Sheil complaining bitterly of the difference
existing, to the disadvantage of Ireland, between the proposed plans of
Reform for the two countries. On the following day the Lord Advocate
brought in the Bill relating to Scotland. On the 4th of July Lord
John Russell moved the second reading of the English Reform Bill. A
debate of three nights followed, containing little or no novelty in the
argument, nothing but a wearisome repetition of points that had been
discussed all over the country, hundreds of times, during the last few
months. The most interesting feature was the attitude of Sir Robert
Peel, who unfortunately placed himself in the front of the battle
against Reform, in which he proved himself so able a general that all
enlightened friends of the country lamented his false position. It was
remarked, however, that he confined himself to a criticism of details.

[Illustration: GREAT SEAL OF WILLIAM IV.]

The division on the second reading took place on the 6th of July, when
the numbers were--for the Bill, 367; against it, 231; majority, 136.
This result was a sufficient vindication of the appeal made to the
country. The nation had now spoken constitutionally as to the evils
of the old system of representation and unmistakably expressed its
determination to have it reformed. The measure might be delayed in the
Commons by vexatious opposition; but if it were to be defeated it must
be by the House of Lords, and it required some boldness in the majority
of that assembly to take upon itself to hinder the other branch of
the legislature from effecting its own reform. The Bill now went into
committee, when the case of each borough which it was proposed to
disfranchise came under separate consideration. In Schedule A were
placed, alphabetically, all the boroughs which had less than 2,000 of
population, and these were to be disfranchised. When Appleby, the first
on the list, came under consideration, there was a keen contest as to
the actual numbers then in the town, and the question turned upon the
census by which the committee were to be guided. By the census of 1821
the place would be disfranchised, but the inhabitants affirmed that
by the census of 1831, then in progress, they were shown to have more
than the requisite number; and Sir Robert Peel contended strenuously
that they should wait for the more correct information. Mr. Wynn having
moved a general resolution that the consideration of the schedules
should be postponed till the result of the census was published, Sir
Robert Peel said, with great show of reason, "After having obtained
so large a majority as 136 on the principle of the Bill, Government
would have acted wisely, even for the interests of the measure itself,
to have postponed going into details till they were in possession of
better documents on which to proceed. They know what is coming; they
are aware of the event which is casting its shadow before--namely, that
the boroughs will be overtaken by the population returns of 1831. In
another fortnight these returns would be laid before the House; and
though his Majesty's Ministers now proceed expressly on the doctrine of
a population of 2,000 and 4,000, they are guilty of the inconceivable
absurdity of proceeding on the returns of 1821, when they can so
soon be in possession of the census of 1831." The House, however,
determined, by a majority of 118, to proceed upon the old census. A
series of tiresome debates upon the details of each particular borough
proceeded from day to day, and lasted for two months, the Ministry
invariably carrying their points by triumphant majorities. The tone of
the discussion was acrimonious, as might naturally be expected from
the weighty personal interests involved. Sir Edward Sugden solemnly
declared that he considered the tone and manner, as well as the
argument, of the Attorney-General as indicating that they were to be
dragooned into the measure. In the opinion of Sir Charles Wetherell
all this was "too capricious, too trifling, too tyrannical, and too
insulting to the British public, to carry with it the acquiescence
either of the majority within or the majority without the House." The
ill-temper and factious obstruction of the Opposition greatly damaged
the Tory party out of doors and exasperated the people against them.

During the passage of the Bill through committee three important
proposals were made--the first by Lord Chandos, that tenants paying
fifty pounds per annum for their holdings should have a vote in the
counties. This was known as "the Chandos clause" of the Reform Bill,
which was carried on the 18th of August by a majority of 84, the
numbers being 232 and 148. Mr. Hume proposed that the colonies should
be represented in the House of Commons; but the motion was negatived
without a division. Mr. Hunt, the celebrated Radical Reformer, moved
that all house-holders paying rates and taxes should have votes; but,
strange to say, household suffrage had in the committee but a single
supporter, Mr. Hunt himself, who upon a division constituted the
minority. Mr. Hume asked only nineteen members to represent 100,000,000
of inhabitants, including our Indian empire, to which he would give
four representatives. It was certainly a small demand, but as a
representation of our colonies and dependencies it was ludicrously
inadequate.

At length, after every clause of the Bill, and every word and every
place in each of the schedules had been the subjects of all possible
motions and discussions--after a warfare which, for animosity and
duration, was unparalleled in our Parliamentary history, the Bill was
read a third time on the 21st of September, and passed by a majority of
109, the numbers being 345 to 236. The result was received with loud
and long-continued cheering by the Reformers in the House. The anxious
and impatient multitude in the streets caught up the sounds of triumph
with exultant enthusiasm; the acclamations of all classes of the
people rang throughout the agitated metropolis. The news spread like
wildfire through the country, and was everywhere received with ringing
of bells and other demonstrations of joy. As soon as the Bill passed
an illumination of London was proposed, and an application was made to
the Lord Mayor, in order to obtain his sanction, which was granted.
The illumination was extensive, and those who refused to comply had
their windows broken by the populace. In many places the people, whose
patience had been so severely tested, began to lose their self-control,
and were betrayed into riotous conduct. Mr. Macaulay, and other leading
Reformers in Parliament, had warned the Opposition of this danger, and
it turned out that their apprehensions were not altogether visionary.

At length, on the 22nd of September, Lord John Russell, attended by
Lord Althorp, and a great body of the most distinguished Reformers,
appeared at the bar of the House of Lords, and handed the English
Reform Bill to the Lord Chancellor, praying the concurrence of
their Lordships. This scene has been made the subject of a great
historical painting. The Bill, without any opposition or remark from
any Conservative peer, was read a first time on the motion of Earl
Grey, and ordered to be read a second time on Monday week. The debate
on the second reading commenced on the 3rd of October, with a speech
from Lord Grey--grave, elaborate, earnest, and impressive; simple, yet
dignified. He described his own efforts in regard to Parliamentary
Reform, spoke of the changes which had of necessity attended his
opinions on the subject, and of the circumstances which, at the
close of his long career, when the conservative spirit is naturally
strongest in every man, had led him to endeavour to put in practice
the theories and speculations of his youth and manhood. Lord Eldon
described the progress of the debate from day to day in letters to
members of his family. Lord Dudley and Lord Haddington quite surprised
and delighted the zealous old man--they spoke so admirably against
the Bill. Lord Carnarvon delivered a most excellent speech; but Lord
Plunket's speaking disappointed him. The fifth night of the debate
was occupied by the lawyers. Lord Eldon--following Lord Wynford and
Lord Plunket--solemnly delivered his conscience on this momentous
occasion. He was ill and weak, and being an octogenarian, he might be
said to be speaking on the edge of the grave. He expressed his horror
of the new doctrines which had been laid down with respect to the law
of the country and its institutions. He could not consent to have all
rights arising out of Charters, and all the rights of close boroughs,
swept away. Boroughs, he contended, were both property and trust.
Close corporations had as good a right to hold their charters under
the Great Seal as any of their lordships had to their titles and their
peerages. He said that he was a freeman of Newcastle-upon-Tyne; he
had received his education in the corporation school of that town on
cheap terms, as the son of a freeman; he had a right to it; and he had
hoped that, when his ashes were laid in the grave, he might have given
some memorandum that the boys there, situated as he was, might rise
to be Lord Chancellors of England, if, having the advantage of that
education, they were honest, faithful, and industrious. The closing
night of the debate brought out the two most illustrious law lords in
the House, who had long been rivals and competitors in the arenas of
professional and political life--Lord Brougham and Lord Lyndhurst.
Each was holding back in order to have the opportunity of replying to
the other; but Lord Lyndhurst managed to have the last word, the more
excitable Lord Chancellor having lost patience, and flung himself into
the debate. He implored the House on his knees to pass the Bill. But
the _coup de théâtre_ miscarried, owing to the obvious anxiety of his
friends lest he should be thought to be suffering from too much mulled
port.

The last night's debate continued till between six and seven o'clock on
the morning of Saturday, the 8th of October. It was a night of intense
anxiety, both in the House and out of doors. The space about the throne
was crowded with foreigners and members of the other House. There was
a number of ladies, peeresses, and their daughters, sitting there the
whole night, manifesting their excitement in every way consistent with
decorum. Palace Yard and the space all round the House was thronged
with people waiting to hear the result of the division. The night was
wet, however, and the debate was so protracted that the crowd had
dispersed before morning. This was a matter of consolation to the
Opposition peers, who dreaded a mobbing. It was now broad daylight,
and no sound was heard outside except the rolling of the carriages of
the peers, who passed up Parliament Street as quietly as if they had
come from disposing of a road Bill. The fate of the Bill was that day
decided, for it, 158; against it, 199--leaving a majority of 41. "The
night was made interesting," wrote Lord Eldon, "by the anxieties of all
present. Perhaps, fortunately, the mob on the outside would not wait so
long."

The result produced intense excitement, and led to rioting and outrage
in the metropolis, and in some of the provincial towns. In London,
the Duke of Wellington, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Marquis of
Londonderry, were assaulted in the street, and rescued with difficulty
from the fury of the mob. Lord Londonderry, who had signalised
himself during the debate by the violence of his opposition, was
struck senseless from his horse by a shower of stones at the gate of
the palace, amidst cries of "Murder him! Cut his throat!" Persons
respectably dressed, and wearing ribbons round their arms, took the
lead on these occasions, giving orders, and rushing from the crowd.
The houses of the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Bristol, and all other
anti-Reform peers, had been visited by the mob, and left without glass
in their windows. All the shops in town were shut. "The accounts from
Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and other places," wrote Lord Eldon, "are
very uncomfortable. I heard last night that the king was frightened by
the appearance of the people outside of St. James's."

Although the division took no one by surprise, as the rejection of
the Bill by the Lords was expected, yet the shock to society was very
violent. The Funds suddenly fell, and there was that feeling of vague
anxiety in the public mind which often portends some great calamity.
At Derby they broke open the gaol and demolished the property of
the anti-Reformers of the place. At Nottingham there was serious
rioting, which ended in the utter destruction by fire of the ancient
castle, once the property of the Duke of Newcastle, who had given
violent offence by his rash declaration with regard to his voters at
Newark, "that he had a right to do what he pleased with his own." The
popular fury, however, soon subsided, and the public mind regained
tranquillity, in the full assurance that the carrying of the Bill was
only a question of time, and that the popular cause must ultimately
triumph. What most materially contributed to the restoration of
public confidence was the fact that the king, alarmed at the prospect
of a revolution, implored the Ministers to retain their places, and
to shape their Bill so as to disarm their opponents; and on the
following Monday, in the House of Commons, Lord Ebrington moved a
vote of confidence in the Government, to the effect that, while the
House lamented the present state of a measure in favour of which the
opinion of the country had been so unequivocally expressed, and which
had been matured after the most anxious and laborious discussions,
they felt imperatively called upon to reassert their firm adherence to
its principles and leading provisions, and their unabated confidence
in the integrity, perseverance, and ability of the Ministers, who,
in introducing it and conducting it so well, had consulted the best
interests of the country. This motion was carried by the large
majority of 131; the numbers being 329 to 198. Thus supported by the
Commons, the Ministers retained their places; and the king, on the
20th of October, prorogued Parliament in person, in a Speech which the
Lords might take as the king's answer to their vote, telling them in
effect that by their obstinate bigotry they were setting themselves
in antagonism to the two other estates of the realm, and that in
their conduct and position lay the real danger to the Constitution.
His Majesty said: "To the consideration of the important question of
the Reform of the House of Commons the attention of Parliament must
necessarily again be called at the opening of the ensuing Session; and
you may be assured of my unaltered desire to promote its settlement by
such improvements in the representation as may be found necessary for
securing to my people the full enjoyment of their rights, which, in
combination with those of the other orders of the State, are essential
to the support of our free Constitution."

In the trying circumstances in which they were placed, Lord Grey and
his colleagues displayed a firmness and courage which entitled them
to the everlasting gratitude of the country. The pluck of Lord John
Russell in particular had quite an inspiriting effect on the nation.
Replying to a vote of thanks to him and Lord Althorp, which had been
passed by the Birmingham Political Union, the noble Paymaster of the
Forces used an antithetical expression, which has become historical,
and which, considering that the faction to which he alluded was the
majority of the order to which he himself belonged, must be admitted
to be one of extraordinary boldness. He said: "I beg to acknowledge
with heartfelt gratitude the undeserved honour done me by 150,000 of my
countrymen. Our prospects are now obscured for a moment, and I trust
only for a moment. It is impossible that the whisper of faction should
prevail against the voice of the nation."

[Illustration: ATTACK ON SIR CHARLES WETHERELL AT BRISTOL. (_See p._
340.)]

Encouraged by language like this from Ministers of the Crown, the voice
of the nation became louder and more menacing every day. Meetings,
attended by vast multitudes of angry and determined men, were held in
Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and most of the large towns, especially
where the democratic element was predominant. The worst and most
destructive of the riots was at Bristol. The recorder of Bristol was
Sir Charles Wetherell, noted for his vehemence in opposing Reform.
Considering the excitement and desperation that had been recently
exhibited throughout the kingdom, it was scarcely prudent for Sir
Charles Wetherell to appear in Bristol at all on that occasion. At
all events, he should have entered the city privately, and discharged
the duties of his office as quietly as possible. Instead of that, he
made a public and pompous entry into the city on the 20th of October,
accompanied by the magistrates and a cavalcade of the Tory gentry.
This offensive pageant was naturally followed by a mob of disorderly
characters, hissing and groaning. They soon began to throw stones and
brickbats, especially when the respectable citizens at the commercial
rooms received their polemical recorder with three cheers. The
mansion-house was assailed with a shower of missiles. The mayor having
called upon them in vain to retire, the Riot Act was read, but the
military were not called out to enforce it. Instead of dispersing, the
mob overpowered the constables and drove them back, forced open the
doors of the mansion-house, smashed the furniture, and armed themselves
with the iron rails which they tore up from the front of the building.
Sir Charles Wetherell and the magistrates providentially escaped by
a back door, and the recorder made an undignified retreat from the
city. The military were at length called out, and after some time the
disturbance seemed to be quelled, and the dragoons, who had been much
fatigued, retired for the night. Bristol, it is said, has always been
distinguished for a bad mob. On the next day the rioters proceeded
to the mansion-house, broke open its cellars, and regaled themselves
with the contents. The military were again brought out to quell the
now intoxicated rioters; but there was no magistrate there to give
orders, and the troops were marched back to the barracks. The mob
then proceeded in detached parties, each having a work of destruction
assigned to it. One party went to the bridewell, broke open the doors,
liberated the prisoners, and then set the building on fire. Another
went to the new gaol and performed a similar operation there. The
Gloucester county prison was next broken open and consigned to the
flames. The principal toll-houses about the city shared the same fate.
The bishop's palace was pillaged and burned to the ground. Becoming
more maddened as they proceeded, their passions raging more furiously
at the sight of the conflagration as it spread, the mob resolved that
no public building should be left standing. The mansion-house, the
custom-house, the excise office, and other public buildings were wrapt
in flames, which were seen bursting forth with awful rapidity on every
side. The blackened and smoking walls of buildings already burned were
falling frequently with terrific crashing, while Queen's Square and
the adjoining streets were filled with a maniacal multitude, yelling
in triumph and reeling with intoxication; many of them lying senseless
on the pavement, and not a few consumed in the fires which they had
raised. In addition to the public buildings, forty-two dwelling-houses
and warehouses were burned. The loss of property was estimated at
half a million sterling. This work of destruction was commenced on
Sunday, and carried on during the night. The sky was reddened with the
conflagration, while the military (who had been sent into the country
to avoid irritating the people) and the paralysed authorities looked
on helplessly from a distance at the progress of destruction. On
Monday morning, however, they recovered from their consternation, and
resolved to make an effort to save the city. The magistrates ordered
the military to act, and under the command of an officer of the 14th,
the dragoons charged the rioters in earnest. A panic now seized the
mob, who fled in terror before the flashing swords of the troops and
the trampling hoofs of their horses, some of them so terror-stricken
that they rushed for safety into burning houses. The number of persons
killed and wounded during this terrible business was ascertained to
be 110, and it is supposed that many more that were never heard of
lost their lives in the burning houses. The ringleaders were tried in
December, when many persons were convicted, of whom three underwent the
punishment of death.

Early in the following year the mayor and the commanding officer,
Colonel Brereton, were brought to trial for neglect of duty. The mayor
was acquitted, as not having been adequately supported by the military;
but Colonel Brereton's humanity led to the most painful consequences.
His trial began on the 9th of January following, and lasted four days,
during which, as the proofs against him accumulated, he was overwhelmed
with agony of mind. On the night of the 12th he did not visit, as was
his custom, the chamber of his two motherless daughters. He was heard
walking for hours about his room during that night, and in the morning,
when the court assembled, it was announced that the prisoner had shot
himself through the heart.

This tragedy produced a painful sensation through the whole community.
The facts brought to light at the trial had the effect of dissociating
the Bristol outrages from the cause of Reform, with which they had
no real connection. Still the leading anti-Reformers were extremely
obnoxious to the people; and as men's minds became more and more
heated, in reiterating demands for national rights, withheld by a
faction, extreme opinions grew into greater favour. For example,
a national political union was formed in London, and held a great
meeting, at which Sir Francis Burdett presided. This body issued
a manifesto, in which they demanded annual Parliaments, universal
suffrage, and vote by ballot. This was a legitimate demand; but
they broached more disputable topics when they proclaimed "that all
property honestly acquired is sacred and inviolable; that all men are
born equally free, and have certain natural and inalienable rights;
that all hereditary distinctions of birth are unnatural, and opposed
to the equal rights of man, and ought to be abolished; and that they
would never be satisfied with any laws that stopped short of these
principles." The union was proclaimed by Lord Melbourne, but continued
to assemble. Altogether, the country was in a most dangerous crisis in
the autumn of 1831.

[Illustration: CLERKENWELL GREEN, LONDON.]

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 1: _Examiner_, March 6th, 1831.]




CHAPTER IX.

REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. (_continued_).

    The Coronation--Fears of Eminent Men--The Cholera--The
    Waverers--Lord John Russell introduces the third Reform Bill--Its
    Progress through the Commons--The Second Reading carried in the
    Lords--Behind the Scenes--Feeling in the Country--Disfranchisement
    Clauses postponed--Grey resigns--Ebrington's Resolution--Wellington
    attempts to form a Ministry--Popular fury--The Run on the
    Bank--Wellington abandons his post--Grey exacts the King's
    Consent to the creation of Peers--The Opposition withdrawn--The
    Bill becomes Law--The Irish Reform Bill--The Bill in the
    Lords--The Scottish Reform Bill--Becomes Law--Result of the
    Reform Bills--Mr. Stanley in Ireland--The Tithe-proctor--The
    Church Cess--Tithe Legislation of 1831--Irish Education--Wyse's
    Report--Stanley's Bill--Its Provisions for Religious
    Instruction--General Election--New Parliament--The Coercion
    Bill--The Church Temporalities Bill--The Poor Law Commission--Its
    Report--Sketch of the Poor Law System--Provisions of the Poor
    Law Amendment Act--History of the Emancipation Movement--Mr.
    Stanley's Resolutions--Provisions of the Act of Emancipation--The
    Dorsetshire Labourers--The Copenhagen Fields Meeting--Other
    Meetings and Strikes--Sheil and Lord Althorp--O'Connell's Motion
    on the Union--Baron Smith--Littleton's Tithe Bill--Mr. Ward's
    Motion--Resignation of Mr. Stanley and his Friends--An Indiscreet
    Speech of the King's--The Debate on Mr. Ward's Motion--Final
    Collapse of the Cabinet--Retrospect of Lord Grey's Ministry.


Meanwhile the coronation had taken place. It was fixed for the 8th
of September, and the necessary alterations were made in Westminster
Abbey for the occasion. On the morning of the appointed day numerous
labourers, in scarlet jackets and white trousers, were busy completing
the arrangements. Forty private gentlemen acted as pages of the
Earl Marshal, and devised a novelty in the way of costume, clothing
themselves in blue frock coats, white breeches and stockings, a
crimson silk sash, and a small, ill-shaped hat, with a black ostrich
feather, each provided with a gilt staff. Their duty was to conduct
persons provided with tickets to their proper places. Three-fourths
of the members of the House of Commons were in military uniform, and
a few in Highland costume. The equipages produced for the occasion
were magnificent, the Lord Chancellor rivalling the Lord Mayor in
this display; but neither of them came up to the Austrian ambassador
in finery. The street procession commenced on Constitution Hill, and
attracted thousands of spectators. Their Majesties' carriage was drawn
by eight horses, four grooms being on each side, two footmen at each
door, and a yeoman of the guard at each wheel. The crowds were in good
humour with the spectacle, and manifested no disposition to dispense
with royalty. The presence of the queen offered a contrast to the
coronation of George IV. Of the regalia, the ivory rod with the dove
was borne by Lord Campbell, the sceptre and the cross by Lord Jersey,
and the crown by the Duke of Beaufort. The queen followed, supported
by the Bishops of Winchester and Chichester, and attended by five
gentleman pensioners on each side, the train borne by the Duchess of
Gordon, assisted by six daughters of earls. There was no banquet,
Government having the fear of the economists before their eyes, and
the nation having too lively a recollection of the coronation folly of
George IV.; but the king entertained a large party of the Royal Family
and nobility, with the principal officers of his household.

Otherwise the prospect was dismal enough, and some of the greatest
thinkers of the age were profoundly affected by the conviction that
they were on the eve of a vast convulsion--that the end of the world
was at hand, and that the globe was about to emerge into a new state of
existence. The unsettled state of society accounts, in some measure,
for the prevalence of the delusions of Edward Irving--then in the
height of his fame; delusions from which such minds as Dr. Arnold's did
not wholly escape. In reply to inquiries about the gift of tongues,
this great man wrote:--"If the thing be real, I should take it merely
as a sign of the coming day of the Lord. However, whether this be a
real sign or no, I believe the day of the Lord is coming--_i.e._ the
termination of one of the great ages of the human race; whether the
final one of all, or not, that, I believe, no created being knows, or
can know.... My sense of the evils of the times, and to what purpose I
am bringing up my children, is overwhelmingly bitter. All the moral and
physical worlds appear so exactly to announce the coming of the great
day of the Lord--_i.e._ a period of fearful visitation, to terminate
the existing state of things--whether to terminate the whole existence
of the human race, neither man nor angel knows--that no entireness of
private happiness can possibly close my mind against the sense of it."

Another cause of the general uneasiness and depression of the public
mind was the appearance, in the autumn of this year, of the mysterious
visitant, cholera morbus. This disease had been long known in India,
but it was only of late years that it began to extend its ravages over
the rest of the world. Within two years it had carried off nearly a
million of people in Asia. It made its first appearance in England at
Sunderland, on the 26th of October, 1831. Its name had come before,
spreading terror in every direction. It appeared in Edinburgh on
February 6th, 1832, at Rotherhithe and Limehouse on February 13th,
and in Dublin on March 3rd, 1832. In all these places, and in many
others, the mortality was very great. But it was still more severe on
the Continent. We know now that cholera could have been in a great
measure averted, and that its mystery lay in our ignorance. We know
that it always fell most heavily on the inhabitants of towns, hamlets,
or houses where deficient drainage and ventilation, accumulations of
putrescent matters, intemperance, and want of personal cleanliness
most prevailed. It selected for the scenes of its habitation and its
triumphs the usual haunts of typhus fever; and it effected its greatest
ravages in the neighbourhoods of rivers and marshes. In London it was
most virulent on the level of the Thames, and lost its power in exact
arithmetical ratio to the height of the districts above that level.
If it attacked a town or an army, and the inhabitants or the soldiers
decamped, and scattered themselves over the country, in the clear air
and pure sunshine, they escaped. It was possible, therefore, to guard
against its power by a proper system of drainage and sewage; by proper
ventilation; by personal cleanliness, temperance, and regularity; by
the abolition of nuisances, stagnant pools, and open ditches; and by
wholesome regimen and regular exercise in the open air. As it was,
a general fast was appointed and the Privy Council issued stringent
regulations which were not of much effect.

[Illustration: EARL GREY STREET, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE. (_From a
Photograph by Poulton & Son, Lee._)]


[Illustration: LORD BROUGHAM.]

As the Government was determined to persevere, and to carry the Reform
Bill by means of a large creation of peers, if necessary, some of the
leading members of the Opposition in the Upper House began to think
seriously of their position, a sort of appeal having been made to
them in a letter from the king's private secretary, suggesting the
prudence of compromise and concession in order to save his Majesty from
the painful alternative of a creation of peers. Accordingly, Lords
Wharncliffe and Harrowby put themselves in communication with Lord
Grey, and this fact was announced by the former in a letter to the Duke
of Wellington, stating that he entertained good hope of being able to
arrange such a plan of compromise as would prevent the necessity of a
second rejection of the Bill by the Lords, and so enable them to alter
and amend it when it came into committee. The Duke, in reply to this,
said that he was glad of a possibility of an arrangement by mutual
concession on the Reform question; and that, for his part, all that
he desired to see, under the new system, was a chance of a Government
for this hitherto prosperous, happy, and great country, which should
give security to life and property hereafter. "The political unions,"
he said, "had assumed an organisation which any man who could read
would pronounce to be for military purposes, and nothing else." In the
meantime Lord Wharncliffe had waited by appointment upon the Prime
Minister at his house, in Sheen, where he discussed the Reform question
with him for two hours, without ever adverting to the political unions,
and he reported the issue in a long letter to the Duke of Wellington.
The result was that Lord Grey made some trifling concession in matters
of detail, and in return Lord Wharncliffe gave him the assurance
that he would do what he could to bring the Opposition lords to take
a more favourable view of the Ministerial scheme and its probable
consequences. This was followed by cordial shaking of hands, and
permission was given on each side to communicate with intimate friends
and colleagues. The Duke of Wellington, however, declined to take any
part in these deliberations. He believed that the Government could be
carried on, though with difficulty, under the existing system; but
under the system which the Reform Bill would introduce he doubted
if the Government could be carried on at all. Nothing came of Lord
Wharncliffe's negotiation with the Government, which declined to make
any material concession. It had the effect, however, of splitting
the Conservative party in the Upper House, breaking the phalanx of
the Opposition, and thus preparing the way for the triumph of the
Government.

So strongly did the latter feel the urgency of the case that Parliament
was called together again on the 6th of December. It was opened by the
king in person, who, in his Speech, recommended the speedy settlement
of the Reform question; referred to the opposition made to the payment
of tithes in Ireland; announced the conclusion of a convention with
France for the suppression of the African slave trade; deplored the
outrages at Bristol; and recommended improvements in the municipal
police of the kingdom. On the 12th Lord John Russell introduced the
Reform Bill the third time. It is said that his manner, like his
proposal, had undergone a striking alteration. His opening speech
was not now a song of triumph, inspired by the joyous enthusiasm of
the people. He no longer treated the Opposition in a tone of almost
contemptuous defiance. The spirit which had dictated the celebrated
reply to the Birmingham Political Union about the voice of the nation
and the whisper of a faction seemed to have died within him. Lord John
Russell proceeded to explain the changes and modifications that had
been made in the Bill since it was last before the House. As the census
of 1831 was now available, the census of 1821 was abandoned. But a new
element was introduced in order to test the claim of a borough to be
represented in Parliament. Numbers alone were no longer relied upon.
There might be a very populous town consisting of mean houses inhabited
by poor people. With numbers therefore, the Government took property,
ascertained by the amount of assessed taxes; and upon the combination
of these two elements the franchise was based. The calculations needed
to determine the standard were worked out by Lieutenant Drummond,
afterwards Under Secretary for Ireland. Upon the information obtained
by the Government as to the limits of each borough, its population,
and the amount of assessed taxes it paid, he made out a series of a
hundred boroughs, beginning with the lowest, and taking the number of
houses and the amount of their assessed taxes together, as the basis of
their relative importance. Thus Schedule A was framed. In the original
Bill this schedule contained sixty boroughs; in the present Bill it
contained only fifty-six. The consequence of taking Mr. Drummond's
report as a basis of disfranchisement was, that some boroughs, which
formerly escaped as populous and large, were now placed in Schedule A;
while others, which were better towns, were taken out of that schedule
and placed in Schedule B, which now contained only thirty instead of
forty boroughs, as in the former Bill. The diminution in this schedule,
consisting of boroughs whose members were to be reduced from two to
one, was owing to the fact that the Government had given up the point
about reducing the number of members in the House of Commons, which
was to remain as before, 658. Thus a number of small boroughs escaped
which ought to have but one member each--so small that every one of
them ought to have been in Schedule A, that their members might be
given to new, prosperous, and progressive communities. Twenty-three
members were now to be distributed. Ten were given to the largest towns
placed in the original Schedule B, one to Chatham, one to the county of
Monmouth, and the rest to the large towns, which, by the former Bill,
obtained power to return one member only. The new Bill retained the
£10 qualification. Every man who occupied a house of the value of £10
a year was to have a vote, provided he was rated for the poor. It was
not the rating, however, that determined the value; it did not matter
to what amount he was rated, if only at £5 or £1, if the holding was
really worth £10 a year.

The second reading was moved on the 14th by Lord Althorp, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord Porchester moved that the Bill be
read a second time that day six months. His motion was supported by
Sir Edward Sugden. Sir Robert Peel had taunted the Government with
inconsistency in adopting alterations, every one of which they had
resisted when proposed by the Opposition. Mr. Macaulay retaliated with
powerful effect, with respect to the conduct of the Tories on the
question of Catholic Emancipation. On a division the numbers were, for
the second reading, 324; against it, 162--majority, 162. The House of
Commons having thus carried the Reform measure a third time by an
increased majority, which was now two to one, the House was adjourned
to the 17th of January, when it resumed its sittings. On the 19th
of that month the Irish Reform Bill was brought in by Mr. Stanley,
and the Scottish Bill by the Lord Advocate. On the 20th the House
resolved itself into a committee on the English Bill, and continued to
discuss it daily, clause by clause, and word by word, pertinaciously
and bitterly wrangling over each, till the 10th of March, when the
committee reported. The third reading was moved on the 19th, when the
last, and not the least violent, of the debates took place. The Bill
was passed on the 23rd by a majority of 116, the numbers being 355 and
239.

The Bill having passed, amidst the enthusiastic cheers of the
Reformers, Lord John Russell and Lord Althorp were ordered to carry it
in to the Lords, and "to request the concurrence of their Lordships
in the same." They did so on Monday, the 26th, followed by a large
number of members. It was read by the Lords the first time, and the
debate on the second reading commenced on the 9th of April. On that
day the Duke of Buckingham gave notice that--in the event of the Bill
being rejected, a result which he fully anticipated--he would bring
in a Reform Bill, of which the principal provisions would be to give
members to large and important towns, to unite and consolidate certain
boroughs, and to extend the elective franchise. Lord Grey then rose
to move the second reading of the Reform Bill. The principle of the
Bill, he remarked, was now universally conceded. It was admitted in
the Duke of Buckingham's motion. Even the Duke of Wellington did not
declare against all reform. They differed with the Opposition then
only as to the extent to which reform should be carried. He adverted
to the modifications that had been made in the Bill, and to the
unmistakable determination of the people. At this moment the public
mind was tranquil, clamour had ceased--all was anxious suspense and
silent expectation. Lord Grey disclaimed any wish to intimidate
their lordships, but he cautioned them not to misapprehend the awful
silence of the people. "Though the people are silent," he said, "they
are looking at our proceedings this night no less intently than they
have looked ever since the question was first agitated. I know it is
pretended by many that the nation has no confidence in the Peers,
because there is an opinion out of doors that the interests of the
aristocracy are separated from those of the people. On the part of
this House, however, I disclaim all such separation of interests;
and therefore I am willing to believe that the silence of which I
have spoken is the fruit of a latent hope still existing in their
bosoms." The Duke was severe upon the "waverers," Lords Wharncliffe and
Harrowby, who defended themselves on the ground that the Bill must be
carried, if not by the consent of the Opposition, against their will,
by a creation of peers that would swamp them. The Earl of Winchilsea,
on the third day, expressed unbounded indignation at the proposed
peer-making. If such a measure were adopted he would no longer sit in
the House thus insulted and outraged; but would bide his time till
the return of those good days which would enable him to vindicate the
insulted laws of his country by bringing an unconstitutional Minister
before the bar of his peers. The Duke of Buckingham would prefer
cholera to the pestilence with which this Bill would contaminate the
Constitution. This day the Bill found two defenders on the episcopal
bench, the Bishops of London and Llandaff. The Bishop of Exeter, in
the course of the debate, made remarks which called forth a powerful
and scathing oration from Lord Durham. The Bill was defended by Lord
Goderich, and Lord Grey rose to reply at five o'clock on Friday
morning. Referring to the attack of the Bishop of Exeter, he said, "The
right reverend prelate threw out insinuations about my ambition: let me
tell him calmly that the pulses of ambition may beat as strongly under
sleeves of lawn as under an ordinary habit." He concluded by referring
to the proposed creation of peers, which he contended was justified by
the best constitutional writers, in extraordinary circumstances, and
was in accordance with the acknowledged principles of the Constitution.
The House at length divided at seven o'clock on the morning of the
13th, when the second reading was carried by a majority of nine; the
numbers being--contents present, 128; proxies, 56-184; non-contents
present, 126; proxies, 49-175. The Duke of Wellington entered an
elaborate protest on the journals of the House against the Bill, to
which protest 73 peers attached their signatures.

This result was due to important negotiations behind the scenes. For
many months the more extreme section of the Cabinet had urged Lord Grey
to recommend the king to swamp the hostile majority by a creation of
peers. Both he and Althorp objected to this course, and fresh overtures
were made to the waverers, while the king undertook to convert the
Bishops. Both attempts failed, and then the Cabinet was nearly rent
in twain. Lord Durham attacked his father-in-law in language which
Althorp declared to be "brutal," and for which, said Lord Melbourne,
he deserved to be knocked down. At last the king resolved to agree to
a creation of peers on condition that the new creations should not
exceed the number of 24. This alarmed the waverers, and with the aid of
Charles Greville they came to terms with the Government. Lord Harrowby
and Lord Wharncliffe secured a majority on the second reading, on
condition that no new peers should be created.

The House then adjourned for the Easter holidays, till the 7th of May.
The interval was one of the greatest possible public excitement. The
narrowness of the majority made the Reformers tremble for the fate
of the Bill in committee. The awful silence was now broken, and the
voice of the nation was heard like peals of thunder. The political
unions which had been resting on their arms, as if watching intently
the movements of armies at a distance, now started to their feet, and
prepared themselves for battle. At Leeds, at Birmingham, Manchester,
Sheffield, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, meetings were held, strong
resolutions passed, and imperative petitions adopted. At Birmingham an
aggregate meeting of the political unions of the surrounding districts
was held on the 7th of May at the foot of New Hall Hill. Of this vast
and formidable assembly, the northern division alone was estimated at
100,000 men, who marched with 150 banners and eleven bands of music,
their processions extending over four miles. The total number of bands
in attendance at the meeting was 200, and the number of banners 700.
The commencement of the proceedings was announced by sound of bugle.
A number of energetic and determined speeches was delivered, and a
petition to the Lords was adopted, imploring them not to drive to
despair a high-minded, generous, and fearless people, nor to urge them
on by a rejection of their claims to demands of a much more extensive
nature; but rather to pass the Reform Bill into law, unimpaired in
any of its great parts and provisions, more especially uninjured
in the clauses relating to the ten-pound franchise. The council of
the Birmingham Union declared its sitting permanent, and the vast
organisation throughout the United Kingdom assumed an attitude of
resolution and menace truly alarming.

[Illustration: CORONATION OF WILLIAM IV.: THE ROYAL PROCESSION. (_See
p._ 343.)]

When the Peers assembled on the 7th it became quite evident that in
allowing the Bill to go into committee they were only practising a
manœuvre. In the first place they wished to prevent the creation of
peers, and in the second they were resolved to mutilate the Bill in
committee. They were aware that they had the sympathy of the king
in this plot, and that he would have been glad of their success,
irritated as he was by the coercion and pressure put upon him by his
Ministers. The first step was taken by Lord Lyndhurst, who proposed
in committee to defer the consideration of the disfranchising clauses
till the enfranchising clauses had been considered. "Begin," he
said, "by conferring rights and privileges, by granting boons and
favours, and not by depriving a portion of the community of the
privileges which they at present enjoy." This ostentatious preference
of boons and favours for the people, postponing disfranchisement to
enfranchisement, ringing changes on the words, was a mere artifice,
but it was at once seen through by the indignant people. Lord Grey and
Lord Brougham promptly exposed the attempted imposition; the former
hoped the noble lords would not deceive themselves. He would not say
that the proposal was insidious, but its object was utterly to defeat
the Bill. He declared that if the motion were successful it would be
fatal to the whole measure. It would then be necessary for him to
consider what course he should take. He dreaded the effect of the
House of Lords opposing itself, as an insurmountable barrier, to what
the people thought necessary for the good government of the country.
The noble earl's warning was on this occasion disregarded. The House
being in committee proxies could not be counted, and the amendment
of Lord Lyndhurst was carried after an angry debate--contents, 151;
non-contents, 116; majority, 35. This division put a sudden stop to the
proceedings in committee. Lord Grey at once proposed that the chairman
should report progress, and asked leave to sit again on the 10th.
Lord Ellenborough endeavoured to dissuade him from this course, and
proceeded to give a description of the measure which he was prepared
to substitute for the Ministerial Bill, and which he presumed to hope
would be satisfactory to the country. This was a critical moment in
the destiny of England, and the awful nature of the crisis seemed to
be felt by all present, except those who were blinded by faction.
Lord Grey had now but one alternative, a large creation of peers or
resignation. With a majority against him in the Lords so refractory,
nothing could be done; but the king declined to create the fifty
peerages which the Ministry demanded. Accordingly, on Wednesday, the
9th of May, the resignation of the Ministers (and the king's acceptance
of it) was formally announced by Lord Grey in the House of Lords, and
by Lord Althorp in the House of Commons. Lord Ebrington immediately
rose, and gave notice that he would next day move a call of the House,
and then an Address to his Majesty on the present state of public
affairs. In the course of the debate which ensued, attempts were made
by Mr. Baring and Sir Robert Peel to excite sympathy for the Lords,
as taking a noble stand against the unconstitutional pressure upon
the king for the creation of peers, but in vain. Neither the House of
Commons nor the country could be got to give them credit for any but
the most selfish motives. They considered their obstinacy to be nothing
better than the tenacity of the monopolists in power. Mr. Macaulay
indignantly denounced their inconsistency in pretending that they
wished to carry a measure of Reform. The influence of the Crown, always
powerful, was visible in the division on Lord Ebrington's motion. The
"ayes" were only 288 instead of the 355 that carried the third reading
of the Reform Bill. There were evidently many defaulters; but woe to
them at the next general election! Rigid scrutiny was instituted, and
a black list made out of those who had deserted their constituents on
this momentous question. In the meantime the most angry remonstrances
came to absent members from their constituents. The motion, however,
was carried by a majority of 80. It was evidently a relief to the
king to get rid of the Whigs; and he knew so little of the state of
public feeling as to suppose that a modified Reform measure, a mere
pretence of Reform, would satisfy the country. He therefore sent for
Lord Lyndhurst in order to consult him, assigning the reason, that
being now Chief Baron, he was removed from the vortex of politics,
although he had led the Opposition in their successful attack upon the
Ministerial measure. The first thing Lord Lyndhurst did was to wait
upon the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, to both of whom he
stated the views of the king. His Majesty insisted that some extensive
measures of Reform should be carried. "My advice to the king," said the
Duke, "was not to reappoint his late Ministry, nor was it to appoint
myself. I did not look to any objects of ambition. I advised him to
seek the assistance of other persons well qualified to fill the high
situations of the State, expressing myself willing to give his Majesty
every assistance, whether in office or out, to enable him to resist
the advice which had been given him." The Premiership was offered to
Sir Robert Peel, but he peremptorily declined to take such a perilous
position, declaring that "no authority nor example of any man, nor any
number of men, could shake his determination not to accept office,
under existing circumstances, upon such conditions." On the 12th of May
the Duke undertook to form an Administration, taking the post of Prime
Minister himself. Mr. Manners Sutton was to be leader of the Commons,
Lord Lyndhurst Chancellor, and Mr. Baring Chancellor of the Exchequer.
For five days the courageous Duke was engaged in a desperate effort
to form a Cabinet. But no sooner was it known throughout the country
than a terrific storm of popular fury burst forth, which threatened
to blow down the House of Peers and sweep away the Throne. The king,
from being the popular idol, became suddenly an object of popular
execration. The queen, who had also been a great favourite with the
people, attracted a large share of the odium excited against the Court.
It was understood that her influence had much to do in causing the king
to desert Lord Grey, and to break faith with him with regard to the
creation of peers. The king and queen were groaned at and hissed, and
pursued with tremendous noises by the people, while passing through
the town of Brentford. Dirt was hurled at the royal carriage; and if
the military escort had not kept close to the windows, it is probable
their majesties would have sustained personal injury. Along the road
to London the people expressed their feeling in a similar manner; and
when the carriage entered the Park the mob saluted their majesties with
yells and execrations of every description.

Nothing could exceed the indignation of the public at the attempt that
was being made by the Court, in league with an intriguing faction, to
resist the national will. All classes, high and low, rich and poor,
nobles and commoners, Churchmen and Dissenters, were roused into a
state of wild excitement and fierce determination. Indignation meetings
were everywhere held and threatening resolutions passed. The House of
Commons was called upon to stop the supplies; placards were put up in
the windows of shops expressing the determination of the inhabitants
to pay no taxes. This determination was not confined to the middle
classes; men of the highest rank and largest property, such as Lord
Milton, told the tax-collector not to call again. A complete and
active organisation existed in London for the purpose of stimulating
and directing public feeling in the provinces, and obtaining from the
people vehement petitions, which poured in to both Houses rapidly,
especially to the House of Commons. The political unions were
everywhere preparing for actual insurrection. In London meetings were
held by day and by night, at which the most violent language was used
even by persons of property and rank. The Common Council of London met,
and passed resolutions denouncing those who had advised the king not
to create peers as enemies of their Sovereign, who had put to imminent
hazard the stability of the Throne and the security of the country. A
standing committee was appointed to watch the course of events. The
feeling excited by these extraordinary proceedings proved, beyond the
possibility of doubt, that the whole mercantile and trading classes in
the metropolis were prepared to adopt revolutionary measures, if such
were necessary, for the attainment of the Reform Bill. Immense numbers
of persons who had hitherto considered the proceedings of the National
Political Union in London too violent, were now, says the _Times_ of
the 11th of May, at their own solicitation, admitted members. Similar
excitement prevailed throughout the provinces.

Shortly after the king arrived, on the 12th of May, pursued to his
palace gates by a multitude of his angry and insurgent subjects, he was
waited upon by the Duke of Wellington, who remained in conference with
him about twenty minutes, and then departed amidst the most astounding
yells of the populace. "A week since," said the _Sun_ of that day,
"only a short week since, the king was in full possession of the
greatest popularity any earthly monarch could enjoy; and now behold the
change!" Among the means resorted to for the purpose of coercing the
Peers, was a run upon the banks. The cry was raised, "To stop the Duke,
go for gold!" The advice was acted upon, and in three days no less than
£1,800,000 was drawn out of the Bank of England in specie.

Civil war seems to have been averted only by the Duke's precipitate
abandonment of the undertaking to form a Ministry. No one can for a
moment imagine that the chief members of the Grey Administration ever
intended to proceed to illegal extremities, but that the conduct of
their friends led the Reforming world to think of and prepare for armed
resistance admits of little doubt. Parliament and the country were kept
in suspense and anxiety by varying rumours about the formation of a
Government for several days, during which comments were freely made
on the conduct of the Duke of Wellington and his friends. On the one
hand, it was confidently stated that the king would keep his word as to
Reform, which the Duke had agreed to carry. On the other hand, it was
denied that the Duke could ever consent to tergiversation so base. On
the former supposition, Mr. Macaulay said he was willing that others
should have "infamy and place." But he added, "Let us have honour and
Reform." Sir Robert Inglis was too honest to differ from this view
of the matter, and too candid to conceal his sentiments. He declared
that he could not but regard such a course on the part of his leader
"with the greatest pain, as one of the most fatal violations of public
confidence which could be inflicted."

Mr. Baring, who represented the Duke in the House of Commons, seemed
to regard this declaration from the high-minded member for Oxford
University as fatal to the Tory scheme for recovering power. They
came at length to understand that the new Premier would be equally
unacceptable to the country, whether he appeared with a Reform Bill or
a gagging Bill. Both Baring and Sutton, the late Speaker, sent in their
resignations. The Duke at length confessed that he had failed in his
attempt to form an Administration; and the king had no other resource
but to submit to the humiliation of again putting himself in the hands
of his late Ministers. He had before him only the terrible alternative
of a creation of peers or civil war. Earl Grey was determined not to
resume office, "except with a sufficient security that he would possess
the power of passing the present Bill unimpaired in its principles and
its essential provisions." The consequence was, that on the 17th of
May the following circular was sent to the hostile Lords by Sir Henry
Taylor:--"My dear lord, I am honoured with his Majesty's commands
to acquaint your lordship that all difficulties to the arrangements
in progress will be obviated by a declaration in the House of Peers
to-night from a sufficient number of peers, that in consequence of the
present state of affairs they have come to the resolution of dropping
their further opposition to the Reform Bill, so that it may pass
without delay as nearly as possible in its present shape." Wellington,
as usual, obeyed and withdrew from the House, but his seceding comrades
prefaced their departure by defiant speeches in which they reserved
to themselves the right of resuming their position. Then the Cabinet
insisted on obtaining the royal consent to an unlimited creation; and
it was given on condition that they, in the first instance, called to
the House of Lords the eldest sons of peers or the collateral heirs of
childless noblemen. But Sir Henry Taylor's circular had done its work,
and the extreme step was unnecessary.

After this complete surrender the House resumed its labours in
committee on the Bill on the 1st of June. Few alterations were made,
and the thinned ranks of the Opposition ceased to throw obstacles in
the way. The third reading was carried by a majority of 84, the numbers
being 106 and 22. The Lords' amendments having been acquiesced in by
the Commons, the Bill was referred to the Upper House, and on the 7th
of June it received the Royal Assent by commission, the Commissioners
being Lords Grey, Brougham, Lansdowne, Wellesley, Holland, and Durham.
The king was so hurt by the coercion to which he had been subjected,
and by the insults heaped upon himself, the queen, and all belonging to
him, that nothing could persuade him to go to the House and give his
assent in person. "The question," he said, "was one of feeling, not of
duty; and as a Sovereign and a gentleman he was bound to refuse."

The Irish Reform Bill, which had been introduced by Mr. Stanley, then
Irish Secretary, became the subject of debate on the 26th of May, when
the second reading was moved by him in a speech of great ability. His
main object was to prove that the passing of the measure would not
endanger the Established Church in Ireland; and that it would not
increase the power of O'Connell, whom, instead of conciliating, he
exasperated by the contemptuous and defiant tone of his remarks. As
the great question of Reform had been conceded in the English Bill,
it was only with regard to matters of detail, and to the extent and
nature of the franchise, that the Tories maintained their opposition.
The second reading was carried by a majority of 116, the numbers being,
for the Bill, 246; against it, 130. O'Connell contended that the Bill
was not calculated to benefit Ireland, and he said he was sure it was
framed with no good feeling to the country; but, on the contrary, was
dictated by narrow and bigoted feeling. He complained that certain
classes of the forty-shilling freeholders were not restored by the
Reform Bill. He was supported by a moderate and greatly respected Irish
statesman, the venerable Sir John Newport, who complained of defects
in the measure, especially in the mode of registration, which would go
far to neutralise all its benefits. O'Connell's proposal was made on
the 13th of June, and was rejected by a majority of forty-nine. The
Irish Reform Bill, instead of being the means of conciliation, tending
to consolidate the Union, and taking away the arguments for Repeal,
really furnished O'Connell with fresh fuel for agitation. In a series
of letters which he addressed to the Reformers of England, he pointed
out the defects of the Irish Bill. He objected to it on the ground that
it diminished the elective franchise instead of extending it; that the
qualification for a voter was too high; that the registration of voters
was complicated; and that the number of Irish representatives was
inadequate. The substitution in counties of the ten-pound beneficial
interest franchise for the forty-shilling freehold caused the
disfranchisement of 200,000 voters. He referred to population to prove
the unfairness towards Ireland: thus the county of Cumberland, with a
population of 169,681, got two additional members, and returned four to
Parliament; while the county of Cork, with a population of 807,366, got
no additional member, and sent only two to the Reformed Parliament. A
similar contrast was presented between other English and Irish counties.

The Irish Bill was read a second time in the House of Lords on the
23rd of July. It was strongly opposed by the Duke of Wellington, as
transferring the electoral power of the country from the Protestants
to the Roman Catholics. Lord Plunket, in reply, said, "One fact, I
think, ought to satisfy every man, not determined against conviction,
of its wisdom and necessity. What will the House think when I inform
them that the representatives of seventeen of those boroughs,
containing a population of 170,000 souls, are nominated by precisely
seventeen persons? Yet, by putting an end to this iniquitous and
disgraceful system, we are, forsooth, violating the articles of the
Union, and overturning the Protestant institutions of the country!
This is ratiocination and statesmanlike loftiness of vision with a
vengeance! Then it seems that besides violating the Union Act we are
departing from the principles of the measure of 1829. I deny that. I
also deny the assumption of the noble Duke, that the forty-shilling
freeholders were disfranchised on that occasion merely for the purpose
of maintaining the Protestant interests in Ireland. The forty-shilling
freeholders were disfranchised, not because they were what are called
'Popish electors,' but because they were in such indigent circumstances
as precluded their exercising their suffrage right independently and
as free agents--because they were an incapable constituency." The Bill,
after being considered in committee, where it encountered violent
opposition, was passed by the Lords on the 30th of July, and received
the Royal Assent by commission on the 7th of August.

[Illustration: SCENE IN IRELAND: VISIT OF THE TITHE-PROCTOR. (_See p._
355.)]

Lord Advocate Jeffrey, who had introduced the Scottish Reform Bill as
early as the 19th of January, moved the second reading on the 21st
of May. He had, in the previous Session, proceeded on the principle
that the old system was to be regarded as utterly incurable, and not
to be patched or mended, but abandoned and destroyed. They could not
decimate its abuses, or cut off its vicious excesses; its essence was
abuse, and there was nothing that was not vicious about it. He gloried
in the avowal that no shred, or jot, or tittle of the old abomination
should remain. Indeed, it is a matter of astonishment that the Scottish
people could have so long borne a state of things so humiliating to
a nation which originally formed a kingdom by itself, which still
retained its own laws, religion, interests, feelings, and language;
which was full of generally diffused wealth; in which education had for
ages been extended throughout the very lowest ranks; and whose people
were peaceable, steady, and provident, possessing all the qualities
requisite for a safe exercise of the franchise. The Scots had literally
no share whatever in the representation of the Imperial Parliament. The
qualification for a voter in Parliament was at least thirty or forty
times higher than in any other part of the empire, and above a hundred
times beyond the general qualification in England. Consequently a vote
became a dear article in the Scottish market. Some persons bought
votes as a good investment. The average price was about £500, but it
frequently rose to double that sum. Shortly before the passing of the
Reform Bill six Scottish votes were exposed for sale in one day, and
brought £6,000. The electors were, therefore, cut off from the rest of
the public, and set aside to exercise a high and invidious privilege,
which they regarded not as a trust for the people, but as a privilege
to be prized for its pecuniary value or for its influence in procuring
Government situations.

While the Scottish Bill was passing through committee in the Commons
the English Bill was being hotly contested in the Lords, and absorbed
so much attention that only a few members comparatively voted in the
divisions upon the former measure; seldom more than one hundred, often
less. There had previously been no property qualification in Scotland
for members of Parliament representing towns. A provision had been
inserted in the Bill requiring heritable property to the extent of
£600 a year for a county and £300 a year for a borough; but this was
expunged on the third reading, on the ground that if the property
qualification were rigidly enforced it would exclude some of the
brightest ornaments of the House: for example, in past times, it would
have excluded Pitt, Sheridan, Burke, and Tierney. The Scottish Bill
was passed by the Lords on the 13th of July. It increased the number
of members for that country from forty-five to fifty-three, giving
two each to Edinburgh and Glasgow, and one each to Paisley, Aberdeen,
Perth, and Dundee.

The following is the general result of the Reform Acts upon the
constitution of the Imperial Parliament:--In England the county
constituencies, formerly 52, returning 94 members, were increased to
82, returning 159 members. The borough members were 341, giving a
total of 500 for England. In Ireland the number of the constituencies
remained the same, but five members were added, making the total
number 105, representing 32 counties and 41 boroughs including
the University of Dublin. A second member was given to each of
the following:--Limerick, Waterford, Belfast, Galway, and Dublin
University. The proportion of counties and boroughs in Scotland was
30 and 23, giving a total of 53. All the counties of the United
Kingdom returned 253 members, all the boroughs 405, the total number
constituting the House of Commons being 658.

Ireland continued, during 1831 and 1832, in a very unsettled state. The
restraint imposed by the Catholic Association during the Emancipation
struggle was relaxed when the object was attained, and when Mr.
O'Connell was absent from the country, attending his Parliamentary
duties. The consequence was that the people, suffering destitution in
some cases and in others irritated by local grievances, gave vent to
their passions in vindictive and barbarous outrages. O'Connell himself
was not in a mood to exert himself much in order to produce a more
submissive spirit in the peasantry, even if he had the power. He was
exasperated by his collisions with Mr. Stanley, by whom he was treated
in a spirit of defiance, not unmingled with scorn; so that the great
agitator was determined to make him and the Government feel his power.
Had Mr. Stanley when he was Chief Secretary for Ireland possessed the
experience that he afterwards acquired when he became Earl of Derby,
he would have adopted a more diplomatic tone in Parliament, and a more
conciliatory spirit in his Irish administration. His character as it
appeared to the Irish Roman Catholics, sketched by O'Connell, was a
hideous caricature. A more moderate and discriminating Irish sketch of
him by Mr. Fitzpatrick represented the Chief Secretary as possessing a
judgment of powerful penetration and a facility in mastering details,
with a temper somewhat reserved and dictatorial. Popularity was not
his idol; instead of the theatrical smile and plastic posture of his
predecessors, there was a knitted brow and a cold manner. Mr. Stanley
left much undone in Ireland. But this candid Catholic writer gives him
credit for having accomplished much, not only in correcting what was
evil, but in establishing what was good. He is praised for putting down
Orange processions, and for "the moral courage with which he grappled
with the hydra of the Church Establishment." He created as well as
destroyed, and "his creations were marked with peculiar efficiency."
"The Irish Board of Works sprang up under his auspices. The Shannon
navigation scheme at last became a reality, and the proselytism of
the Kildare Place Society received a fatal check by the establishment
of the national system of education. The political philippics which
Baron Smith had been in the habit of enunciating from the Bench were
put a stop to by Mr. Stanley. He viewed the practice with indignation,
and trenchantly reprobated it in the House of Commons. It ought to be
added that Mr. Stanley built a house in Tipperary, chiefly with the
object of giving employment to the poor." It has been often remarked
that the Chief Secretary for Ireland, on his arrival in Dublin, is
always surrounded by men each of whom has his peculiar specific
for the evils of the country. But Mr. Sheil said that Mr. Stanley,
instead of listening to such counsel with the usual "sad civility,
invariably intimated with some abrupt jeer, bordering on mockery, his
utter disregard of the advice, and his very slender estimate of the
adviser." Mr. Stanley made an exception, however, in favour of the
then celebrated "J. K. L." He acknowledged a letter from Dr. Doyle,
on the education question, with warm expressions of thanks for the
suggestions contained in it, and a wish to see him on his arrival in
Dublin. Towards O'Connell, however, Mr. Stanley seems to have cherished
a strong antipathy. They exercised mutual repulsion upon one another,
and they never came into contact without violent irritation.

The Irish peasantry very soon learnt that whatever Emancipation had
done or might do for barristers and other persons qualified to hold
situations under Government, from which Roman Catholics had previously
been almost entirely excluded, it had done nothing to remove or even
to mitigate their practical grievances. They found that the rackrents
of their holdings were not reduced; that the tax-collector went round
as usual, and did not abate his demands; that the tithe-proctor did
not fail in his visits, and that, in default of payment, he seized
upon the cow or the pig, the pot or the blanket. Through the machinery
of the Catholic Association, and the other associations which
O'Connell had established, they became readers of newspapers. They
had read that a single tithe-proctor had on one occasion processed
1,100 persons for tithes, nearly all of the lower order of farmers or
peasants, the expense of each process being about eight shillings. It
would be scarcely possible to devise any mode of levying an impost
more exasperating, which came home to the bosoms of men with more
irritating, humiliating, and maddening power, and which violated more
recklessly men's natural sense of justice. If a plan were invented for
the purpose of driving men into insurrection, nothing could be more
effectual than the tithe-proctor system. Besides, it tended directly to
the impoverishment of the country, retarding agricultural improvement
and limiting production. If a man kept all his land in pasture, he
escaped the impost; but the moment he tilled it, he was subjected to
a tax of ten per cent, on the gross produce. The valuation being made
by the tithe-proctor--a man whose interest it was to defraud both the
tenant and the parson,--the consequence was that the gentry and the
large farmers, to a great extent, evaded the tax, and left the small
occupiers to bear nearly the whole burden; they even avoided mowing
their meadows in some cases, because then they should pay tithe for the
hay.

There was besides a tax called Church Cess, levied by Protestants in
vestry meetings upon Roman Catholics for cleaning the church, ringing
the bell, washing the minister's surplice, purchasing bread and wine
for the communion, and paying the salary of the parish clerk. This
tax was felt to be a direct and flagrant violation of the rights of
conscience, and of the principles of the British Constitution; and
against it there was a determined opposition, which manifested itself
in tumultuous and violent assemblages at the parish churches all
over the country on Easter Monday, when the rector or his curate, as
chairman of the meeting, came into angry collision with flocks who
disowned him, and denounced him as a tyrant, a persecutor, and a robber.

The evil of this state of things became so aggravated that all
reasonable men on both sides felt it must be put a stop to somehow.
In 1831 the organised resistance to the collection of tithes became
so effective and so terrible that they were not paid, except where
a composition had been made and agreements had been adopted. The
terrified proctors gave up their dangerous occupation after some of
their number had been victimised in the most barbarous manner; and
although a portion of the clergy insisted on their rights, not merely
for the sake of their incomes, but for the interest of the Church which
they felt bound to defend, yet many had too much Christian spirit,
too much regard for the interests of the Gospel, to persist in the
collection of tithes at such a fearful cost. At Newtownbarry, in the
county of Wexford, some cattle were impounded by a tithe-proctor. The
peasantry assembled in large numbers to rescue them, when they came
into collision with the yeomanry, who fired killing twelve persons. At
Carrickshock there was a fearful tragedy. A number of writs against
defaulters was issued by the Court of Exchequer, and entrusted to the
care of process-servers, who, guarded by a strong body of police,
proceeded on their mission with secrecy and despatch. Bonfires along
the surrounding hills, however, and shrill whistles soon convinced
them that the people were not unprepared for their visitors. But
the yeomanry pushed boldly on; suddenly an immense assemblage of
peasantry, armed with scythes and pitchforks, poured down upon them.
A terrible hand-to-hand struggle ensued, and in the course of a few
moments eighteen of the police, including the commanding officer, were
slaughtered. The remainder consulted safety and fled, marking the
course of their retreat by the blood that trickled from their wounds. A
coroner's jury pronounced this deed of death as "wilful murder" against
some persons unknown. A large Government reward was offered, but it
failed to produce a single conviction. At Castle-pollard, in Westmeath,
on the occasion of an attempted rescue, the chief constable was knocked
down. The police fired, and nine or ten persons were killed. One of
the most lamentable of these conflicts occurred at Gurtroe, near
Rathcormack, in the county of Cork. Archdeacon Ryder brought a number
of military to recover the tithes of a farm belonging to a widow named
Ryan. The assembled people resisted, the military were ordered to fire,
eight persons were killed and thirteen wounded; and among the killed
was the widow's son.

These disorders appealed with irresistible force to the Government
and the legislature to put an end to a system fraught with so much
evil, and threatening the utter disruption of society in Ireland.
In the first place, something must be done to meet the wants of the
destitute clergy and their families. Accordingly, Mr. Stanley brought
in a Bill in May, 1832, authorising the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland
to advance £60,000 as a fund for the payment of the clergy, who were
unable to collect their tithes for the year 1831. This measure was
designed to meet the existing necessity, and was only a preliminary
to the promised settlement of the tithe question. It was therefore
passed quickly through both Houses, and became law on the 1st of
June. But the money thus advanced was not placed on the Consolidated
Fund. The Government took upon itself the collection of the arrears
of tithes and to reimburse itself for its advances out of the sum
that it succeeded in recovering. It was a maxim with Mr. Stanley that
the people should be made to respect the law; that they should not be
allowed to trample upon it with impunity. The odious task thus assumed
produced a state of unparalleled excitement. The people were driven to
frenzy, instead of being frightened by the Chief Secretary becoming
tithe-collector-general, and the army employed in its collection. The
first proceeding of the Government to recover the tithes under the Act
of the 1st of June was, therefore, the signal for general war. Bonfires
blazed upon the hills, the rallying sounds of horns were heard along
the valleys, and the mustering tread of thousands upon the roads,
hurrying to the scene of a seizure or an auction. It was a bloody
campaign; there was considerable loss of life, and the Church and the
Government thus became more obnoxious to the people than ever. Mr.
Stanley being the commander-in-chief on one side, and O'Connell on the
other, the contest was embittered by their personal antipathies. It was
found that the amount of the arrears for the year 1831 was £104,285,
and that the whole amount which the Government was able to levy, after
putting forward its strength in every possible way, was £12,000, the
cost of collection being £15,000, so that the Government was not able
to raise as much money as would pay the expenses of the campaign. This
was how Mr. Stanley illustrated his favourite sentiment that the people
should be made to respect the law. But the Liberal party among the
Protestants fully sympathised with the anti-tithe recusants.

Mr. Stanley left behind him one enduring monument of his administration
in Ireland which, though afterwards a subject of controversy and
party strife, conferred immense advantages upon the country--the
national system of education. It has been remarked that the principle
of the Irish Establishment was that of a "missionary church;" that
it was never based on the theory of being called for by the wants of
the population; that what it looked to was their future spiritual
necessities. It was founded on the same reasons which prompt the
building of churches in a thinly peopled locality, the running of roads
through an uncultivated district, of drains through a desert morass.
The principle was philanthropic, and often, in its application, wise;
but it proceeded on one postulate, which, unfortunately, was here
wanting--namely, that the people will embrace the faith intended for
them. This was so far from having hitherto been the case that the
reverse was the fact. For nearly three centuries this experiment was
tried with respect to the education of the rising generations of the
Roman Catholics, and in every age it was attended by failures the most
marked and disastrous. The Commissioners of National Education refer
to this uniformity of failure in their sixth report, in which they
observe,--"For nearly the whole of the last century the Government of
Ireland laboured to promote Protestant education, and tolerated no
other. Large grants of public money were voted for having children
educated in the Protestant faith, while it was made a transportable
offence in a Roman Catholic (and if the party returned, high treason)
to act as a schoolmaster, or assistant to a schoolmaster, or even as a
tutor in a private family. The Acts passed for this purpose continued
in force from 1709 to 1782. They were then repealed, but Parliament
continued to vote money for the support only of the schools conducted
on principles which were regarded by the great body of the Roman
Catholics as exclusively Protestant until the present system was
established."

[Illustration: MR. STANLEY (AFTERWARDS 14th EARL OF DERBY). [_From a
photograph by S. A. Walker, Regent Street, London._]]

In the report drawn up by Mr. Wyse, the chairman of the Select
Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the
Foundation Schools in Ireland, in 1837, an interesting history is
given of the origin, progress, and working of those obnoxious schools,
and of other educational societies which followed. The Incorporated
Society for Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland was
established by Royal Charter in 1733, the avowed object being the
education of the poor in the principles of the Established Church. It
is sufficient to remark that the annual grants which were made to the
schools in connection with it (well known as the Charter Schools) were,
in consequence of the report of the Commissioners of 1824, gradually
reduced, and finally withdrawn. In 1824 there were of those schools
32; the number of children in them amounted to 2,255. The grant for
1825 was £21,615. The grant was gradually reduced to £5,750 in 1832,
when it was finally withdrawn. During nineteen years this system cost
the country £1,612,138, of which £1,027,715 consisted of Parliamentary
grants. The total number of children apprenticed from the beginning
till the end of 1824 was only 12,745; and of these but a small number
received the portion of £5 each, allotted to those who served out
their apprenticeship, and married Protestants. The Association for
Discountenancing Vice was incorporated in 1800. It required that the
masters and mistresses in its schools should be of the Established
Church; that the Scriptures should be read by all who had attained
sufficient proficiency; and that no catechism be taught except that
of the Established Church. The schools of the Association amounted
in 1824 to 226, and the number of children to 12,769; of whom it was
stated that 7,803 were Protestants, and 4,804 were Roman Catholics;
but the Rev. William Lee, who had inspected 104 of these schools in
1819 and 1820, stated before the Commissioners of 1824 that he had
found the catechism of the Church of Rome in many of them. The Society
for Promoting the Education of the Poor was founded on the 2nd of
December, 1811, and was managed by a committee of various religious
persuasions. The principles which they had prescribed to themselves
for their conduct were, to promote the establishment and assist in the
support of schools in which the appointment of governors and teachers,
and the admission of scholars, should be uninfluenced by religious
distinctions, and in which the Bible or Testament, without note or
comment, should be read by all the scholars who had attained a suitable
proficiency in reading, excluding catechisms and books of religious
controversy; at the same time it was to be distinctly understood that
the Bible or Testament should not be used as a school book from which
children should be taught to spell or read. A grant was accordingly
made to the society of £6,980, Irish currency, in the Session of
1814-15. The system of this society was manifestly the same as that
which was formerly called the Lancastrian system in England, and which,
although adopted by the great body of the Protestant Dissenters there,
was so much opposed by the bishops and clergy of the Established Church
in general, that they completely prevented its application to schools
for children of their communion. The Roman Catholic prelates and
clergy set themselves with equal resolution against it in Ireland and
with equal success. It was accordingly found in 1824, that of 400,348
children whose parents paid for their education in the general schools
of the country, and whose religion was ascertained, there were 81,060
Protestants, and 319,288 Roman Catholics; while of 56,201 children
educated under the Kildare Place Society--although theirs were schools
for the poor, and the Roman Catholics bear a much greater proportion to
Protestants in the poorer classes than in the higher--there were 26,237
Protestants, and only 29,964 Roman Catholics.

Various inquiries had been instituted from time to time by royal
commissions and Parliamentary committees into the state of education
in Ireland. One commission, appointed in 1806, laboured for six years,
and published fourteen reports. It included the Primate, two bishops,
the Provost of Trinity College, and Mr. R. Lovell Edgeworth. They
recommended a system in which the children of all denominations should
be educated together, without interfering with the peculiar tenets of
any; and that there should be a Board of Commissioners, with extensive
powers, to carry out the plan. Subsequent commissions and committees
adopted the same principle of united secular education, particularly
a select committee of the House of Commons appointed in 1824. These
important reports prepared the way for Mr. Stanley's plan, which he
announced in the House of Commons in July, 1832. His speech on that
occasion showed that he had thoroughly mastered the difficult question
which he undertook to elucidate. It was remarkable for the clearness
of its statements, the power of its arguments, and for the eloquence
with which it enforced sound and comprehensive principles. Mr.
Spring-Rice having moved that a sum of £30,000 be granted for enabling
the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland to assist in the education of the
people, and the House having agreed to the motion without a division,
Mr. Stanley, in the following month, wrote a letter to the Duke of
Leinster, in which he explained "the plan of national education," which
afterwards bore his name. The first Commissioners were the Duke of
Leinster, Archbishop Whately, Archbishop Murray, the Rev. Dr. Sadleir,
Rev. James Carlile (Presbyterian), A. R. Blake (Chief Remembrancer, a
Roman Catholic), and Robert Holmes, a Unitarian barrister. Mr. Carlile,
minister of Mary's Abbey congregation in Dublin, was the only paid
commissioner, and to him, during seven years, was committed a principal
share in working the system. He selected the Scripture lessons,
directed the compilation of the schoolbooks, aided in obtaining the
recognition of parental rights, apart from clerical authority; in
arranging the machinery and putting it in working order.

Much opposition was excited by the part of Mr. Stanley's letter to
the Duke of Leinster which spoke of "encouraging" the clergy to give
religious instruction, and requiring the attendance of the scholars at
their respective places of worship on Sunday to be registered by the
schoolmaster. This was treading on religious ground, and committing
both Protestants and Catholics to the actual support of what they
mutually deemed false. But the Government were driven to this course
by the cry of "infidelity" and "atheism" which the new plan encountered
as soon as it was proposed in Parliament. Explanations were afterwards
issued by authority, showing that the "encouragement" of religious
instruction meant only granting "facility of access" to the children
out of school hours, not "employing or remunerating" the teachers. The
Commissioners very properly treated the Bible as a book for religious
instruction; but so far from offering the sacred volume an "indignity,"
or "forbidding" its use, they said: "To the religious instructors of
the children they cheerfully leave, in communicating instruction, the
use of the sacred volume itself, as containing those doctrines and
precepts a knowledge of which must lie at the foundation of all true
religion." To obviate every cavil, however, as far as possible, without
departing from the fundamental principle of the Board, it was arranged
that the Bible might be read at any hour of the day, provided the
time was distinctly specified, so that there should be no suspicion
of a desire to take advantage of the presence of Roman Catholics.
This satisfied the Presbyterians, who nearly all placed their schools
in connection with the Board. But the great body of the Established
clergy continued for some time afterwards hostile, having put forward
the Church Education Society as a rival candidate for Parliamentary
recognition and support. Its committee declared that the national
system was "essentially defective" in permitting the Catholic children
to refuse the Bible. They said this permission "involves a practical
indignity to the Word of God," and that it was "carrying into effect
the discipline of the Church of Rome, in restricting the use of the
inspired writings." This was the grand charge against the Board, the
vital point in the controversy.

On the 3rd of December Parliament was dissolved, and the first
elections under the Reform Bill promptly followed. Though they were
anticipated not without alarm, everything went off peacefully, and it
was discovered that the new House of Commons was composed of much the
same materials as the old. The two most singular choices were those
of Oldham which retained Cobbett, and of Pontefract which selected
the ex-prizefighter Gully. But the state of parties was considerably
changed. The old Tory party was practically extinct; the Moderates
began to call themselves Conservatives; and Whig and Radical, bitterly
as they disagreed on many points, proceeded to range themselves under
the Liberal banner. The Radicals promptly proved their independence by
proposing Mr. Littleton for the Speakership against the old Speaker,
Mr. Manners Sutton, but the Whigs voted against them, and they were in
a minority of 31 against 241. It was clear from the Royal Speech that
the Session was to be devoted to Irish affairs, and the Cabinet was
much divided over the measures in contemplation. These were a Coercion
Bill, much favoured by Mr. Stanley, and a Church Temporalities Bill,
the pet project of Lord Althorp. After many evenings had been wasted
in bitter denunciations of the Irish Secretary by O'Connell and his
following, Lord Althorp, on the 12th of February, 1833, introduced
the Church Temporalities Bill, and three days afterwards Earl Grey
introduced the Coercion Bill in the House of Lords. It had an easy
course through that House, and was then brought forward by Althorp in
the Commons. Speaking against his convictions, he made a singularly
tame and ineffective defence of the measure. Then Stanley took the
papers which he had given to his leader, mastered their details in a
couple of hours, and in a magnificent speech completely turned the
current of debate, and utterly silenced O'Connell. Before the end
of March the Bill had passed through all its stages in the House of
Commons.

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, TUAM.]

The Church Temporalities Bill, with some alterations, passed the Lower
House; it encountered strong opposition in the Lords, who defeated
the Ministry on one important amendment, but it ultimately passed, on
the 30th of July, by a majority of fifty-four, several peers having
recorded their protests against it, among whom the Duke of Cumberland
was conspicuous. The Commissioners appointed under the Bill were the
Lord Primate, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Lord Chancellor and Chief
Justice of Ireland, and four of the bishops, and some time afterwards
three laymen were added. The following were the principal features of
this great measure of Church Reform: Church Cess to be immediately
abolished--this was a direct pecuniary relief to the amount of about
£80,000 per annum, which had been levied in the most vexatious
manner--and a reduction of the number of archbishops and bishops
prospectively, from four archbishops and eighteen bishops to two
archbishops and ten bishops, the revenues of the suppressed sees to be
appropriated to general Church purposes. The archbishoprics of Cashel
and Tuam were reduced to bishoprics, ten sees were abolished, the
duties connected with them being transferred to other sees--Dromore to
Down, Raphoe to Derry, Clogher to Armagh, Elphin to Kilmore, Killala
to Tuam, Clonfer to Killaloe, Cork to Cloyne, Waterford to Cashel,
Ferns to Ossory, Kildare to Dublin. The whole of Ireland was divided
into two provinces by a line drawn from the north of Dublin county to
the south of Galway Bay, and the bishoprics were reduced to ten. The
revenues of the suppressed bishoprics, together with those of suspended
dignities and benefices and disappropriated tithes, were vested by the
Church Temporalities Act in the Board of Ecclesiastical Commissioners,
to be applied by them to the erection and repairs of churches, to
the providing for Church expenses hitherto defrayed by vestry rates,
and to other ecclesiastical purposes. The sales which were made
of perpetuities of Church estates, vested in the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners, produced upwards of £631,353; the value of the whole
perpetuities, if sold, was estimated at £1,200,000. The total receipts
of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1834 were £68,729; in 1835 they
amounted to £168,027; and in 1836 they reached £181,045. The cost of
the official establishment was at one time £15,000; during the later
years, however, it averaged less than £6,000. Its total receipts, up
to July, 1861, were £3,310,999. The Church Temporalities Act imposed
a tax on all benefices and dignities whose net annual value exceeded
£300, graduated according to their amount, from two and a half to
five per cent., the rate of charge increasing by 2s. 6d. per cent. on
every additional £10 above £405. All benefices exceeding £1,195 were
taxed at the rate of fifteen per cent. The yearly tax imposed on all
bishoprics was graduated as follows:--Where the yearly value did not
exceed £4,000 five per cent.; not exceeding £6,000, seven per cent.;
not exceeding £8,000, ten per cent.; and not exceeding £10,000, twelve
per cent. In lieu of tax the Archbishopric of Armagh was to pay to
the Ecclesiastical Commissioners an annual sum of £4,500, and the see
of Derry to pay £6,160. The exact net incomes of the Irish bishops
were as follows:--Armagh, £14,634; Meath, £3,764; Derry, £6,022;
Down, £3,658; Kilmore, £5,248; Tuam, £3,898; Dublin, £7,636; Ossory,
£3,874; Cashel, £4,691; Cork, £2,310; Killaloe, £3,310; Limerick,
£3,987--total, £63,032. The total amount of tithe rent-charge payable
to ecclesiastical persons--bishops, deans, chapters, incumbents of
benefices, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners was £401,114. The
rental of Ireland was estimated, by the valuators under the Poor Law
Act, at about £12,000,000--this rental being about a third part of the
estimated value of the annual produce of the land.

[Illustration: AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS AT THE PERIOD OF THE FIRST REFORM
PARLIAMENT.]

After passing a Factory Act of some importance, which, however, was
only the forerunner of much subsequent legislation, the House of
Commons engaged in Poor Law Reform. In the winter of 1832-3 a very
startling state of things was disclosed. In a period of great general
prosperity, that portion of England in which the Poor Laws had their
most extensive operation, and in which by much the largest expenditure
of poor-rates had been made, was the scene of daily riot and nightly
incendiarism. There were ninety-three parishes in four counties
of which the population was 113,147 and the Poor-Law expenditure
£81,978, or fourteen shillings and fivepence per head; and there were
eighty parishes in three other counties the population of which was
105,728 and the Poor-Law expenditure £30,820, or five shillings and
ninepence a head. In the counties in which the Poor-Law expenditure
was large the industry and skill of the labourers were passing away,
the connection between the master and servant had become precarious,
the unmarried were defrauded of their fair earnings, and riots and
incendiarism prevailed. In the counties where the expenditure was
comparatively small, there was scarcely any instance of disorder;
mutual attachment existed between the workman and his employer; the
intelligence, skill, and good conduct of the labourers were unimpaired,
or increased. This striking social contrast was but a specimen of
what prevailed throughout large districts, and generally throughout
the south and north of England, and it proved that either through
the inherent vice of the system, or gross maladministration in the
southern counties, the Poor Law had a most demoralising effect upon
the working classes, while it was rapidly eating up the capital upon
which the employment of labour depended. This fact was placed beyond
question by a commission of inquiry, which was composed of individuals
distinguished by their interest in the subject and their intimate
knowledge of its principles and details. Its labours were continued
incessantly for two years. Witnesses most competent to give information
were summoned from different parts of the country. The Commissioners
had before them documentary evidence of every kind calculated to throw
light on the subject. They personally visited localities, and examined
the actual operation of the system on the spot; and when they could not
go themselves, they called to their aid assistant commissioners, some
of whom extended their inquiries into Scotland, Guernsey, France, and
Flanders; while they also collected a vast mass of interesting evidence
from our ambassadors and diplomatic agents in different countries
of Europe and America. It was upon the report of this commission
of inquiry that the Act was founded for the Amendment and Better
Administration of the Laws relating to the Poor in England and Wales (4
and 5 William IV., cap. 76). A more solid foundation for a legislative
enactment could scarcely be found, and the importance of the subject
fully warranted all the expense and labour by which it was obtained.

The statutory provision for all who cannot support themselves had now
existed for upwards of 280 years. There was no considerable increase
of population in England from the period when the Poor Laws were
established up to the middle of the eighteenth century. Its people have
been distinguished for their industry, thrift, and forethought. No
other nation has furnished such unquestionable proofs of the prevalence
of a provident and independent spirit. From the year 1601, when the
Act 43 Elizabeth, the foundation of the old code of Poor Laws, was
put in force, to the commencement of the war with Napoleon, there had
been scarcely any increase of pauperism. In 1815 there were 925,439
individuals in England and Wales, being about one-eleventh of the then
existing population, members of friendly societies, formed for the
express purpose of affording protection to the members in sickness
and old age, and enabling them to subsist without resorting to the
parish fund. It may be asked, How was this state of things compatible
with the right to support at the expense of the parish which the law
gave to the destitute? The answer is, that the exercise of that right
was subjected to the most powerful checks, and restricted in every
possible way. In 1723 an Act was passed authorising the church-wardens
and overseers, with the consent of the parishioners, to establish a
workhouse in each parish; and it was at the same time enacted that the
overseers should be entitled to refuse relief to all who did not choose
to accept it in the workhouse, and to submit to all its regulations.
In consequence of this Act workhouses were erected in many parishes,
and they had an immediate and striking effect in reducing the number
of paupers. Many who had previously received pensions from the parish
preferred depending on their own exertions rather than take up their
abode in the workhouse.

The workhouse test, then, operated powerfully in keeping down
pauperism; but another cause came into operation still more
influential, namely, the Law of Settlement. By the Act 13 and 14
Charles II. a legal settlement in a parish was declared to be gained by
birth, or by inhabitancy, apprenticeship, or service for forty days;
but within that period any two justices were authorised, upon complaint
being made to them by the churchwardens or overseers, if they thought
a new entrant likely to become chargeable, to remove him, unless he
either occupied a tenement of the annual value of ten pounds, or gave
sufficient security that he would indemnify the parish for whatever
loss it might incur on his account. And by a subsequent Act, 3 William
III., every newcomer was obliged to give notice to the churchwarden
of his arrival. This notice should be read in church after divine
service, and then commenced the forty days during which objection might
be made to his settlement. In case of objection, if he remained it
was by sufferance, and he could be removed the moment he married, or
was likely to become chargeable. A settlement might also be obtained
by being hired for a year when unmarried or childless, and remaining
the whole of that time in the service of one master; or being bound an
apprentice to a person who had obtained a settlement. The effect of
this system was actually to depopulate many parishes. The author of a
valuable pamphlet on the subject, Mr. Alcock, stated that gentlemen
were led by this system to adopt all sorts of expedients to hinder the
poor from marrying, to discharge servants in their last quarter, to
evict small tenants, and pull down cottages; so that several parishes
were in a manner depopulated, while England complained of want of
useful hands for agriculture, for manufactures, and for the land and
sea services.

But we come now to a new phase in the Poor-Law system, rather a
complete revolution, by which the flood-gates of pauperism were opened,
and all those barriers that had restrained the increase of population
were swept away. The old system had been somewhat relaxed in 1782
by Mr. Gilbert's Act, which, by incorporating parishes into unions,
prevented grasping landlords and tenants from feeling that intense
interest in the extinction of population and pauperism which they
did when the sphere was limited to a single parish. But in the year
1795 the price of corn rising from 54s. to 74s., and wages continuing
stationary, the distress of the poor was very great and many of the
able-bodied were obliged to become claimants for parish relief. But
instead of meeting this emergency by temporary expedients and extra
grants suited to the occasion, the magistrates of Berks and some other
southern counties issued tables showing the wages which they affirmed
every labouring man ought to receive, not according to the value of his
labour to his employer, but according to the variations in the number
of his family and the price of bread; and they accompanied these tables
with an order directing the parish officers to make up the deficit
to the labourer, in the event of the wages paid him by his employer
falling short of the tabulated allowance. This was the small beginning
of a gigantic evil. The practice originating in a passing emergency
grew into a custom, and ultimately assumed the force of an established
right, which prevailed almost universally, and was productive of an
amount of evil beyond anything that could have been conceived possible.
The allowance scales issued from time to time were framed on the
principle that every labourer should have a gallon loaf of standard
wheaten bread weekly for every member of his family, and one over. The
effect of this was, that a man with six children, who got 9s. a week
wages, required nine gallon loaves, or 13s. 6d. a week, so that he had
a pension of 4s. 6d. over his wages. Another man with a wife and five
children, so idle and disorderly that no one would employ him, was
entitled to eight gallon loaves for their maintenance, so that he had
12s. a week to support him. The increase of allowance according to the
number of children acted as a direct bounty upon early marriage.

The farmers were not so discontented with this allowance system as
might be supposed, because a great part of the burden was cast upon
other shoulders. The tax was laid indiscriminately upon all fixed
property; so that the occupiers of villas, shopkeepers, merchants,
and others who did not employ labourers, had to pay a portion of the
wages for those that did. The farmers were in this way led to encourage
a system which fraudulently imposed a heavy burden upon others, and
which, by degrading the labourers, and multiplying their numbers beyond
the real demand for them, must, if allowed to run its full course,
have ultimately overspread the whole country with the most abject
poverty and wretchedness. There was another interest created which
tended to increase the evil. In the counties of Suffolk, Sussex, Kent,
and generally through all the south of England, relief was given in
the shape of house accommodation, or free dwellings for the poor. The
parish officers were in the habit of paying the rent of the cottages;
the rent was therefore high and sure, and consequently persons who had
small pieces of ground were induced to cover them with those buildings.

The evils of this system had reached their height in the years 1832-3.
That was a time when the public mind was bent upon reforms of all
sorts, without waiting for the admission from the Tories that the
grievances of which the nation complained were "proved abuses." The
Reformers were determined no longer to tolerate the state of things
in which the discontent of the labouring classes was proportioned
to the money disbursed in poor rates, or in voluntary charities; in
which the young were trained in idleness, ignorance, and vice--the
able-bodied maintained in sluggish and sensual indolence--the aged
and more respectable exposed to all the misery incident to dwelling
in such a society as that of a large workhouse, without discipline
or classification, the whole body of inmates subsisting on food far
exceeding, both in kind and in amount, not merely the diet of the
independent labourer, but that of the majority of the persons who
contributed to their support; in which a farmer paid ten shillings
a year in poor rate, and was in addition compelled to employ
supernumerary labourers, not required on his farm, at a cost of from
£100 to £250 a year; in which the labourer had no need to bestir
himself to seek work or to please his master, or to put a restraint
upon his temper, having all a slave's security for subsistence, without
the slave's liability to punishment; in which the parish paid parents
for nursing their little children, and children for supporting their
aged parents, thereby destroying in both parties all feelings of
natural affection and all sense of Christian duty. The Government,
therefore, resolved to apply a remedy. The following is a brief
outline of the main features of the measure they proposed, and which
was adopted by the legislature. They found the greatest evils of the
old system were connected with the relief of the able-bodied; and
in connection with that lay the chief difficulty of administering
relief. It was, above all things, an essential condition that the
situation of the pauper should not be made--really or apparently--so
desirable as that of independent labourers of the lowest class; if it
were, the majority of that class would have the strongest inducements
to quit it, and get into the more eligible class of paupers. It was
necessary, therefore, that an appeal to the parish should be a last
resource--that it should be regarded as the hardest taskmaster and the
worst paymaster. This principle was embodied in the Poor Law Amendment
Act; and the effects which quickly followed on its operation were most
marked and salutary. Able-bodied paupers were extensively converted
into independent labourers, for whose employment a large fund was
created by the reduction of parochial expenditure; next followed a
rise in wages; then a diminution, not only of pauper marriages, but of
early and imprudent marriages of all sorts; and lastly, there was a
diminution of crime, with contentment among the labourers, increasing
with their industry: relief of a child was made relief to the parent,
and relief of a wife relief to the husband. In fact, the law combined
charity with economy.

The Commissioners recommended the appointment of a central board to
control the administration of the Poor Laws, with such assistant
Commissioners as might be found requisite, the Commissioners being
empowered and directed to frame and enforce regulations for the
government of workhouses, and as to the nature and amount of the
relief to be given and the labour to be exacted; the regulations to be
uniform throughout the country. The necessity of a living, central,
permanent authority had been rendered obvious by the disastrous working
of the old system, arising partly from the absence of such control--an
authority accumulating experience in itself, independent of local
control, uninterested in favour of local abuse, and responsible to the
Government. A Board of three Commissioners was therefore appointed
under the Act, themselves appointing assistant Commissioners, capable
of receiving the powers of the Commission by delegation. The anomalous
state of things with regard to districts was removed by the formation
of unions.

In 1831 there were in England and Wales 56 parishes containing less
than 10 persons; 14 parishes containing but from 10 to 20 persons, the
largest of these, on the average, containing 5 adult males; and there
were 533 parishes, containing from 20 to 50 persons, the largest of
which would give 12 adult males per parish. It was absurd to expect
that such parishes could supply proper machinery for the levying and
collecting of rates, or for the distribution of relief. It was found
that a large number of overseers could only certify their accounts
by signing with a mark, attested by the justice's clerk. The size of
the parishes influenced materially the amount of the poor-rate--the
smallest giving the greatest cost per head. For example, the hundred
absolutely largest parishes, containing a population of 3,196,064,
gave 6s. 7d. per head; the hundred intermediate parishes, containing
a population of 19,841, gave 15s. a head; while the hundred smallest
parishes from which poor-rate returns were made, with a population
of 1,708, gave £1 12s. a head. The moral effects were still more
remarkable. In the large parishes 1 in 13 was relieved; in the
intermediate, 1 in 12½; and in the smallest, 1 in 4, or 25 per cent.
of the population, were paupers. Hence arose the necessity of a union
of parishes with a common workhouse and a common machinery, and with
paid permanent officers for the administration of relief.

The most important change in the Settlement Law was the repeal of the
settlement by hiring and service, which prevented the free circulation
of labour, interfered with the liberty of the subject, and fixed an
intolerable burden upon the parish. This law was repealed by the
64th and 65th sections of the Act; the settlement by occupation of a
tenement, without payment of rates, by the 66th; while other sections
effected various improvements in the law of removal. The old law made
it more prudent for a woman to have a number of children without a
husband than with a husband, as she could throw the burden of their
support upon the parish, or through the parish force the putative
father to support them; and if he could not give security to pay, he
was liable to imprisonment. By this means marriages were often forced.
These evils were remedied by rendering the unmarried mother liable for
the maintenance of her children, by rendering it unlawful to pay to her
any sums which the putative father might be compelled to contribute
for the reimbursement of the parish, and by rendering it necessary
that evidence additional to that of the mother should be required to
corroborate her charge against the person accused of being the father.
The law worked fairly well, though it was discovered that many mothers
shrank from prosecuting the fathers of their babies at the price of
disclosing their shame, and thus illegitimate children were brought up
in the utmost squalor.

[Illustration: MR. (AFTERWARDS LORD) MACAULAY. (_From a photograph by
Maull and Fox._)]

Each union of parishes, or each parish, if large and populous
enough, was placed under the management of a board of guardians,
elected annually by the ratepayers; but where under previous Acts an
organisation existed similar to that of unions or boards of guardians,
under the Poor Law Amendment Act these were retained. The following
table exhibits the local divisions of England and Wales made under that
Act:--

    AUTHORITY.               DESCRIPTION.        NUMBER OF
                                                 PARISHES.
    Poor Law Amendment       { 585 unions           13,964
    Act                      { 20 single parishes       20
    Local Act (various)      { 21 unions               320
                             { 15 single parishes       15
    Gilbert's Act, (22 Geo.  { 12 unions               200
    III., c. 83)             { 2 single parishes         2
                             { 89 parishes (including}
    43 Elizabeth, c. 2       { the Scilly Islands    }  89
                             { as one parish)        }
                                                    ------
                                    Total           14,610

Of these unions and parishes 111 were declared and organised in the
first year, 252 in the second, 205 in the third, and 17 in the fourth.
Within the four years succeeding 1834 as many as 328 unions had
workhouses completed and in operation, and 141 had workhouses building
or in course of alteration. The work went on slowly till the whole
country was supplied with workhouse accommodation. The amount expended
in providing new workhouses up to 1858 was £4,168,759, and in altering
and enlarging old workhouses, £792,772; the total amount thus expended
was upwards of five millions sterling.

The active mind, strong will, and philanthropic spirit of Mr. Stanley,
now transferred from Ireland to the Colonial Secretaryship, found an
important field for their exercise in the Colonial Office. He applied
his energies to the abolition of negro slavery in the West Indies,
and was happily more successful in that work than in his attempt to
tranquillise Ireland. The time had arrived when the labours on behalf
of the negro race, of Clarkson, Wilberforce, Mackintosh, Brougham,
Buxton, Lushington, and William Smith were to be followed with success,
by the abolition of slavery in the British West Indian colonies. The
Society of Friends, as became that philanthropic body, led the van
in the movement which began in 1823, when Wilberforce presented a
petition from them in the House of Commons. Soon afterwards, when Mr.
Buxton brought forward a resolution condemning slavery as repugnant
to Christianity and to the British Constitution, Mr. Canning moved a
counter-resolution as an amendment, recommending reforms in the system,
which, he alleged, might be safely left to the West Indian Assemblies;
and if they refused to do their duty, the Imperial Parliament might
then interfere. These resolutions were carried, although any one
acquainted with the history of the West Indies might have known that
they would be perfectly futile. No amelioration of the system could
be rationally expected from the reckless adventurers and mercenary
agents by whom many West Indian plantations were managed. The infamous
cruelty of which the missionary Smith had been the victim showed that,
while the colonial laws allowed the most horrible atrocities, there
existed among the planters a spirit of brutality which did not shrink
from their perpetration. Time was when such barbarities might have
escaped with impunity; when in Great Britain it was maintained in
high places, and even by the legislature, that slavery was defended
by an impregnable fortress, that property in human flesh was not only
expedient for the good of the commonwealth, and beneficial for the
negro, but also a sacred institution, founded on the authority of the
Bible. But, thanks to the indefatigable labours of the friends of
the negro race, such abominable dogmas had been long reprobated by
public opinion, and at the period now referred to no man ventured to
promulgate such heresies in England. The moral sense of the nation had
condemned slavery in every form. The missionaries had, in the midst of
tremendous difficulties and cruel persecutions, enlightened the West
Indian slaves with regard to their rights as men and their privileges
as Christians; and while they inculcated patience and meek submission
even to unjust laws, they animated their crushed hearts with the hope
that the blessings of liberty would soon be enjoyed by them, and that
humanity and justice would speedily triumph over the ruthless tyranny
under which they groaned.

Ten years passed away from the adoption of Mr. Canning's resolution,
and little or nothing was effectually done to mitigate the system,
not-withstanding various subsequent recommendations of the British
Government. The consolidated slave law for the Crown colonies contained
in an Order in Council issued in 1830, was proposed for the chartered
colonies as a model for their adoption; but it contained no provision
for the education or religious instruction of the slaves. All the
chartered colonies, except two, Grenada and Tobago, had legalised
Sunday markets, and they allowed no other time to the negroes for
marketing or cultivating their provision grounds. The evidence of
slaves had been made admissible; but in most of the colonies the right
was so restricted as to make it entirely useless. Except in the Crown
colonies, the marriage of slaves was subject to all sorts of vexatious
impediments. The provision against the separation of families was
found everywhere inoperative. The right of acquiring property was so
limited as to prove a mockery and a delusion. The Order in Council
gave the slaves the right of redeeming themselves and their families,
even against the will of their owners; but all the chartered colonies
peremptorily refused any such right of self-liberation. In nearly all
the colonies the master had a right by law to inflict thirty-nine
lashes at one time, on any slave of any age, or of either sex, for
any offence whatever, or for no offence. He could also imprison his
victims in the stocks of the workhouse as long as he pleased. There was
no return of punishments inflicted, and no proper record. An Order in
Council had forbidden the flogging of females; but in all the chartered
colonies the infamous practice had been continued in defiance of the
supreme Government. The administration of justice--if the term be
applicable to a system whose very essence was iniquity--was left to
pursue its own course, without any effort for its purification. In
July, 1830, Mr. Brougham brought forward his motion, that the House
should resolve, at the earliest possible period in next Session, to
take into consideration the state of the West Indian colonies, in order
to the mitigation and final abolition of slavery, and more especially
in order to the amendment of the administration of justice. But the
national mind was then so preoccupied with home subjects of agitation
that the House was but thinly attended, and the motion was lost by a
large majority. The Reform movement absorbed public interest for the
two following years, so that nothing was done to mitigate the hard lot
of the suffering negro till the question was taken up by Mr. Stanley,
in 1833, in compliance with the repeated and earnest entreaties
of the friends of emancipation. The abolitionists, of course, had
always insisted upon immediate, unconditional emancipation. But the
Ministerial plan contained two provisions altogether at variance with
their views; a term of apprenticeship, which, in the first draft of the
measure, was to last twelve years, and compensation to the owners--a
proposition which, though advanced with hesitation, ultimately assumed
the enormous amount of twenty millions sterling. On the principle of
compensation there was a general agreement, because it was the State
that had created the slave property, had legalised it, and imposed upon
the present owners all their liabilities. It was therefore thought
to be unjust to ruin them by what would be regarded as a breach of
faith on the part of the legislature. The same excuse could not be
made for the system of protracted apprenticeship, which would be a
continuance of slavery under another name. If the price were to be
paid for emancipation, the value should be received at once. This
was the feeling of Lord Howick, who was then Under-Secretary for the
Colonies, and who resigned his office rather than be a party to the
apprenticeship scheme, which he vigorously opposed in the House, as
did also Mr. Buxton and Mr. O'Connell. But the principle was carried
against them by an overwhelming majority. Among the most prominent
and efficient advocates of the negroes during the debates were Mr.
Buckingham, Dr. Lushington, Admiral Flemming, and Mr. T. B. Macaulay.
The opposition to the Government resolution was not violent; it was led
by Sir Robert Peel, whose most strenuous supporters were Sir Richard
Vivian, Mr. Godson, Mr. W. E. Gladstone, and Mr. Hume. In the House
of Lords the resolutions were accepted without a division, being
supported by the Earl of Ripon, Lord Suffield, Earl Grey, and the Lord
Chancellor Brougham. The speakers on the other side were the Duke of
Wellington, the Earl of Harewood, Lord Ellenborough, and Lord Wynford.

In the Bill which was founded on the resolutions the term of
apprenticeship was limited to six years for the plantation negroes,
and four for all others. The Bill passed the House of Lords with
slight opposition; and on the 28th of August, 1833, it received the
Royal Assent. It does not appear that William IV. urged any plea of
conscience against signing this Act of Emancipation, although in his
early days he had been, in common with all the Royal Family, except
the Duke of Gloucester, opposed to the abolition of the slave trade.
The Act was to take effect on the 1st day of August, 1834, on which
day slavery was to cease throughout the British colonies. All slaves
who at that date should appear to be six years old and upwards were
to be registered as "apprentice labourers" to those who had been
their owners. All slaves who happened to be brought into the United
Kingdom, and all apprentice labourers who might be brought into it
with the consent of their owners, were to be absolutely free. The
apprentices were divided into three classes. The first class consisted
of "predial apprentice labourers," usually employed in agriculture,
or the manufacture of colonial produce, on lands belonging to their
owners, and these were declared to be attached to the soil. The second
class, consisting of the same kind of labourers, who worked on lands
not belonging to their owners, were not attached to the soil. The third
class consisted of "non-predial apprenticed labourers," and embraced
mechanics, artisans, domestic servants, and all slaves not included in
the other two classes. The apprenticeship of the first was to terminate
on the 1st of August, 1840; and of the "non-predial" on the same day in
1838. The apprentices were not obliged to labour for their employers
more than forty-five hours in any one week. Voluntary discharges were
permitted; but, in that case, a provision was made for the support
of old and infirm apprentices. An apprentice could free himself
before the expiration of the term, against the will of his master, by
getting himself appraised, and paying the price. No apprentices were
to be removed from the colony to which they belonged, nor from one
plantation to another in the same colony, except on a certificate from
a justice of the peace that the removal would not injure their health
or welfare, or separate the members of the same family. Under these
conditions the apprentices were transferable with the estates to which
they were attached. Their masters were bound to furnish them with food,
clothing, lodging, and other necessaries, according to the existing
laws of the several colonies, and to allow them sufficient provision
ground, and time for cultivating it, where that mode of maintenance was
adopted. All children under six years of age when the Act came into
operation, and all that should be born during the apprenticeship, were
declared free; but if any children were found destitute, they could be
apprenticed, and subjected to the same regulations as the others. The
Act allowed governors of colonies to appoint stipendiary magistrates,
with salaries not exceeding £300 a year, to carry the provisions of the
law into effect. Corporal punishment was not absolutely abolished, but
it could be inflicted only by the special justices, who were authorised
to punish the apprentices by whipping, beating, imprisonment, or
addition to the hours of labour. The corporal punishment of females was
absolutely forbidden in all circumstances. The quantity of punishment
was restricted, and the hours of additional labour imposed were not to
exceed fifteen in the week.

The sum of twenty millions was divided into nineteen shares, one for
each of the colonies, proportioned to the number of its registered
slaves, taken in connection with the market price of slaves in that
colony, on an average of eight years, ending with 1830. But no money
was payable in any colony until it should have been declared by an
Order in Council that satisfactory provision had been made by law
in such colony for giving effect to the Emancipation Act. Two of
them were so perverse as to decline for several years to qualify for
the reception of the money; but others acted in a different spirit.
Believing that the system of apprenticeship was impolitic, they
declined to take advantage of it, and manumitted their slaves at once.
Antigua was the first to adopt this wise course. Its slaves were all
promptly emancipated, and their conduct fully justified the policy; for
on Christmas Day, 1834, for the first time during thirty years, martial
law was not proclaimed in that island. Thus, the effect of liberty was
peace, quietness, and confidence. Bermuda followed this good example,
as did also the smaller islands, and afterwards the large island of
Barbadoes; and their emancipation was hailed by the negroes with
religious services, followed by festive gatherings. Jamaica, and some
other islands, endeavoured to thwart the operation of the new law, as
far as possible, and took every advantage in making the apprentices
miserable, and wreaking upon them their spite and malice. They met with
harsher treatment than ever, being in many instances either savagely
ill-used or inhumanly neglected. Considering their provocations, it was
generally admitted that they behaved on the whole very well, enduring
with patience and resignation the afflictions which they knew must come
to an end in a few years. The total number of slaves converted into
apprentices on the 1st of August, 1834, was 800,000. The apprenticeship
did not last beyond the shorter time prescribed, and on the 1st of
August, 1838, there was not a slave in existence under the British
Crown, save only in the island of Mauritius, which was soon required by
instructions from the Home Government to carry the Act into effect.

Much inconvenience and misery were caused during the year by the trades
unions and their strikes. In several places the workmen combined in
order to enforce a rise of wages, and a more equitable distribution
of the profits derived from their labour. The striking commenced on
the 8th of March, when the men employed by the London gas companies
demanded that their wages should be increased from twenty-eight
shillings to thirty-five shillings a week, with two pots of porter
daily for each man. On the refusal of this demand they all stopped
working; but before much inconvenience could be experienced their
places were supplied by workmen from the country. On the 17th of
March an event occurred which caused general and violent excitement
among the working classes. At the Dorchester Assizes six agricultural
labourers were tried and convicted for being members of an illegal
society, and administering illegal oaths, the persons initiated being
admitted blindfold into a room where there was the picture of a
skeleton and a skull. They were sentenced to transportation for seven
years. Their case excited the greatest sympathy among the working
population throughout the kingdom. In London, Birmingham, and several
other large manufacturing towns immense meetings were held to petition
the king in favour of the convicts. In the midst of this excitement
the manufacturers of Leeds declared their determination not to employ
any persons in their factories who were members of trades unions. The
consequence was that in that town three thousand workmen struck in
one day. On the 15th of April there was a riot at Oldham, where, in
consequence of the arrest of two members of a trade union, a factory
was nearly destroyed, and one person killed, the mob having been
dispersed by a troop of lancers. Several of the rioters were arrested
and sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from six to eighteen
months. On the 21st of April a meeting of the trades unions took place
at Copenhagen Fields, to adopt a petition to the Home Secretary praying
for a remission of the sentence on the Dorchester convicts. They
marched to the Home Office through the leading thoroughfares, numbering
about 25,000, in order to back up their deputation, which, however,
Lord Melbourne refused to receive, though he intimated to them that
their petition should be laid before the king if presented in a proper
manner. The multitude then went in procession to Kennington Common.
On the 28th 13,000 London journeymen tailors struck for higher wages.
The masters, instead of yielding, resolved not to employ any persons
connected with trades unions, and after a few weeks the men submitted
and returned to their work.

[Illustration: SLAVERY EMANCIPATION FESTIVAL IN BARBADOES. (_See p._
368.)]

The conduct of the trades unions excited a great deal of angry feeling
amongst the wealthier classes; and the Government were vehemently
condemned for not putting down the combination with a strong hand.
It was said that the mischief they created was well known; that
though their interference with trade, "their atrocious oaths, impious
ceremonies, desperate tyranny, and secret assassinations had been
brought under their observation," Ministers could not be stirred to
any exhibition of energy for the protection of the manufacturer, the
workman, or the public. On the 28th of April the Duke of Newcastle
had brought the trades unions under the consideration of the House of
Lords, and questioned Ministers as to their neglect respecting the
disturbances these combinations occasioned. Lord Grey contented himself
with a quiet expression of regret for their existence, and of a hope
that they would die out if let alone; meanwhile, the Government were
ready to put down disorderly meetings. This apparent indifference
called forth indignant protests from the Marquis of Londonderry and
Lord Eldon. The Lord Chancellor declared that the meetings were
illegal, and that they were likely to produce great mischief; adding,
"Of all the worst things, and of all the most pernicious devices that
could be imagined for the injury of the interests of the working
classes, as well as of the interests of the country at large, nothing
was half so bad as their existence." He also stated that there could
not remain the shadow of a doubt of the justice of the conviction of
the Dorchester labourers. Strikes and combinations, however, continued
during the summer. At the Chester Assizes, on the 5th of August, two
men were indicted for the murder of a manufacturer during a strike in
1831. It appeared on evidence that the deceased had excited the ill
feeling of the trades unions of the place, where he had a mill, in
which he gave employment to a great number of people. Two of his own
workmen had agreed to assassinate him for the sum of £3 6s. 8d. each,
paid by the union. They shot him as he was passing through a lane to
his mills. Being found guilty, they were executed. On the 18th of the
same month the workmen employed by the builders of London struck to
the number of 10,000, including the artisans at the Government works.
This course was adopted in consequence of a combined declaration of the
master-builders, requiring them to abandon their connection with trades
unions.

Meanwhile in Ireland, where Lord Anglesey had been succeeded by Lord
Wellesley and Mr. Stanley by Mr. Littleton, O'Connell was openly
agitating for a Repeal of the Union. His conduct was much resented
by Lord Grey's followers, and at a meeting at Hull Mr. M. D. Hill
challenged the good faith of the Irish party, and declared that an
Irish member, who spoke with great violence against the Coercion Bill,
had secretly urged the Ministers to force it through in its integrity.
O'Connell brought the statement before the House early in the Session,
when it was unnecessarily confirmed by Lord Althorp, who said that he
had good reason to believe it to be true. After a violent scene, he
further admitted that Sheil was one of the members to whom he referred.
Mr. Sheil denied the imputation so passionately that, on the motion of
Sir F. Burdett, both he and Lord Althorp were taken into custody by the
Serjeant-at-Arms. They were released on submitting to the authority
of the House, and a committee, after examining into the matter and
collecting no evidence of value, were glad to avail themselves of an
apology tendered by Hill and to bring the incident to a close.

On the 22nd of April Mr. O'Connell brought forward a very comprehensive
motion. It was for a select committee to inquire and report on the
means by which the destruction of the Irish Parliament had been
effected; on the results of the Union upon Ireland, and upon the
labourers in husbandry and operatives in manufactures in England; and
on the probable consequences of continuing the Legislative Union
between Great Britain and Ireland. This motion originated a debate on
the Repeal question which lasted four days. O'Connell himself spoke
for six hours. The debate was chiefly memorable for a speech of Mr.
Spring-Rice, in defence of the Union, which also occupied six hours
in the delivery. He concluded by proposing an amendment to the effect
that an Address should be presented to the king by both Houses of
Parliament, expressing their determination to maintain the Legislative
Union inviolate. In a very full House the amendment was carried by an
overwhelming majority, the numbers being for, 523; against, 38. Mr.
Spring-Rice's speech served the Government materially, while by the
Conservatives it was regarded as "a damper" to their own hopes.

The chiefs of the Tory party were at this time sanguine in their
expectation of being speedily called to office. Their hopes were
founded mainly upon the dissensions that were known to exist in the
Cabinet. These dissensions were first revealed by O'Connell's motion
for a committee to inquire into the conduct of Baron Smith, when
presiding as a judge in criminal cases, and especially with reference
to a charge addressed by him to the grand jury of Dublin, in which he
said: "For the last two years I have seldom lost an opportunity for
making some monitory observations from the Bench. When the critical
and lawless situation of the country did not seem to be generally and
fully understood, I sounded the tocsin and pointed out the ambuscade.
Subsequent events deplorably proved that I had given no false alarm.
The audacity of factious leaders increased from the seeming impunity
which was allowed them; the progress of that sedition which they
encouraged augmented in the same proportion, till on this state of
things came, at length, the Coercion Bill at once to arrest the
mischief, and consummate the proof of its existence and extent." As
there was no doubt that these shafts were aimed at O'Connell, this last
charge afforded him a fair opportunity of putting a stop to the abuse
by bringing the conduct of the talented but eccentric judge before
Parliament; for, as there was no political case in the calendar, there
was no excuse for the attack. Mr. Littleton declared it impossible to
refuse his consent to the motion. Mr. Stanley, Lord Althorp, and Lord
John Russell expressed a similar view. Sir James Graham briefly but
warmly dissented from his colleagues. He had come down to the House
with the understanding that they meant to oppose the motion. He for
one still retained his opinion, and had seen no reason to change it. As
one who valued the independence of the judges and his own character, he
must declare that if the motion were carried, and if, as its result, an
Address was presented to the Crown for the removal of Baron Smith, it
would be a highly inexpedient--nay, more, a most unjust proceeding. The
present would be the most painful vote he had ever given, since he felt
it incumbent upon him to sever himself from those friends with whom
during a public life of some duration he had had the honour of acting;
but feeling as he did the proposition to be one dangerous in itself, he
conceived he would be betraying the trust committed to him if he did
not declare against it. Baron Smith was ably defended by Mr. Shaw, by
Sir J. Scarlett, and Sir Robert Peel. On a division, the motion for a
committee of inquiry was carried by 167 to 74, Sir James Graham and Mr.
Spring-Rice voting in the minority. Next morning Sir James tendered his
resignation as First Lord of the Admiralty, which was declined, and in
the following week the vote was rescinded by a majority of six.

Thus the Cabinet was evidently fast breaking up, when Mr. Littleton
introduced his Tithe Bill. Its object was much the same as Mr.
Stanley's Act of 1832 for the Compulsory Commutation of Tithe. This
last Act had been a failure, and Mr. Littleton was compelled to ask
Parliament to grant the sum of £1,000,000 to pay the arrears. He
hoped to remedy its defects by reducing the number of people who were
liable to tithe, and then, after the 1st of November, to commute the
tithe into a land tax, payable to the State, to reduce its amount by
one-fifth, and to allow any person having a substantial interest in
the estate to redeem the residue of it, after five years had expired,
on easy terms. After a number of stormy debates the progress of the
measure seemed assured, when Lord John Russell went out of his way
to express his views in favour of the appropriation of the surplus
revenues of the Irish Church to secular purposes. Stanley wrote to
Graham the laconic note, "Johnny has upset the coach." Indeed, the
declaration was the more indiscreet because the Cabinet was hopelessly
divided on the point.

On the 27th of May Mr. Ward brought forward a motion upon this subject.
In an able speech he reviewed the state of Ireland, and remarked that
since 1819 it had been necessary to maintain there an army of 22,000
men, at a cost of a million sterling per annum, exclusive of a police
force that cost £300,000 a year. All this enormous expense and trouble
in governing Ireland he ascribed to the existence of a religious
establishment hostile to the majority of the people; he therefore moved
that "the Protestant episcopal establishment in Ireland exceeds the
spiritual wants of the Protestant population; and that, it being the
right of the State to regulate the distribution of Church property in
such a manner as Parliament may determine, it is the opinion of this
House that the temporal possessions of the Church of Ireland, as now
established by law, ought to be reduced."

The motion was seconded by Mr. Grote. When he had concluded, Lord
Althorp rose and moved that the House should be adjourned until the 2nd
of June. The differences in the Cabinet had now reached their crisis.
It was fully expected that Mr. Ward's motion would be carried, and
Ministers differed as to whether the principle involved in it should
be rejected or accepted; the majority were for accepting it, whereupon
Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, Lord Ripon, and the Duke of Richmond
resigned their offices. They were succeeded by Mr. Spring-Rice, as
Colonial Secretary; Lord Auckland, as First Lord of the Admiralty; the
Earl of Carlisle, as Lord Privy Seal; Mr. Abercromby, as Master of the
Mint. Mr. Poulett Thompson became President of the Board of Trade, and
the Marquis of Conyngham Postmaster-General.

On the following day, which was the anniversary of the king's birthday,
the Irish prelates, headed by the Archbishop of Armagh, presented
an address to his Majesty, complaining of the attacks on the Irish
Church, deprecating the threatened innovations, and imploring his
protection. The king was greatly moved by this appeal. Breaking
through the usual restraints, he delivered an extemporaneous answer,
in which, among other things, he said, "I now remember you have a
right to require of me to be resolute in defence of the Church." He
assured the bishops that their rights should be preserved unimpaired,
and that if the interior arrangements of the Irish Church required any
amendment--which, however, he greatly doubted--he hoped it would be
left to the bishops to correct them, without the interference of other
parties. He was now completing his 69th year, and he must prepare to
leave the world with a conscience clear in regard to the maintenance
of the Church. Tears ran down his cheeks while, in conclusion, he
said, "I have spoken more strongly than usual, because of the unhappy
circumstances that have forced themselves upon the observation of all.
The threats of those who are the enemies of the Church make it the more
necessary for those who feel their duty to that Church to speak out.
The words which you hear from me are, indeed, spoken by my mouth, but
they flow from my heart."

These words, indiscreet as they were, and calculated to embarrass
the Ministers, were regarded as in the highest degree precious by
the bishops and clergy, and the whole Tory party. With the utmost
despatch they were circulated far and wide, with the design of bringing
public feeling to bear against Mr. Ward's motion. In the meantime,
great efforts were made by the Government to be able to evade the
motion. Its position at this time appeared far from enviable, and
there was a general impression that it could not long survive. The new
appointments did not give satisfaction. The Cabinet was said to be
only patched up in order to wear through the Session. It was in these
discouraging circumstances that Lord Althorp had to meet Mr. Ward's
motion on Monday, the 2nd of June. In order to avoid a dissolution and
a general election, the results of which might turn upon the existence
of the Irish Church, it was necessary that Mr. Ward's motion should be
defeated. He refused to withdraw it, because he apprehended the speedy
dissolution of the Ministry, and he wished the decision of the House
of Commons on the Irish Church question to be recorded, that it might
stand in the way of a less liberal Administration. The anticipated
contest in the Commons that evening excited extraordinary interest.
The House was surrounded by a crowd anxious to obtain admittance or to
hear the result, while within it was so thronged with members that the
Ministers found it difficult to get to their seats. Rarely has there
been so full a House, the number of members being 516. When Mr. Ward
had spoken in favour of his motion, Lord Althorp rose to reply. He
announced that a special commission of inquiry had been already issued,
composed of laymen, who were to visit every parish in Ireland, and were
to report on the means of religious instruction for the people; and
that, pending this inquiry, he saw no necessity for the House being
called upon to affirm the principles of Mr. Ward's motion. He would,
therefore, content himself by moving the previous question. This was
carried by an overwhelming majority, the numbers being 396 to 120.

But a month only elapsed when fresh differences arose in the Cabinet
leading to further resignations, and ending in the retirement of
Lord Grey from public life. Again Ireland was the rock on which the
Cabinet struck and went to pieces. The Irish Coercion Act, which had
been passed for one year only, was to be renewed, with modifications,
for which purpose a Bill was introduced into the Lords about the
middle of June. A large number of the Liberal members of England
and Scotland, as well as Ireland, required the omission of the
clauses enabling the Lord-Lieutenant to suppress public meetings
by proclamation--a power which Lord Wellesley was induced by his
meddlesome advisers, Mr. Littleton and Lord Brougham, to declare he
did not require. His opinion, however, was overruled in the Cabinet,
and they agreed to support the Bill as it stood. Lord Althorp had
very reluctantly yielded the point, more especially as the necessity
for the extra-constitutional powers was denied by the Irish executive
and by the Lord Chancellor. Mr. Littleton, the Irish Secretary,
having indiscreetly made O'Connell aware of the division in the
Cabinet, and of the fact that several of its members were supporting
the clause contrary to their convictions, the Irish leader used the
knowledge thus obtained with tremendous effect. While sitting under
the fierce invectives of his opponent, Lord Althorp felt his position
to be intolerable. On quitting the House, after a long and harassing
discussion, on the 7th of July, he wrote to the Prime Minister,
announcing this fact. Next morning there was a conference, after which
Lord Grey transmitted to the king his resignation, with that of Lord
Althorp; and on the recommendation of Lord Grey, Lord Melbourne was
appointed to the office of Prime Minister, being succeeded in the
Home Office by Lord Duncannon; while Lord Althorp, relieved from his
obligation with regard to the Coercion Bill, consented to resume the
post he had just resigned.

[Illustration: KENNINGTON COMMON, LONDON, ABOUT 1840.]

On the 9th of July Earl Grey made a statement in the Lords, when the
Duke of Wellington disclaimed all personal hostility in the opposition
he had been obliged to give to his Government. The Lord Chancellor
pronounced an affecting eulogium on the great statesman who was finally
retiring from his work, and expressed his own determination to remain
in office. Lord Grey's popular Administration had lasted three years,
seven months, and twenty-two days, which exceeded the term of his
predecessor, the Duke of Wellington, by nearly a year and a half. Lord
Grey, from the infirmities of age, declining health, and weariness
of official life, had wished to retire at the close of the previous
Session, but was prevailed upon by his colleagues to remain in office.
In delivering his farewell speech he was listened to with profound
attention, and at one moment was so overpowered by his feelings that he
was compelled to sit down, the Duke of Wellington considerately filling
up the interval by presenting some petitions.

Earl Grey had lived to witness the triumphant realisation of all the
great objects for which throughout his public life he had contended,
sometimes almost without hope. Catholic Emancipation had been yielded
by his opponents as a tardy concession to the imperative demand of the
nation. In the debates on that question in the House of Lords, Lord
Grey was said to have excelled all others, and even himself. The long
dormant question of Parliamentary Reform was quickened into life by
the electric shock of the French Revolution of 1830, when the Duke of
Wellington, with equal honesty and rashness, affirmed that the existing
system of representation enjoyed the full and entire confidence of the
country. This declaration raised a storm before which he was compelled
to retire, in order to make way for a statesman with keener eye and
firmer hand, to hold the helm and steer the vessel in that perilous
crisis of the nation's destiny. Throughout the whole of that trying
time Earl Grey's wisdom, his steadfastness, the moral greatness of his
character, and the responsibility of his position, made him the centre
of universal interest, and won for him the respect and admiration of
all parties in the nation. Baffled again and again in the struggle for
Reform, undismayed by the most formidable opposition, not deterred
or disheartened by repeated repulses, he renewed his attacks on the
citadel of monopoly and corruption, till at last his efforts were
crowned with victory. And well did he use the great power for good
which the Reform Parliament put into his hands. The emancipation of
the slaves, the reform of the Irish Church, and the abolition of the
gigantic abuses of the Poor Law system, were among the legislative
achievements which he effected. His foreign policy, in the able hands
of Lord Palmerston, was in harmony with his own domestic policy--bold,
just, moderate, true to the cause of freedom abroad, while vigilantly
guarding the national honour of his own country. By his vigorous
diplomacy he had saved Belgium from being overwhelmed by the Dutch, and
at the same time kept her independent of France. A capable Sovereign
had been provided for her in Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the widowed
husband of Charlotte of England. Finally, when the Dutch declined
to give way to the remonstrances of the Western Powers, a joint
Anglo-French expedition was dispatched, which compelled the citadel of
Antwerp to capitulate on December 23rd, 1832. Nevertheless, such was
the obstinacy of the Dutch that the question remained unsettled on the
fall of the Grey Ministry. Lord Palmerston's foreign policy was equally
noteworthy in other quarters of the globe. If he could do little for
the revolution in Poland, he could at least preserve constitutionalism
in the Peninsula, where it was threatened by Dom Miguel in Portugal,
and, after the death of Ferdinand in 1833, by Don Carlos in Spain.
On the 22nd of April, 1834, Palmerston, in concert with Talleyrand,
now French Minister in London, drew up the Quadruple Treaty, by which
the two Powers undertook to deliver the Peninsula from the Absolutist
pretenders. Its effect for the time being was remarkable; they both
fled from the country, and constitutionalism was restored.




CHAPTER X.

REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. (_continued_).

    The Remainder of the Session--The Coercion Bill carried--Rejection
    of the Tithes Bill--University Tests--Prorogation of
    Parliament--Brougham's Tour in Scotland--Burning of the Houses
    of Parliament--Fall of Melbourne's Ministry--Wellington
    sole Minister--Peel forms a Ministry--The Tamworth
    Manifesto--Dissolution and General Election--Mr. Abercromby
    elected Speaker--The Lichfield House Compact--Peel defeated
    on the Address--Lord John Russell announces a Resolution on
    Appropriation--Lord Chandos's Motion--Lord Londonderry's
    Appointment--The Dissenters and London University--Hardinge's
    Tithe Bill--The Appropriation Resolution--The Debate--Peel
    resigns--Melbourne's second Ministry--Conservative Successes--Lord
    Alvanley and O'Connell--The Duel between Alvanley and
    Morgan O'Connell--O'Connell and Disraeli--Character of Lord
    Melbourne--Municipal Reform--Report of the Commission--The
    Municipal Corporations Act introduced--Its Progress in
    the Commons--Lyndhurst's Amendments-It becomes Law--Irish
    Corporations--Report of the Commission--The Bill is mutilated in
    the Upper House, and abandoned--It becomes Law in 1840--Municipal
    Reform in Scotland.


On the 17th of July the new Premier, Lord Melbourne, who, declining, on
the king's suggestion, to form a coalition with the Duke of Wellington
and Mr. Stanley, had made few alterations in the Ministry, announced
a less offensive Coercion Bill for Ireland, which led to an animated
debate, in which Lords Wicklow and Wharncliffe, the Duke of Wellington,
and other peers strongly censured the conduct of the Government for
its alleged inconsistency, vacillation, and tergiversation. The new
Coercion Bill passed quickly through both Houses, and became the law of
the land before the end of the month. The Tithes Bill was rejected in
the House of Lords, on the motion of Lord Ellenborough, by 189 votes to
122.

The English Dissenters were led, notwithstanding the difference in
creed, to sympathise to a considerable extent with Irish Catholics
in their agitation against the Church establishment. Dissenters felt
particularly aggrieved by the tests which debarred them from obtaining
University degrees, which, they justly contended, should be attainable
as a matter of right on equal grounds by citizens of all denominations.
A petition was presented by Lord Grey on the 21st of March in the
Upper House, and by Mr. Spring-Rice on the 24th in the Commons; but
no step was taken in consequence till after the Easter recess, when
Colonel Williams moved an Address to the Crown, praying that the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge should no longer act under the
letters of James I. Mr. Wood moved an amendment to the effect that it
was more advisable to proceed by Bill, which was carried by a large
majority; but before anything could be done the exclusive spirit of
both Universities was roused to a pitch of violent excitement, and in
the midst of the controversial storm the quiet voice of reason could
not be heard. Mr. Stanley could not see why a man should sign the
Thirty-Nine Articles in order to obtain a literary degree, and he
deprecated the idea that such a subscription should be regarded as a
mere matter of form. Sir Robert Peel was not yet prepared to carry out
fully the principle of religious equality. The Bill, he argued, would
give to Jews, infidels, and atheists a statutable right of demanding
admission into our Universities. Dissenters had been freed from all
civil disabilities by the repeal of the Test Acts, and the Roman
Catholics by the Emancipation Act; a vast change had been effected in
the constitution of Parliament by the Reform Act: and after all those
concessions, were they now to be deprived of an Established Church?
What was the essence of an Established Church? What but the legislative
recognition of it on the part of the State? Parliament was therefore
entitled to say to the Dissenters, "With that legislative recognition
you shall not interfere." In a brief speech, full of sound sense, Lord
Althorp showed the absurdity of those arguments and apprehensions. The
second reading of the Bill was carried by a majority of 321 to 194.
It was opposed by the Speaker in committee, but having there received
some amendments, it was read a third time and passed on the 28th of
July by a majority of 164 against 75. In the Lords it was denounced
by the Duke of Gloucester, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge,
who moved that it be read a second time that day six months. He was
followed by the Duke of Wellington, Chancellor of the University of
Oxford. Lord Brougham ably defended the measure, but in vain. The Bill
was rejected by a majority of 187 against 85. An attempt made by Lord
Althorp to abolish church-rates, and to grant in lieu thereof the sum
of £250,000 from the land-tax, to effect a commutation of tithes, and
to allow Dissenters to get married in their own chapels, was equally
unsuccessful.

On the 15th of August Parliament was prorogued by the king in person.
The Speech referred to the postponement of a final settlement between
Holland and Belgium, which his Majesty regretted. He expressed lively
satisfaction at the termination of the civil war in Portugal, and
disappointment at the recurrence of disorders in Spain. He alluded with
satisfaction to the numerous and important questions that had engaged
the attention of Parliament, more especially the amendment of the
Poor Laws, and the establishment of a central court for the trial of
offenders in the metropolis and its vicinity. The important subjects of
jurisprudence and the reform of municipal corporations remained to be
considered in the next Session.

Immediately on the rising of Parliament O'Connell published a violent
attack in the form of a letter to Lord Duncannon. This was taken up
by Lord Brougham in the course of an oratorical tour which he was
making through Scotland, and a mutual exchange of compliments ensued.
Unfortunately the Chancellor's eccentricity did not stop there. Earl
Grey was not permitted to retire into private life without some popular
recognition of his great public services. On the 15th of September a
grand banquet was given in Edinburgh in honour of this illustrious
statesman. "Probably," says a contemporary chronicle, "no Minister
in the zenith of his power ever before received so gratifying a
tribute of national respect as was paid on this occasion to one who
had not only retired from office, but retired from it for ever. The
popular enthusiasm, both in the capital and other parts of Scotland,
was extreme, which the noble earl sensibly felt, and gratefully
acknowledged as among the proudest circumstances of his life. The
dinner took place in a large pavilion, erected for the occasion in the
area of the High School, and was provided for upwards of 1,500 persons,
more than 600 having been admitted after the removal of the cloth. The
principal speakers were Earl Grey, the Lord Chancellor, and the Earl
of Durham. Earl Grey and the Lord Chancellor, in their speeches, said
they considered that the Reform in Parliament afforded the means by
which all useful improvements might be obtained without violence. Both
advocated a deliberate and careful, but steady course of amelioration
and reform, and both derided the idea of a reaction in favour of Tory
principles of government. The Earl of Durham avowed his opinions in
favour of the ballot and household suffrage, and declared that he
should regret every hour which left ancient and recognised abuses
unreformed." This involved the Lord Chancellor in a new controversy in
which more personalities were exchanged.

On the 9th of August, 1834, a fire broke out in part of the Dublin
Custom House, one of the finest buildings in the United Kingdom. Owing
to the immense quantity of combustible materials, the fierceness
of the conflagration was something terrific. By great exertion the
building was saved. This fire naturally produced a great sensation
throughout the United Kingdom, but it was nothing in comparison to the
interest excited by the burning of the two Houses of Parliament, which
occurred on the 16th of October, 1834. According to the report of the
Lords of the Privy Council, who inquired into the cause of the fire,
the tally-room of the exchequer had been required for the temporary
accommodation of the Court of Bankruptcy, and it was necessary to get
rid of a quantity of the old exchequer tallies, which had accumulated
till they would have made about two cartloads. These tallies had been
used for kindling the fires. On one occasion a quantity of them was
burned in Tothill Fields. There had been a question as to the best mode
of getting rid of them, and it was ultimately resolved that they should
be carefully and gradually consumed in the stoves of the House of
Lords. But the work had been committed to workmen who were the reverse
of careful. They heaped on the fuel, nearly filling the furnaces, and
causing a blaze which overheated the flues. The housekeeper of the
Lords' chamber sent to them several times during the day, complaining
of the smoke and heat, but they assured her there was no danger. About
four o'clock in the afternoon two strangers were admitted to see the
House of Lords, and found the heat and smoke so stifling, that they
were led to examine the floor, when they perceived that the floor-cloth
was "sweating." At six o'clock the pent-up flames broke forth through
the windows, and immediately the alarm was spread in all directions.
The Ministers, the king's sons, Mr. Hume, and others, were presently on
the spot, and did all they could in the consternation and confusion.
The law courts were saved by having their roofs stripped off, and
causing the engines to play on the interior. The greatest efforts were
made to save Westminster Hall, which was happily preserved; but the
two Houses of Parliament were completely destroyed, together with the
Commons' library, the Lords' painted chamber, many of the committee
rooms, part of the Speaker's house, the rooms of the Lord Chancellor
and other law officers, as well as the kitchen and eating-rooms. The
king promptly offered Parliament the use of Buckingham Palace; but it
was thought best to fit up temporary rooms on the old site, and to have
them ready for next Session. The committee of the Privy Council sat for
several days, and during the whole of that time the fire continued to
smoulder among the _débris_, and in the coal vaults, while the engines
were heard to play from day to day within the boarded avenues. As soon
as possible the temporary halls were prepared. The House of Lords was
fitted up for the Commons, and the painted chamber for the Lords, at an
expense of £30,000.

[Illustration: BURNING OF THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. (_See p._ 376.)]

The Ministry had, as a matter of course, been much weakened by the
retirement of Lord Grey; but, having got through the Session, it might
have survived to the next meeting of Parliament but for the death of
Earl Spencer, which occurred on the 10th of November--an event which
removed Lord Althorp to the House of Peers. It was supposed that
this would lead only to a fresh modification of the Cabinet, by a
redistribution of places. For example, Lord John Russell was to succeed
Lord Althorp as the leader of the House of Commons. Lord Melbourne's
Administration seemed to be quietly acquiesced in, as sufficient for
a time; the nation evidently assuming that, in any case, a Liberal
Government was the necessary consequence of a reformed Parliament. The
public were therefore startled when it was announced on the 15th that
the king had dismissed his Ministers. It appeared that Lord Melbourne
had waited upon his Majesty at Brighton, on the 14th, to take his
commands as to the new arrangements he was about to make. But the
king said he considered that Government dissolved by the removal of
Lord Althorp; that he did not approve of the intended construction of
the Cabinet; that Lord John Russell would make "a wretched figure" as
leader of the House, and that Abercromby and Spring-Rice were worse
than Russell; that he did not approve of their intended measure
with regard to the Irish Church; and concluded by informing Lord
Melbourne that he would not impose upon him the task of completing the
Ministerial arrangements, but would send for the Duke of Wellington.

Melbourne returned to town that evening, the bearer of a letter to the
Duke. He communicated the state of affairs to Brougham under pledge
of secrecy, but the Lord Chancellor promptly went to the _Times_ and
gave the editor a report of the circumstances, with the malicious
addition--"The queen has done it all." The king, furious at the insult,
came up to town, and dismissed his Ministers before their successors
were appointed. Meanwhile, the Duke went to Brighton on Sunday, and
advised the king to send for Sir Robert Peel, who was then in Italy. A
messenger was immediately despatched, who in ten days arrived at Rome,
and surprised Sir Robert Peel with the announcement of the king's wish
that he should return to England forthwith. Next morning the right
honourable baronet started for home, and arrived in London on the 9th
of December. The Duke of Wellington details the circumstances of this
Ministerial crisis in a letter to the Duke of Buckingham. According to
his account, the death of the Earl Spencer, which removed Lord Althorp
from the House of Commons, from the management of the Government
business in that assembly, and from the office of Chancellor of the
Exchequer, occasioned the greatest difficulty and embarrassment.
His personal influence and weight in the House of Commons were the
main foundation of the strength of the late Government; and upon his
removal it was necessary for the king and his Ministers to consider
whether fresh arrangements should be made to enable his Majesty's late
servants to conduct the affairs of the country, or whether it was
advisable for his Majesty to adopt any other course. The arrangements
in contemplation must have reference, not only to men, but to measures,
to some of which the king felt the strongest objection. He had also
strong objections to some of the members of the Cabinet. The Duke
was therefore requested to form an Administration, but he earnestly
recommended Sir Robert Peel as the fittest man for the office of Prime
Minister. In the meanwhile he offered to hold the offices of First Lord
of the Treasury and Home Secretary until Sir Robert Peel's return, Lord
Lyndhurst holding the Great Seals temporarily, subject, with all the
other arrangements, to Sir Robert Peel's approbation. On the 21st Lord
Lyndhurst was gazetted as Lord Chancellor, holding in the interim his
office of Chief Baron of the Exchequer, which Lord Brougham, dreading
the prospect of idleness, offered to fill without salary, thus saving
the country £12,000 a year, an offer which exposed him to censure from
his own party, and which he afterwards withdrew.

The plot thickened as it proceeded. It was suspected that the
Conservative section of the Whigs wished for office, and that Sir
Robert Peel wished to have them. Mr. Stanley (now Lord Stanley in
consequence of the death of his grandfather, the Earl of Derby),
Sir. J. Graham, and the Duke of Richmond had a meeting at the Duke
of Sutherland's, to consider what they should do, in consequence of
proposals made to them to join the Administration. But as they would
not pledge themselves to forward Conservative measures to the extent
required, Sir Robert Peel was obliged to form a Government of Tories
exclusively. On the 10th of the month the arrangements were completed,
and the following were announced as the members of the Cabinet:--First
Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Robert
Peel; Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst; Privy Seal, Lord Wharncliffe;
Secretary of the Home Department, Mr. Goulburn; Secretary of the
Foreign Department, Duke of Wellington; Secretary of the Colonial
Department, Lord Aberdeen; First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl Ripon;
Secretary for Ireland, Sir H. Hardinge; President of the Board of
Control, Lord Ellenborough; President of the Board of Trade and Master
of the Mint, Mr. Baring; Paymaster of the Forces, Mr. E. Knatchbull;
Secretary at War, Mr. Herries; Master-General of the Ordnance, Sir G.
Murray.

Sir Robert Peel did all in his power to form out of the materials
at his disposal a Ministry that should command the confidence of
the country. On the 16th he issued an address to his constituents
at Tamworth, in which he announced the policy that should guide the
new Government. He declared his intention to correct all proved
abuses and real grievances; to preserve peace at home and abroad;
to resist the secularisation of Church property in any part of the
United Kingdom; to fulfil existing engagements with Foreign Powers; to
observe a strict economy in the public expenditure; and promised an
impartial consideration of what was due to all interests, agricultural,
manufacturing, and commercial. He said:--"With regard to the Reform
Bill itself, I accept it as a final and irrevocable settlement of a
great constitutional question; a settlement which no friend to the
peace and welfare of the country would attempt to disturb either by
direct or insidious means. I will carry out its intentions, supposing
those to imply a careful review of old institutions, undertaken in a
friendly spirit, and with a purpose of improvement."

The first Reform Parliament was dissolved by proclamation on the
30th of December, after an existence of only one year and eleven
months. This proceeding was regarded by the Reformers as a sort of
political sacrilege; a manifest flying in the face of the people;
a clear declaration of an intention to destroy popular rights. But
the care bestowed on the registries told strongly in favour of the
Conservatives at the English elections. The exertions they made to
secure a majority were immense. It was believed at the time that the
Carlton Club had expended nearly a million sterling in securing the
success of their candidates in every possible way in which money could
be made available. In the counties and boroughs the Whigs and Radicals
lost about 100 seats, but after all the Conservatives could muster
only 302 members; against 356. The contests were unusually numerous
and severe, but the Reform Act machinery worked so well that the
elections were for the most part conducted in a very orderly manner.
In many places the closeness of the poll was remarkable. It was a
neck and neck race between the rival candidates. In the metropolitan
boroughs the Ministerialists were everywhere defeated. Not one of the
sixteen seats in this vast centre of influence could the Government,
with all its lavish expenditure, obtain. In some of the provincial
towns, however--Bristol, Exeter, Newcastle, Hull, York, Leeds, Halifax,
and Warrington--a Tory supplanted a Whig. At Liverpool the contest
was intensely exciting. During the last hour of polling were seen in
every direction vans, gigs, and flies in rapid motion, and the price
of a vote rose from £15 to £25. The result was the return of Lord
Sandon, a moderate Tory; Sir Howard Douglas, the other Conservative
candidate, being defeated by Mr. Ewart. In Lancashire and Hampshire
both the Liberal candidates were defeated. Manchester, Birmingham,
Bolton, Sheffield, Preston, and most of the manufacturing towns,
returned Liberals. On the whole, the Government had a small majority
of the five hundred English members. In Scotland, however, the Reform
Act had wrought a complete revolution, and the mass of the electors
so long excluded from political power used the privileges they had
obtained with great zeal in favour of the party to which they were
indebted for their enfranchisement. The whole of the burghs, twenty
in number, returned Liberal members. Five of the counties were gained
by the Tories and three by the Whigs, where respectively they had
formerly failed. Glasgow, whose voice had been neutralised by returning
one representative of each party, now returned two Liberals. Serious
disturbances took place at Jedburgh when Lord John Scott, the Tory
candidate, made his appearance. At Hawick, in the same county, the
rioting was still worse. The persons who came to vote for him were spit
upon, pelted with stones, and severely struck. In some cases they were
thrown into the stream that runs through the town, and subjected to the
most shocking indignities, which the judges who afterwards tried the
cases declared to be "worse than death itself."

But the new Government met its Nemesis in Ireland. O'Connell and
the priests were resolved that, so far as in them lay, Protestant
ascendency should not be re-established in that country. The Anti-Tory
Association was but one of many names and forms which the Protean
agitation had assumed, and all were brought to bear with concentrated
power upon every point to secure the defeat of the Ministerial
candidates. Minor differences were sunk for the occasion, and all
forces were combined against the Government. The consequence was
that amongst the large constituencies the cause of Reform was almost
everywhere successful. In Kerry, in Meath, in Youghal, and Tralee,
the candidates returned were the sons and nephew of O'Connell. He
himself stood a severe contest for Dublin, and was returned with Mr.
Ruthven, but was unseated on petition. It was during this contest that
he recommended that a "death's head and cross-bones" should be painted
on the door of every elector who would support the "nefarious and
blood-stained" tithe system.

It was the tremendous exertions of O'Connell and his followers that
secured the triumph of the Liberal party in this memorable struggle.
The first trial of strength was on the election of a Speaker.
Parliament met on the 19th of February, 1835, and Lord Francis
Egerton, one of the members for Lancashire, moved that Sir C. Manners
Sutton, who for eighteen years had filled the chair with the unanimous
approbation of all parties in the House, should be re-elected. Mr.
Denison, one of the members for Surrey, proposed Mr. Abercromby, a
gentleman of high position at the bar, and member for the city of
Edinburgh. The division, it was felt on both sides, would be decisive
as to the fate of the Government, by showing whether or not it was
supported by a majority of the new Parliament which was the response
given to the Prime Minister's appeal to the country. The house was the
fullest on record, there being 626 members present. Mr. Abercromby was
elected by a majority of ten, the numbers being 316 to 306. Sir Charles
Sutton was supported by a majority of the English members--23, but his
opponent had a majority of ten of the Scottish. Still, had the decision
been in the hands of the British representatives, Government would
have had a majority of 13; but of the Irish members only 41 voted for
Sutton, while 61 voted for Abercromby. From this memorable division two
things were evident to the Tories, in which the future of England for
the next half century was to them distinctly foreshadowed; the first
was, that the Ministry was entirely, on party questions, at the mercy
of the Irish Catholic members; the second, that the county members of
the whole empire were outvoted by the borough members in the proportion
of 35 to 20, and that a large majority of the former had declared for
the Conservative side.

It was stated that the overthrow of Peel's Government was decided by
what was called the Lichfield House compact, which made a great noise
at the time. By this compact it was alleged that a formal coalition
had been effected between the Whigs and the Irish Catholics; but they
denied that there was anything formal about the arrangement. There
was a meeting, it is true, at Lichfield House, when Lord John Russell
stated his intentions, and described what would be his Parliamentary
tactics. These met the approval of O'Connell and his friends, and to
that extent alone, even by implication, did any compact exist. There
had also, it appears from Mr. Walpole's "Life of Lord John Russell,"
been certain _pour-parlers_, the result of a formal circular issued
by Lord Duncannon. Mr. O'Connell was accustomed to explain his reason
for supporting the Whigs by a comparison which was not the most
complimentary to them; he said they were like an old hat thrust into a
broken pane to keep out the cold.

Sir Robert Peel hoped that by earnestly promoting practical reforms,
and improving the institutions of the country in the spirit of his
manifesto, he would gradually conciliate a number of members of
independent position and moderate views, so that he might be able to
secure a working majority. He therefore did not resign when defeated
in the first trial of strength on the election of a Speaker; and
the same consideration induced him to hold his ground when he was
defeated on the amendment to the Address. The House of Commons met
for the despatch of business on the 24th of February. The Speech
from the Throne, after lamenting the destruction of the Houses of
Parliament, congratulated the country on the prevalent commercial
prosperity, which, however, was accompanied by a general depression
of the agricultural interest. The king, therefore, recommended to
the consideration of Parliament whether it might not be in their
power, after providing for the exigencies of the public service, and
consistently with the steadfast maintenance of the public credit, to
devise a method for mitigating the pressure of those local charges
which bore heavily on the owners and occupiers of land, and for
distributing the burden of them more equally over other descriptions
of property. When the Address was moved, an amendment was proposed by
Lord Morpeth, which was designed to strike at the very existence of
the new Ministry. It was not a direct censure upon their policy, or
a formal declaration of want of confidence; but it affirmed a policy
materially differing from that which had been announced by Sir Robert
Peel. It expressed a hope that municipal corporations would be placed
under vigilant popular control; that the undoubted grievances of the
Dissenters would be considered; that abuses in the Church of England
and Ireland would be removed; and it lamented the dissolution of
Parliament as an unnecessary measure, by which the progress of these
and other reforms had been interrupted and endangered. This hostile
motion gave rise to a debate of intense earnestness, which lasted four
nights. It was not easy to predict, during the course of the conflict,
which side would be victorious. Even the whippers-in were doubtful of
the issue; but the contest ended in the triumph of the Liberals, who
had a majority of seven, the numbers being 309 to 302. Of the English
members, the Government had a majority of 32; and of the English and
Scottish together, of 16; but in Ireland Sir Robert Peel's supporters
were only 36, while the Liberals mustered 59.

As Ministers did not resign on being placed in a minority the third
time, rumours were industriously circulated by their opponents that
they meant to rule the country despotically; that they were about to
dissolve Parliament the second time, and had resolved to maintain the
army on their own responsibility, without the Mutiny Act. On the 2nd
of March Lord John Russell, referring to these rumours, gave notice
that he intended to bring forward the Irish Appropriation question, and
the question of Municipal Reform. It was for a test of this kind that
Sir Robert Peel waited. In the meantime he denied that he had any such
intentions as those ascribed to him, and compelled Mr. Hume to withdraw
his proposal to limit the supplies to three months. He promised that
Government would bring in a Bill on the Irish Church; but it would
adhere strictly to the principle that ecclesiastical property should
be reserved for ecclesiastical purposes. He declared they would be
prepared to remedy all real abuses when the report of the Commissioners
appointed for their investigation was received.

[Illustration: LORD ALTHORP (3RD EARL SPENCER).]

On the 26th of March the Marquis of Chandos made an attempt to obtain
some relief for the agricultural interest, which was then in a very
depressed state, and the measure he proposed was the abolition of the
malt tax, which brought in the sum of £4,812,000. Sir Robert Peel
prophesied that if this tax were abolished they would be in for a
property tax. He said: "My prophecy is, that if you repeal this tax
you will make an income tax necessary; to that, be assured, you must
come at last, if you repeal the malt tax. You will lay your taxes on
articles of general consumption--on tobacco, on spirits, on wine--and
you will meet with such a storm that will make you hastily recede from
your first advances towards a substitute. To a property tax, then, you
must come; and I congratulate you, gentlemen of the landed interest,
on finding yourselves relieved from the pressure of the malt tax, and
falling on a good, comfortable property tax, with a proposal, probably,
for a graduated scale. And you who represent the heavy land of this
country, the clay soils--the soils unfit for barley--I felicitate you
on the prospect that lies before you. If you think that the substitute
will be advantageous to your interests, be it so; but do not--when
hereafter you discover your mistake--do not lay the blame upon those
who offered you a timely warning, and cautioned you against exchanging
the light pressure of a malt duty for the scourge of a property tax."
The motion was rejected by a majority of 350 to 192.

The Premier was at this time subjected to a great mortification in
being compelled by the House of Commons, and public opinion out of
doors, to cancel the appointment of the Marquis of Londonderry as
ambassador to St. Petersburg. A deep sympathy with the oppressed Poles,
and an abhorrence of the unrelenting despotism of Russia pervaded
the public mind in the United Kingdom. The Marquis of Londonderry
had distinguished himself by sympathies of an opposite kind, and had
characterised the Poles as the Czar's rebellious subjects. It was
generally felt that England could not be fairly represented at the
Court of St. Petersburg by a man of such well-known sentiments. The
press was loud in its condemnation of the appointment, and Mr. Sheil
brought the subject before the House of Commons by moving that an
Address be presented to his Majesty for a copy of the appointment. As
Lord Stanley declared emphatically against the selection of the noble
marquis for such a mission, it was evident that if Government had gone
to a division they would have been defeated. Sir Robert Peel therefore
gave way with a good grace, stating that the appointment had not been
formally made out; and though the House seemed to be interfering
unduly with the Royal Prerogative, he would not advise his Majesty to
persist in it. The motion was then withdrawn, and when Lord Londonderry
read the report of the debate in the papers next day, he immediately
sent in his resignation. In announcing this in the House of Peers, he
said: "Having but one object, and that to serve the king honestly and
to the best of my ability, were I to depart from this country after
what has passed in the House of Commons, I should feel myself, as a
representative of his Majesty, placed in a new, false, and improper
position. My efficiency would be impaired, and it would be impossible
for me to fill the office to which I have been called with proper
dignity or effect. Upon these grounds, I have now to announce that no
consideration will induce me to accept the office which his Majesty has
been graciously pleased to confer on me."

Meanwhile, Sir Robert Peel applied himself with great energy and
diligence to the legislative work that he had proposed for his
Government. On the 17th he moved for leave to bring in a Bill to
relieve Dissenters from the disabilities under which they laboured with
regard to the law of marriage. It was felt to be a great grievance
that Nonconformists could not be married except according to the
rites of the Established Church, to which they had conscientious
objections. Attempts had been made by the Whigs to relieve them, but in
a hesitating manner, and with only a half recognition of the principle
of religious equality. Sir Robert Peel took up the subject in a more
liberal spirit and with more enlightened views. He proposed that, so
far as the State had to do with marriage, it should assume the form
of a civil contract only, leaving the parties to solemnise it with
whatever religious ceremonies they chose. The Bill for this purpose met
the approval of the House, and would have satisfied the Dissenters if
Sir Robert Peel had remained in office long enough to pass it. All the
committees of the preceding year were reappointed, in order to redeem,
as far as possible, the time lost by the dissolution. A measure was
brought forward for the improvement of the resources of the Church
of England, by turning some of the larger incomes to better account,
and by creating two additional bishoprics, Ripon and Manchester. The
Premier did not act towards the Dissenters in the same liberal spirit
with regard to academic education as he did with regard to marriage.
They were excluded from the privileges of the Universities; and yet
when it was proposed to grant a charter to the London University, that
it might be able to confer degrees, the Government opposed the motion
for an Address to the king on the subject, and were defeated by a
majority of 246 to 136.

On the 20th of March Sir Henry Hardinge brought forward the Ministerial
plan for the settlement of the tithe question. It was proposed that
in future tithes should be recoverable only from the head landlord,
and that the owner should be entitled to recover only 75 per cent. of
the amount, 25 per cent. being allowed for the cost of collection and
the risk and liability which the landlord assumed. He might redeem
it, if he wished, at twenty years' purchase, calculated upon the
diminished rate. The purchase-money was to be invested in land or
otherwise for the benefit of the rectors and other tithe-owners. The
arrears of 1834 were to be paid out of the residue of the million
advanced from the Consolidated Fund, and the repayments of the clergy
for the loans they had received were to be remitted. There was a good
deal of discussion on this plan, Lord John Russell contending that it
was the same in substance as the one brought forward last Session by
the late Government. There was, however, some difference between the
two measures. In the former, the landlords were to get two-fifths, or
£40, out of every £100, securing to the clergy 77½ per cent., and
involving an annual charge of 17½ per cent. on the Consolidated
Fund. This was the shape the measure had assumed as the result of
amendments carried in committee. The Ministerial resolution was carried
by a majority of 213 to 198.

But all this was but preliminary to the great battle which commenced
on the 30th of this month and decided the fate of the Ministry. Lord
John Russell, after the House had been called over, moved, "That the
House should resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to
consider the temporalities of the Church of Ireland, with a view of
applying any surplus of the revenues not required for the spiritual
care of its members to the general education of all classes of the
people, without distinction of religious persuasion." This resolution
was skilfully framed to secure the support of all the Liberal party,
and of the English Dissenters as well as the Irish Catholics; all
of them being able to agree upon it, and to act together without
inconsistency, though each might act from different motives and with
different objects. The discussion was particularly interesting, as it
turned very much upon the great question of religious establishments.
Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, and Mr. Sheil, while fully admitting
that an establishment tends to promote religion and to preserve good
order, contended that it ought not to be maintained where it fails to
secure these objects, and that it must always fail when, as in Ireland,
the members of the Established Church are only a minority of the
nation, while the majority, constituting most of the poorer classes,
are thrown upon the voluntary system for the support of their clergy.
Concurring with Paley in his view of a Church establishment--that it
should be founded upon utility, that it should communicate religious
knowledge to the masses of the people, that it should not be debased
into a State engine or an instrument of political power,--they demanded
whether the Church of Ireland fulfilled these essential conditions of
an establishment. They asked whether its immense revenues had been
employed in preserving and extending the Protestant faith in Ireland.
In the course of something more than a century it was stated that
its revenues had increased sevenfold, and now amounted to £800,000
a year. Had its efficiency increased in the same proportion? Had it
even succeeded in keeping its own small flocks within the fold? On the
contrary, they adduced statistics to show a lamentable falling off in
their numbers.

Such being the facts of the case, the Liberals came to the conclusion
that a reform was inevitable. In order to adapt the Establishment to
the requirements of the Protestant population, there must be a large
reduction, and the surplus funds that remained ought to be applied
to some object by which the moral and religious instruction of the
people would be promoted. The least objectionable mode in which the
money could be applied was the general education of the poor under
the National Board, by which children of all denominations could
be educated in harmony together, as they had been ever since its
establishment. The reformers denied that there was any analogy between
the revenues of the Established Church and private property. The Acts
of Parliament securing those revenues had all treated them as being
held in trust for the benefit of the nation; and after leaving ample
means for the due execution of the trust, so far as it was really
practicable, the Legislature was competent to apply the balance in
accomplishing by other agency than the Protestant clergy, to some
extent at least, the objects originally contemplated by the founders of
the religious endowments.

The case of the Irish Church was stated by Sir Robert Peel, Lord
Stanley, and Sir James Graham, who argued that its revenues were
greatly exaggerated, subjected to heavy drawbacks and deductions.
The vestry cess had been abolished. A tax exclusively borne by the
clergy of three to fifteen per cent. had been laid upon all livings,
and the Church Temporalities Act provided that in all parishes in
which service had not been performed from 1830 to 1833, when a vacancy
occurred, there should be no reappointment, and the revenues of that
living, after paying a curate, should be destined to other parishes
differently situated, but for purposes strictly Protestant. Here was a
provision already made for the progressive diminution or extinction of
the Episcopal Church in those districts where it was not called for,
and could be of no utility. Whence, then, the anxiety to take away a
surplus, which probably would not exceed £100,000 a year, from a Church
already subjected to such heavy and exclusive burdens? It was not
pretended that the object of this appropriation was to apply the income
seized to the payment of the National Debt, or that it was justified
by State necessity. They argued that if the appropriation clause, as
now shaped, once passed into law, not only would the Protestant faith
cease to be the established religion in Ireland, but the measure would
be fatal to the Established Church in England also. In fact, the
Conservatives contended that this was only the first of a series of
measures avowedly intended to annihilate the Protestant Establishment.
O'Connell proposed to confiscate the property of the Church, in order
to relieve the land from its appropriate burdens, and to exempt it from
the support of the poor. They argued, therefore, that on no reasonable
ground could it be maintained that this concession to Irish agitation
could have any other effect than stimulating the agitators to make
fresh demands.

[Illustration: LICHFIELD HOUSE, ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, LONDON.]

The debate lasted four nights, and was kept up with the greatest spirit
and vigour. The division was taken between three and four o'clock
in the morning, when it was found that in a House of 611 members
the numbers were--for the motion, 322; against it, 289; leaving the
Government in a minority of 33. A Cabinet Council was held on the
following day, when it was unanimously resolved to await the result
of the debate on the Irish Tithe question on the same evening. Lord
John Russell, on the report of the committee being brought up, moved
the following resolution:--"That it is the opinion of this House
that no measure upon the subject of tithes in Ireland can lead to a
satisfactory and final adjustment which does not embody the principle
contained in the foregoing resolution." He referred to the principle of
the appropriation clause. On this an animated debate followed, which
lasted till one o'clock in the morning. When the House divided, it was
found that the resolution was carried by a majority of twenty-seven;
the numbers being--ayes, 285; noes, 258. As these divisions took place
on a question of vital policy, Sir Robert Peel had no alternative but
to resign. Accordingly, he announced his decision in the House next
day. After the extraordinary efforts that he had made, and considering
the circumstances in which he had been called upon to assume the reins
of Government, it must have been very painful to him to be thus cut
short in his patriotic labours; but he bore the disappointment with
admirable spirit, and retired from his position so gracefully that he
was warmly cheered from all parts of the House.

[Illustration: SIR ROBERT PEEL.]

It may be as well to dispose here of the Irish Church question; for
although Lord Morpeth, on the part of the Melbourne Administration,
brought in a Bill for settling the Tithe question, which passed
the House of Commons by a majority of 26 votes, and contained the
appropriation clause--in the House of Lords this clause was struck out,
and the Bill was otherwise altered in committee so materially that,
when sent back to the Commons, they scarcely knew their own offspring.
The Bill was therefore disowned, and thrown out.

When Sir Robert Peel delivered up the seals of office, the first
thing the king did was to send for Earl Grey, who declined the task
of forming an Administration. He advised his Majesty to entrust it to
Viscount Melbourne. The business, therefore, devolved upon Melbourne,
and he hastened to complete it out of such materials as he had at his
command. These were substantially the same as those which composed
his former Administration. Lord Brougham, however, was now left out,
as Lord Melbourne, in a series of plain-spoken letters, had already
informed him he would be; also Lord Althorp, who, being in the Upper
House as Earl Spencer, did not seem to have any ambition for the toils
and honours of office. Lord Howick, the eldest son of Earl Grey, became
a member of the Cabinet. There was no Lord Chancellor appointed for
the present, out of consideration for Brougham's feelings. The Great
Seal was put in commission, the three Commissioners being the Master of
the Rolls, the Vice-Chancellor, and Mr. Justice Bosanquet. The offices
were distributed as follows:--Lord Melbourne, Premier; the Marquis
of Lansdowne, President of the Council; Lord Palmerston, Foreign
Secretary; Lord John Russell, Home Secretary; Mr. Charles Grant,
Colonial Secretary; Mr. Spring-Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer;
Viscount Duncannon, Lord Privy Seal and Chief Commissioner of Woods and
Forests; Lord Auckland, First Lord of the Admiralty; Sir John Hobhouse,
President of the Indian Board; Mr. Poulett Thompson, President of
the Board of Trade; Lord Howick, Secretary-at-War; Lord Holland,
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The appointments not in the
Cabinet were--Sir Henry Parnell, Paymaster of the Forces; Mr. Charles
Wood, Secretary to the Admiralty; Sir George Grey, Under-Secretary
of the Colonies; the Honourable Fox Maule, Under-Secretary for the
Home Department; Mr. Labouchere, Vice-President of the Board of
Trade and Master of the Mint; Attorney-General, Sir John Campbell;
Solicitor-General, Mr. Rolfe. The Irish appointments were--The Earl of
Mulgrave, Lord-Lieutenant; Lord Morpeth, Chief Secretary; Lord Plunket,
Chancellor.

The change of Ministers and some additions to the peerage caused
several elections. Mr. Littleton was raised to the Upper House with
the title of Lord Hatherton, and Mr. Charles Grant as Lord Glenelg.
They were promptly replaced by Conservatives. Lord John Russell having
lost his election for South Devon, Colonel Fox made way for him at
Stroud, which borough continued to furnish a seat for the noble lord
during many years. Lord Palmerston had been defeated in Hampshire at
the general election; but Mr. Kennedy retired to make way for him at
Tiverton, which had the honour of being represented by the Foreign
Secretary until his death. Lord Morpeth had to stand a severe contest
in Yorkshire, but he was returned by a large majority.

On the 8th of April the dissolution of the Peel Administration took
place, and on the 18th Lord Melbourne announced the completion of his
arrangements. On that occasion Lord Alvanley asked the Premier if he
had secured the assistance of Mr. O'Connell and his friends, and if
so, upon what terms. Lord Melbourne answered that he did not coincide
in opinion with Mr. O'Connell; that he had taken no means to secure
his support; that he gave the most decided negative to Lord Alvanley's
question; adding, "And if he has been told anything to the contrary,
he has been told what is false, and without foundation." In the House
of Commons, a few days after, Colonel Sibthorpe spoke of O'Connell
as the prompter and adviser of the new Ministry, and said: "I do not
like the countenances of the honourable gentlemen opposite, for I
believe them to be the index of their minds, and I will oppose them
on every point, from the conviction that they could not bring forward
anything that would tend to benefit the country. I earnestly hope
that we shall have a safe and speedy riddance from such a band." This
escapade roused the ire of O'Connell, who instantly rose and said that
he thought the gallant colonel's countenance was, at all events, as
remarkable as any upon the Ministerial benches. He would not abate him
a single hair in point of good-humour. "Elsewhere," he said, "these
things may be treated in a different style. There is no creature--not
even a half-maniac or a half-idiot--that may not take upon himself to
use that language there which he would know better than to make use
of elsewhere; and the bloated buffoon ought to learn the distinction
between independent men and those whose votes are not worth purchasing,
even if they were in the market."

O'Connell was promptly challenged by Alvanley, and declined the combat.
But his second son, Morgan, was resolved not to let the matter rest.
As soon as he heard of the proceedings, he wrote to Lord Alvanley
a very spirited letter, in which he designated the challenge as a
party manœuvre, with no other object than to cast a stigma upon his
father--upon the party to which he belonged, as well as upon the
Government and its supporters. He denounced the proceeding as a
wretched manœuvre--as an utterly ungentlemanly and braggadocio mode of
carrying on party warfare. He adopted his father's insulting language,
not, he said, in the vain hope of inducing him to give satisfaction;
but, lest he should be wrong in that surmise, he intimated that he was
at his lordship's service. This letter was conveyed through Colonel
Hodges. The result was that the parties met at Arlington Street, when
they arranged to have a meeting at a short distance beyond the turnpike
next the Regent's Park, on the Barnet Road. The ground was measured
at twelve paces; the parties took their positions; the word was given,
"Ready--fire." O'Connell fired, but Lord Alvanley did not, owing to a
mistake, and claimed the right to fire, which was refused. Both parties
fired two rounds more without effect, each satisfied that the other had
acted with perfect fairness. There was no apology made on either side.

Mr. Morgan O'Connell soon found that he had no sinecure in undertaking
to give satisfaction with the pistol for all his father's violations
of the code of honour. Shortly after, Mr. Daniel O'Connell referred,
in strong language, to an attack made upon him by Mr. Disraeli at
Taunton:--"In the annals of political turpitude, there is not anything
deserving the appellation of black-guardism to equal that attack upon
me.... He possesses just the qualities of the impenitent thief who
died upon the Cross; whose name, I verily believe, must have been
Disraeli. For aught I know, the present Disraeli is descended from
him; and with the impression that he is, I now forgive the heir-at-law
of the blasphemous thief who died upon the Cross." When Mr. Disraeli
read this tremendous philippic, he wrote to Mr. Morgan O'Connell for
satisfaction, which the latter denied his right to demand. He had not
seen the attack, nor was he answerable for his father's words, though
he had taken up his quarrel with Lord Alvanley. Not being able to get
satisfaction by means of pistols, he had recourse to the pen; and,
certainly, if O'Connell's attack was violent, the retaliation was not
of the meekest. However, ink alone was spilt.

Lord Melbourne on announcing the completion of his arrangements made
a general statement of his policy. In forming his Cabinet he had had
to contend with difficulties "peculiarly great and arduous, and some
of them of a severe and mortifying nature." He had no change of policy
to declare. "His Government would be based upon the principles of a
safe, prudent, and truly efficient reform--principles the tendency of
which was not to subvert or endanger, but, on the contrary, to improve,
strengthen, and establish the institutions of the country; and in
regard to ecclesiastical government, every measure contemplated in
reference to that subject would have for its end the increase of true
piety and religion through the whole of his Majesty's dominions." From
the disposition and character popularly ascribed to Lord Melbourne, it
could not be expected that he should prove an energetic Reformer. The
Earl of Derby mentions a saying of his which often escaped him as a
member of Lord Grey's Cabinet. When they had to encounter a difficulty,
he would say, "Can't you let it alone?" This accords with the portrait
of him presented by Sydney Smith, in his second letter to Archdeacon
Singleton.

Notwithstanding his careless manner, however, there was much sincerity
in the nature of Lord Melbourne; and there is no doubt that he laboured
with an honest purpose to make his Administration useful to the
country, though not with so much activity and energy, or with such
constant solicitude to secure success, as his predecessor had brought
to the task. As it was now advancing towards the end of the Session,
he confined his attention to two great measures of reform--the Irish
Tithe question (of which we have already disposed) and the question
of Municipal Reform. It is scarcely necessary to remark that abuses
in corporations had been a matter of constant and general complaint
for two centuries. But it was hopeless to expect a remedy so long
as the Parliamentary representation was so inadequate and corrupt.
The rotten and venal boroughs, of which the franchise was abolished
or amended by the Reform Act, were the chief seats of abuse. The
correction of the local evil would have been the destruction of the
system by which the ruling party in the State sustained its political
power. There were, therefore, the most powerful interests at work,
restraining each from attempting the work of reform; but by the
Parliamentary Reform Act these interests were abolished, and those
local fountains of corruption could no longer pour their fetid contents
into the legislature. Statesmen now felt at liberty to abate those
nuisances. Yet the work was not as speedily accomplished as might have
been expected. It is true that Lord Grey advised the king to issue a
commission of inquiry in July, 1833, but it was not until the 5th of
June, 1835, that any measure was brought forward upon the subject.
Even then Lord Melbourne had to overcome the dislike of the king, who
distrusted the measure, and thought that, if the corporations were to
be reformed at all, they had best be reformed by granting them new
charters. The commission consisted of twenty gentlemen, who were to
proceed with the utmost despatch to inquire as to the existing state
of the municipal corporations in England and Wales, and to collect
information respecting the defects in their constitution, to make
inquiry into their jurisdiction and powers as to the administration
of justice, and in all other respects; and also into the mode of
electing and appointing the members and officers of such corporations,
into the privileges of the freemen and other members thereof, and into
the nature and management of the income, revenues, and funds of the
said corporations. They divided the whole of England and Wales into
districts, each of which was assigned to two commissioners. Their
reports on individual corporations occupied five folio volumes. The
whole was presented in a general report, signed by sixteen of the
Commissioners.

The number of places in which the inquiries under the commission were
carried on was 237, having a population of 2,028,513. In twenty-five
places the number of corporators was not ascertained; in the others
(212) they amounted to 88,509. The governing body was self-elected
in 186 boroughs. This body elected the mayor in 131 boroughs,
appointed the recorder in 136, and the town-clerk in 135. The number
of corporators exercising magisterial functions was 1,086, in 188
boroughs. In 112 boroughs the corporations had exclusive criminal
jurisdiction, extending to the trial of various descriptions of
offences, and in forty-two their jurisdiction was not exclusive.
Seventeen boroughs did not enjoy any income whatever; in eight the
precise amount could not be obtained. The total income of 212 boroughs
amounted to £366,948; their expenditure to £377,027. 103 were involved
in debts amounting to £1,855,371, and were besides burdened with
annuities amounting to £4,463. In twenty-eight boroughs only were the
accounts published; in fifteen the annual income was under £20; in
eleven it was between £2,000 and £3,000; in five, £3,000, and under
£4,000; in one, £4,000, and under £5,000; in four, £5,000, and under
£7,500; in five, £10,000, and under £12,500; in one, £12,500, and under
£15,000; in one, £15,000, and under £20,000; and in one, £91,000.

The measure, which was founded on the recommendations of the report,
was advocated principally by Lord John Russell, Lord Melbourne, and Mr.
C. Hobhouse. The plan was intended to provide for 183 corporations,
extending to a population of at least 2,000,000. Many of these
corporations governed large and important towns, of which they did not
sufficiently represent the property, intelligence, and population. In
Bedford the corporation composed only one in seventy of the people,
and one-fortieth of the property. In Oxford there were only 1,400
electors, and seldom more than 500 voted at an election. In Norwich
315 of the electors were paupers. In Cambridge there were only 118
freemen, out of a population of 20,000; and while the annual rental
was more than £25,000, the property of freemen amounted to little more
than £2,000. These were only samples of the strange anomalies that
everywhere prevailed. It was obvious to every one that corporations so
constituted were altogether unfitted for the objects which they were
originally designed to answer. On the contrary, they tended directly to
frustrate those objects, and to render the proper government of towns
impracticable. They engendered jealousy and distrust between the small
governing power and the body of the people. A few persons carrying on
the government for their own benefit were connected with a portion of
the lower classes, whose votes they purchased and whose habits they
demoralised. With such a monopoly the grossest abuses were inevitable.
Charitable funds, often large in amount, which had been left for the
benefit of the whole people, were either lavishly distributed among the
venal dependents of the governing body, squandered on civic feasts, or
spent in bribing the freemen in order to secure their votes. In short,
the general if not the universal practice had been to use the powers
of municipal corporations, not for the good government or benefit of
the towns over which they presided--not in order that they might be
well and quietly governed in the terms of the charters, but for the
sole purpose of establishing an interest which might be useful in the
election of members of Parliament.

It was impossible to defend a system like this, and therefore the
Conservatives offered no opposition to the principle of the Bill; their
aim being to save as much as possible of the old system, which had
rendered much more service to them than to the Whigs, and presented
a number of barriers to the advance of democratic power. Sir Robert
Peel, with Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham, who were now the ablest
antagonists their former Whig colleagues had to encounter, pleaded
powerfully for the delinquent boroughs; not for absolute acquittal, but
for mitigation of punishment. They would not go the length of asserting
that freemen were altogether immaculate; for of what body of electors
could that be predicated? The question was not whether it was right to
admit these men for the first time, but whether they should be deprived
of the rights that they and their ancestors had enjoyed for centuries.
The Reformers were the first to propose covertly and insidiously, a
great and important change in the Reform Bill. What did they mean by
first bringing in a Bill which was based on perpetuating the rights of
freemen and recognising them as an integral part of the Constitution,
and now, within three years, bringing in another intending to deprive
them of their rights? Was not this a precedent for breaking up the
final settlement, which might be followed on future occasions? Might
not another Ministry deem it for their advantage to extinguish the £10
electors? And where was this to stop? Could it stop while a fragment
remained of the Reform Act--the boasted second Charter of the people
of England? If there were guilty parties, let them be punished. Let
convicted boroughs be disfranchised; but let not whole bodies of
electors be annihilated because some of their members may have been
corrupt. Were the £10 voters perfectly immaculate? and, if not, on what
principle were they spared, while the freemen were condemned? The Whigs
had created the Reform Act; but now--infatuated men!--they were about
to lay murderous hands upon their own offspring.

[Illustration: THE MANSION HOUSE, LONDON, 1891.]

Thus argued the Conservatives, and not without effect, for the clause
against disfranchising the freemen was carried only by a majority of
twenty-eight; and in the passage through the Lords several important
amendments were carried against the Government, owing chiefly to the
vigorous opposition of Lord Lyndhurst. He proceeded to convert the
Bill into what was called a Conservative arrangement, and when Peel's
moderation was brought up against him, is said to have remarked, "Peel!
What is Peel to me? D---- Peel!" On an amendment which he proposed--to
omit the clause disfranchising the freemen--he defeated the Government
by a majority of 93; the numbers being 130 to 37. He followed up this
victory by a motion to secure to the freemen their Parliamentary
franchise, which was carried without a division. The Commons thought
it better to adopt some of these alterations, however repugnant to
their feelings, rather than lose the measure. The Bill, as amended, was
accordingly passed on the 7th of September. London, with its numerous
and wealthy incorporated guilds, was reserved for future legislation,
which the lavish hospitalities of the Mansion House and Guildhall
postponed to a later date than municipal reformers then thought of.

The Irish corporations were included in the inquiry, which commenced
in 1833. The Irish Commissioners took for their local investigations
the one hundred and seventeen places which had sent representatives to
the Irish Parliament. They found everywhere the grossest abuses. By an
Act of George II., residence had been dispensed with as a qualification
for corporate offices. The effect of this was to deprive a large number
of them of a resident governing body. In some cases a few, very rarely
a majority, of the municipal council were inhabitants of the town.
In others, the whole chartered body of burgesses were non-resident,
and they attended as a mere matter of form, to go through the farce
of electing members of Parliament, or for the purpose of disposing
of the corporate property. In some boroughs the charter gave the
nomination of a member of Parliament to the lord of the manor or some
local proprietor. In others the power of returning the Parliamentary
representative was vested in a small self-elected body of freemen;
almost invariably the power of nomination was actually possessed by
the gentleman known as the "patron" or "proprietor," who could dispose
of the seat as he thought proper, and if not reserved for himself or
some member of his family, it was sold for the highest price it would
bring in the market--treated in every respect as absolute property,
which was transmitted, like the family estate, from father to son. This
property was fully recognised at the Union, and it was by buying it
up at an exceedingly liberal price that Lord Castlereagh was enabled
to carry that measure. By the Act of Union a large number of those
rotten corporations, some of which had not even a hamlet to represent,
were swept away. But a considerable number remained, and of these the
Commissioners of inquiry remarked:--"This system deserves peculiar
notice in reference to your Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects. In the
close boroughs they are almost universally excluded from all corporate
privileges. In the more considerable towns they have rarely been
admitted even as freemen, and, with few exceptions, they are altogether
excluded from the governing bodies. In some--and among these is the
most important corporation in Ireland, that of Dublin--their admission
is still resisted on avowed principles of sectarian distinction. The
exclusive spirit operates far more widely and more mischievously than
by the mere denial of equal privileges to persons possessing perfect
equality of civil worth; for in places where the great mass of the
population is Roman Catholic--and persons of that persuasion are
for all efficient purposes excluded from corporate privileges--the
necessary result is that the municipal magistracy belongs entirely to
the other religious persuasions; and the dispensation of local justice,
and the selection of juries being committed to the members of one class
exclusively, it is not surprising that such administration of the law
should be regarded with distrust and suspicion by the other and more
numerous body."

In pursuance of this report, Mr. O'Loughlin, the Irish
Attorney-General, introduced a Bill, early in the Session of 1836, for
the better regulation of Irish corporations. There still remained,
he said, 71 corporations, which included within their territories
a population of 900,000, while the number of corporators was only
13,000. Of these, no less than 8,000 were to be found in four of the
larger boroughs, leaving only 5,000 corporators for the remaining 67
corporations, containing above 500,000 inhabitants. So exclusive had
they been, that though, since 1792, Roman Catholics were eligible
as members, not more than 200 had ever been admitted. In Dublin
the principle of exclusion was extended to the great majority of
Protestants of wealth, respectability, and intelligence. In a word,
the Attorney-General said that the management of corporations, and the
administration of justice in their hands, was nothing but a tissue of
injustice, partisanship, and corruption. He concluded by laying down a
plan of Reform which would assimilate the Irish corporations to those
of England. On the part of the Conservatives it was admitted that the
greater part of the corporations in Ireland were created by James I.,
avowedly as guardians of the Protestant interests, and to favour the
spread of the Protestant religion; and that ancient and venerable
system this Bill would annihilate--a revolution against which they
solemnly protested, even though it covered many abuses which had crept
into it during the lapse of time. They were quite appalled at the
prospect of the evils that this Bill would produce. Borough magistrates
were to be elected by popular suffrage. What a source of discord and
animosity! First, there would be the registration of the voters, then
the election of the town councillors, and then the election of the
mayor, aldermen, and town clerks. What a scene would such a state of
things present! How truly was it said that the boroughs would be the
normal schools of agitation! Then what was to become of the corporate
property, which yielded an income of £61,000, while the expenditure was
only £57,000, and the debt charged on it only £133,000? Was all this
property to be placed under the control of the priests, whose influence
would determine the elections?

The second reading of the Bill was not opposed, but Lord Francis
Egerton, with Sir Robert Peel's concurrence, moved that the committee
should be empowered to make provision for the abolition of corporations
in Ireland, and for securing the efficient and impartial administration
of justice, and the peace and good government of the cities and towns
in that country. The Tories thought it better that there should be no
corporations at all, than that their privileges should be enjoyed by
the Roman Catholics. The motion was lost by a majority of 307 to 64,
and the Bill ultimately passed the Lower House by a majority of 61. In
the Upper House a motion similar to that of Lord Francis Egerton was
moved by Lord Fitzgerald, and carried in a full House by a majority of
84. Other amendments were carried, and it was sent back to the Commons
so changed that it was difficult to trace its identity. Lord John
Russell said that it contained little or nothing of what was sent up:
out of 140 clauses, 106 had been omitted or altered, and 18 new ones
introduced. He moved that the amendments of the Lords be rejected, and
that the Bill be sent back to the Upper House. The motion was carried
by a majority of 66, the numbers being 324 to 258. But the Lords
refused by a majority of 99 to undo their work; and upon the Bill being
returned to the Lower House in the same state, Lord John Russell got
rid of the difficulty by moving that the Bill should be considered that
day three months.

Notwithstanding the hopes which might have been fairly entertained that
the measure of Reform would have been rendered complete throughout the
kingdom, a considerable time elapsed before its benefits were extended
to the sister country; and a large amount of persevering exertion
was required before a measure for the purpose was carried through
Parliament, although its necessity was unquestionable. This arose
from certain difficulties which it was not found easy to overcome,
so as to meet the views, or, at least, to secure the acquiescence,
of the various parties in the House. And hence it happened that it
was not until 1840 that an Act was passed for the regulation of
municipal corporations in Ireland, after repeated struggles which had
to be renewed from year to year, and the question was at length only
settled by a sort of compromise. On the 7th of February, 1837, Lord
John Russell moved for leave to bring in the Irish Municipal Bill,
which was passed by a majority of 55; but the consideration of it was
adjourned in the Peers till it was seen what course Ministers were to
adopt with regard to the Irish Tithe Bill. Early in 1838 the Bill was
again introduced, when Sir Robert Peel, admitting the principle by
not opposing the second reading, moved that the qualification should
be £10. The motion was lost, but a similar one was made in the Upper
House, and carried by a majority of 60. Other alterations were made,
which induced Lord John Russell to relinquish his efforts for another
year. In 1839 he resumed his task, and the second reading was carried
by a majority of 26. Once more Sir Robert Peel proposed the £10
qualification for the franchise, which was rejected in the Commons,
but adopted in the Lords by nearly the same majorities as before. Thus
baffled again, the noble lord gave up the measure for the Session.
In February, 1840, the Bill was introduced by Lord Morpeth with a
qualification of £8. Sir Robert Peel now admitted that a settlement of
the question was indispensable. With his support the Bill passed the
Commons by a majority of 148. It also passed the Lords, and on the 18th
of August received the Royal Assent.

Fortunately, Municipal Reform in Scotland did not give much trouble.
It was accomplished almost without any discussion or party contention.
It was based upon the provisions of the Scottish Reform Bill, which
settled the whole matter by the simple rule that the Parliamentary
electors of every burgh should be the municipal electors; also that
the larger burghs should be divided into wards, each of which should
send two representatives to the town council, chosen by the qualified
electors within their respective bounds; and that the provost and
bailies, corresponding to the English mayor and aldermen, should be
chosen by the councillors, and invested with the powers of magistrates
in the burgh. The functionaries were to be elected for three years, and
then to make way for others elected in the same manner to succeed them.
They were invested with the control and administration of all corporate
property and patronage of every description.




CHAPTER XI.

THE REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. (_concluded_).

    Prorogation of Parliament--Agitation against the House of
    Lords--O'Connell's Crusade--Inquiry into the Orange Lodges--Report
    of the Committee--Mr. Hume's Motion--Renewed Attack in 1836--The
    Lodges dissolved--Lord Mulgrave in Ireland--His Progresses--Wrath
    of the Orangemen--Prosperity of the Country--Condition of Canada--A
    Commission appointed--Violence of the King--Lord Gosford in
    Canada--His Failure to pacify the Canadians--Upper Canada--Pepys
    becomes Lord Chancellor--Opening of Parliament--The King's
    Speech--O'Connell and Mr. Raphael--The Newspaper Duty--The Irish
    Poor--Appointment of a Commission--Its numerous Reports--The Third
    Report--Private Bills on the Subject--Mr. Nicholls' Report--Lord
    John Russell's Bill--Abandonment of the Measure--Debate on
    Agriculture--Finance--The Ecclesiastical Commission--Its first
    Report--The Commission made permanent--The Tithe Commutation
    Act--The Marriage Act--The Registration Act--Commercial
    Panics--Foreign Affairs--Russian Aggression--Occupation of
    Cracow--Disorder in Spain--Revolution in Portugal--Position of the
    Ministry--A Speech of Sheil's--The Church Rates Bill--Death of the
    King--His Treatment of the Ministry.


After a lengthened and toilsome Session Parliament was at length
prorogued by the king in person on the 10th of September. Several
important measures which had passed the Commons were rejected by
the Lords. Their resistance had caused great difficulty in carrying
through the imperatively demanded measures of Municipal Reform; and
they had deprived the Irish Church Temporalities Act of one of its
principal features. But their obstructive action was not confined to
great political measures of that kind. They rejected the Dublin Police
Bill, and other measures of practical reform. The consequence was that
the Liberal party began to ask seriously whether the absolute veto
which the Lords possessed, and which they sometimes used perversely
and even factiously, was compatible with the healthful action of
the legislature and the well-being of the country. It was roundly
asserted that the experience of the last two years had demonstrated the
necessity of reform in the House of Lords. The question was extensively
agitated, it was constantly discussed in the press, public meetings
were held throughout the country upon it, and numerous petitions were
presented to Parliament with the same object. On the 2nd of September
Mr. Roebuck, while presenting one of these petitions, announced his
intention of introducing early in the next Session a Bill to deprive
the House of Lords of its veto upon all measures of legislation, and
to substitute for it a suspense of power, so that if a Bill thrown
out by the Lords should pass the Commons a second time, and receive
the Royal Assent, it might become law without the concurrence of the
Peers. Mr. Ripon also gave notice of a motion to remove the bishops
from the House of Peers; while Mr. Hume indignantly denounced the
humiliating ceremonials observed in the intercourse between the Commons
and the Lords. Although the whole proceeding at a conference between
the two Houses consists of the exchange of two pieces of paper, oral
discussions not being permitted, the members of the House of Commons
are obliged to wait upon the Lords, standing with their hats off, the
members of the Upper House, as if they were masters, remaining seated
with their hats on. The state of feeling among the working classes on
this subject was expressed in the strongest language in an address
to Mr. O'Connell from the "non-franchised inhabitants of Glasgow."
They warmly deprecated the unmanly and submissive manner in which the
Ministers and the Commons had bowed bare-headed to the refractory
Lords. They demanded that responsibility should be established in every
department of the State; and they said, "As the House of Lords has
hitherto displayed a most astounding anomaly in this enlightened age by
retaining the right to legislate by birth or Court favour, and being
thereby rendered irresponsible, it follows it must be cut down as a
rotten encumbrance, or be so cured as to be made of some service to the
State, as well as amenable to the people."

Indeed, Mr. O'Connell's agitating tour in the North of England and
in Scotland was in effect a crusade against the Lords. In a speech
which he addressed to an immense assemblage of the working classes
of Manchester, he said, if there were only one House of Parliament,
a majority of that House, perhaps a faction, might become the rulers
of the entire nation. He was, therefore, for two Houses, but they
should be honest and competent. Why should a man be a legislator
because his father was one? It was as reasonable to expect that a man
would be a good tailor on the hereditary principle. The Lords had
proved themselves to be arrant botchers in the work of legislation.
Were they to have 170 masters of that class? He then proceeded in
this strain:--"Will you endure that any gang or banditti, I care not
by what name you call them, should treat you contemptuously? In one
word, I call them rogues. We must put down the House of Lords. Ye are
miserable minions of power. Ye have no choice for yourselves till that
House be thoroughly reformed. Let the king retain his prerogative of
raising men to that rank and station to which they may be eligible.
Let every 200,000 men in Great Britain and Ireland select one lord
from this list; that will give you 120 for the 24,000,000; let them
be re-eligible every five years, and you will have a steady Chamber."
Still, the outrageous attacks of Mr. O'Connell gave much offence, and
when, on his return to Dublin after his crusade, he was invited to
dinner by the Lord-Lieutenant, a violent storm was raised against the
Government, and the king was greatly indignant.

[Illustration: CONFERENCE BETWEEN THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, 1835. (_See
p._ 392.)]

The Tory party sustained serious damage in consequence of an inquiry
on the subject of Orange lodges in the army, which was granted in
May, on the motion of Mr. Finn, an Irish member. Very startling
disclosures were made by this committee during Sir Robert Peel's brief
Administration. Various addresses had been presented from Orange
societies, which led to pertinacious questioning of the Ministers. It
was asked whether the addresses in question purported to come from
Orange societies; whether the king ought to receive addresses from
illegal associations; and whether it was true, as the newspapers said,
that such addresses had been graciously received by his Majesty. There
was a peculiar significance given to these inquiries by an impression
that began to prevail that there had been on foot for some years
a conspiracy to prevent the Princess Victoria from ascending the
throne, and to secure the sovereignty for the eldest brother of the
king, the Duke of Cumberland, the avowed head of the Tory party, and
also the head of the Orange Society, through whose instrumentality
the revolution was to be effected, in furtherance of which Orange
lodges had been extensively organised in the army. The report of the
committee was presented in September, and from this report it appeared
that Orange lodges were first held in England under Irish warrants;
but that in 1808 a lodge was founded in Manchester, and warrants were
issued for the holding of lodges under English authority. On the death
of the Grand Master in that town, in 1821, the lodge was removed to
London, where the meetings were held in the house of Lord Kenyon,
Deputy Grand Master. The Duke of York had been prevented from assuming
the office of Grand Master, because the law officers of the Crown were
of opinion that the society was illegal. The Act against political
associations in Ireland having expired in 1828, the Orange lodges
started forth in vigorous and active existence, under the direction of
the Duke of Cumberland as Grand Master. The passing of the Emancipation
Act seems to have had the effect of driving the leaders of the society
into a conspiracy to counteract its operation, or to bring about a
counter-revolution by means of this treasonable organisation; though,
perhaps, they did not consider it treasonable, as their object was
to place upon the throne the brother of the king, whom they thought
to be alone capable of preserving the Constitution, and of excluding
from it a very young princess, who would be during her minority in the
hands of Whigs and Radicals, whom they believed to be leagued together
to destroy it. Considering the frenzy of party spirit at this time,
and the conditional loyalty openly professed by the men who annually
celebrated the battle of the Boyne and the glorious Revolution of 1688,
there is nothing very surprising in the course adopted by the Orange
societies, though the English public were astounded when they learnt
for the first time, in 1835, that there were 140,000 members of this
secret society in England, of whom 40,000 were in London; and that the
army was to a large extent tainted.

In 1828, when the Duke of Cumberland became Grand Master, he issued a
commission to his "trusty, well-beloved, and right worshipful brother,
Lieutenant-Colonel Fairman," whom he had chosen from a knowledge of
his experience and a confidence in his integrity. This commission was
signed as follows: "Given under my seal at St. James's, this 13th day
of August, 1828. Ernest G. M." In the fulfilment of his commission,
Colonel Fairman went to Dublin, in order to bring the Irish and English
lodges into one uniform system of secret signs and passwords. He also
made two extensive tours in England and Scotland, for the purpose of
extending the system through the large towns and populous districts.
From letters written by Colonel Fairman at various dates, we gather
that he hoped to strike the foe with awe by assuming an attitude of
boldness; that they had inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience
and non-resistance "too religiously by far;" that Lords Kenyon,
Londonderry, Longford, and Cole had written about their prospects in
the highest spirits; that Lord Wynford and other chiefs denounced the
Melbourne Administration to the Duke of Cumberland; that if the duke
would make a tour in the country, for which Fairman had prepared the
way, he would be idolised; that Lord Kenyon had in two years spent
nearer £20,000 than £10,000 on behalf of the good cause; that Lord
Roden wrote to him about "our cause;" that they wanted another "sound
paper" as well as the _Morning Post_ to advocate the cause--the cause,
as they professed, of all the friends of Christianity who devoutly
cherished the hope of the arrival of a day of reckoning, when certain
"hell-hounds would be called upon to pay the full penalty of their
cold-blooded tergiversations." It was found that of 381 lodges existing
in Great Britain, 30 were in the army, and--the inquiry having been
extended to the colonies on the motion of Mr. Hume--that lodges had
been established among the troops at Bermuda, Gibraltar, Malta, Corfu,
New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, and the North American colonies.
The Bishop of Salisbury was Lord Prelate and Grand Chaplain of the
order, and there were a number of clergymen of the Church chaplains.
No Dissenter in England belonged to the body, though it included many
Presbyterians in Ireland, where the members amounted to 175,000, who
were ready at any time to take the field.

Before the report of the committee was presented, Mr. Hume, on the 4th
of August, moved eleven resolutions declaring the facts connected with
Orangeism, proposing an Address to the king, and calling his Majesty's
attention to the Duke of Cumberland's share in those transactions. Lord
John Russell, evidently regarding the business as being of extreme
gravity, moved that the debate be adjourned to the 11th of August,
plainly to allow the Duke of Cumberland an opportunity of retiring
from so dangerous a connection; but instead of doing so, he published
a letter to the chairman of the committee, stating that he had signed
blank warrants, and did not know that they were intended for the army.
Lord John Russell expressed his disappointment at this illogical
course. If what he stated was true, that his confidence was abused by
the members of the society in such a flagrant manner, he should have
indignantly resigned his post of Grand Master, but he expressed no
intention of doing so. Mr. Hume's last resolution, proposing an Address
to the king, was adopted, and his answer, which was read to the House,
promised the utmost vigilance and vigour. On the 19th the House was
informed that Colonel Fairman had refused to produce to the committee
a letter-book in his possession, which was necessary to throw light on
the subject of their inquiry. He was called before the House, where he
repeated his refusal, though admonished by the Speaker. The next day an
order was given that he should be committed to Newgate for a breach of
privilege, but it was then found that he had absconded.

It was now proposed that as the Orange leaders had violated the law
as much as the Dorsetshire labourers, they should be dealt with in
the same manner, and that if evidence could be obtained, the Duke of
Cumberland, Lord Kenyon, the Bishop of Salisbury, Colonel Fairman, and
the rest should be prosecuted in the Central Criminal Court. There was
an Orangeman, named Heywood, who had betrayed his confederates, and
was about to be prosecuted by them for libel. The opponents of the
Orangemen, believing his allegations to be borne out by the evidence
given before the committee, resolved to have him defended by able
counsel, retaining for the purpose Serjeant Wilde, Mr. Charles Austen,
and Mr. Charles Buller. All the necessary preparations were made for
the trial, when Heywood suddenly died, having broken a blood-vessel
through agitation of mind, and alarm lest he should somehow become
the victim of an association so powerful, whose vengeance he had
excited by what they denounced as treachery and calumny. The criminal
proceedings, therefore, were abandoned. Almost immediately after the
opening of Parliament in February, 1836, Mr. Finn and Mr. Hume again
made a statement in the House of Commons of the whole case against the
Duke of Cumberland and the Orange Society, and proposed a resolution
which seemed but a just consequence of their terrible indictment. The
resolution declared the abhorrence of Parliament of all such secret
political associations, and proposed an Address to the king requesting
him to cause the dismissal of all Orangemen and members of any other
secret political association from all offices civil and military,
unless they ceased to be members of such societies within one month
after the issuing of a proclamation to that effect. Lord John Russell
proposed a middle course, and moved, as an amendment, an Address to the
king praying that his Majesty would take such measures as should be
effectual for the suppression of the societies in question. Mr. Hume
having withdrawn his resolution, the amendment was adopted unanimously.
The king expressed concurrence with the Commons; a copy of his reply
was sent to the Duke of Cumberland, as Grand Master, by the Home
Secretary. The duke immediately sent an intimation that before the
last debate in the Commons he had recommended the dissolution of the
Orange societies in Ireland, and that he would immediately proceed
to dissolve all such societies elsewhere. "In a few days," Harriet
Martineau remarked, "the thing was done, and Orangeism became a matter
of history."

But whatever may have been the prudence of the chiefs of the party in
Britain, however quietly the suppression may have been effected on
the English side of St. George's Channel, the society was very far
from dying quietly, or dying at all in Ireland, its native land. It
was stunned for the moment, but very soon recovered all its pristine
vigour and became as troublesome as ever. Lord Mulgrave went to that
country as Viceroy, determined to govern on the principle of strict
impartiality between sects and parties, but the Orangemen and the
Tories generally denounced him as the most partial and one-sided of
Viceroys. It was enough for them that O'Connell declared him to be
the best Englishman that ever came to Ireland. Eulogy from his lips
was the strongest possible censure in the estimation of the opposite
party. The violence of party feeling against the Government may be
inferred from the fact that the Recorder of Dublin, Mr. Shaw, one
of the ablest and most eloquent of the Protestant chiefs, denounced
the Melbourne Administration as infidels in religion. Lord Mulgrave,
imitating some of the Viceroys of old times, made a "progress" of
conciliation through the country, first visiting the south and then the
north. This progress was signalised by the pardon and liberation of a
large number of prisoners, which produced much excitement and clamour
against the Government. It subsequently appeared that he had during
his viceroyalty liberated 822 prisoners, of whom 388 were liberated
without advice, the number of memorials which he received being 1,631.
Although he evinced his impartiality by setting free all the Orangemen
who had been imprisoned in Ulster for taking part in processions on the
previous 12th of July, the members of that body were not conciliated.
The Dublin Grand Committee published a manifesto, declaring that
the mere will of the king was not law, and that their watchword
should still be "No Surrender." Sir Harcourt Lees, who had been long
famous as an Orange agitator, issuing counter-blasts to O'Connell's
letters and speeches, concluded one of his appeals on this occasion
thus:--"Orangemen, increase and multiply; be tranquil, be vigilant.
Put your trust in God, still revere your king, and keep your powder
dry." In Ulster the organs of the Orange party called upon its members
to resist the law against processions, since the provisions of the
Emancipation Act against the Jesuits and other religious orders, who
treated the law with defiance, were allowed to remain a dead letter.
The _Londonderry Sentinel_ warned off the Liberal Viceroy from that
citadel of Protestant ascendency, and said, "If he should come among
us, he shall see such a display of Orange banners as will put him into
the horrors." The irritation was kept up by various incidents, such
as setting aside the election of a mayor of Cork, because he was an
Orangeman, setting aside two sheriffs, and the dismissal of constables
for the same reason. In the meantime a tremendous outcry was raised
on account of the alleged partiality of the Irish Government on the
subject of patronage. It was said that every office was at the disposal
of the Roman Catholics; that from the bench of justice down to the
office of police-constable there was no chance for any one else. In the
midst of a war of factions in the spring of 1836 a tremendous sensation
was produced by the blowing up of the statue of King William on College
Green. On the 8th of February, a little after midnight, this astounding
event occurred. The statue stood on a pedestal eighteen feet in height,
surrounded by an enclosure of iron railing, the head being about thirty
feet from the level of the street. The figure consisted of lead, and
though weighing several tons, it was blown up to a considerable height,
and fell at some distance from the pedestal. The Government and the
corporation offered rewards for the discovery of the authors of this
outrage, but without success. It was a mystery how such a quantity of
gunpowder could have been got into the statue, and how a train could
have been laid without detection in so public a place, the police being
always on duty on College Green at night. King William, however, was
restored to his position.

Happily, the prevalence as well as the acerbity of party spirit was
restrained by the prosperous state of the country in the winter of
1835-36. There were, indeed, unusual indications of general contentment
among the people. Allowing for partial depression in agriculture, all
the great branches of national industry were flourishing. The great
clothing districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire, both woollen and
cotton, were all in a thriving condition. Even in the silk trade of
Macclesfield, Coventry, and Spitalfields, there were no complaints,
nor yet in the hosiery and lace trades of Nottingham, Derby, and
Leicester, while the potteries of Staffordshire, and the iron trade in
all its branches, were unusually flourishing. Of course, the shipping
interest profited by the internal activity of the various manufactures
and trades. Money was cheap, and speculation was rife. The farmers,
it is true, complained, but their agricultural distress to a certain
extent was felt to be chronic. Farming was considered a poor trade,
its profits, on the average, ranging below those of commerce. Most of
the farmers being tenants at will, and their rents being liable to
increase with their profits, they were not encouraged to invest much in
permanent improvements.

But if Great Britain was prosperous, the affairs of Canada got into a
very disturbed state, and became a source of trouble for some time to
the Government in the mother country. To the conflicting elements of
race and religion were added the discontents arising from misgovernment
by a distant Power not always sufficiently mindful of the interests of
the colony. For many years after Lower Canada, a French province, had
come into the possession of Britain, a large portion of the country
westward--lying along the great lakes--now known as Upper Canada,
nearly double the extent of England, was one vast forest, constituting
the Indian hunting-ground. In 1791, when by an Act of the Imperial
Parliament the colony received a constitution, and was divided into
Upper and Lower Canada, with separate legislatures, the amount of the
white population in Upper Canada was estimated at 50,000. Twenty years
later it had increased to 77,000, and in 1825 emigration had swelled
its numbers to 158,000, which in 1830 was increased to 210,000, and in
1834 the population exceeded 320,000, the emigration for the last five
years having proceeded at the rate of 12,000 a year. The disturbances
which arose in 1834 caused a check to emigration; but when tranquillity
was restored it went on rapidly increasing, till, in 1852, it was
nearly a million. The increase of wealth was not less remarkable. The
total amount of assessable property, in 1830, was £1,854,965; 1835,
£3,407,618; 1840, £4,608,843; 1845, £6,393,630.

[Illustration: IRISH PRISONERS LIBERATED DURING LORD MULGRAVE'S
PROGRESS. (_See p._ 396.)]

Lower Canada was inhabited chiefly by French Canadians, speaking the
French language, retaining their ancient laws, manners, and religion,
wedded to old customs in agriculture, and stationary in their habits.
Of its population, amounting to 890,000 in 1852, nearly three-fourths
were of French origin, the remainder being composed of emigrants
from Great Britain and Ireland and other countries, while in Upper
Canada the number of French was under 27,000. Lower Canada, however,
might have been expected to make much more rapid progress from its
natural advantages in being much nearer to the seaboard of the Gulf
of St. Lawrence, and being enabled to monopolise much of the ocean
navigation, which terminated at Montreal. Thus, the cities of Quebec
and Montreal rose quickly into importance when the Upper Province
began to be settled. In 1827 the cities had each a population of above
27,000; but by the census of 1852 it was found that Quebec had a
population of 42,000, and Montreal 57,000. The growth of the towns of
Upper Canada was still more rapid. In 1817 Toronto, then called Little
York, had only 1,200 inhabitants; in 1826 it had scarcely 1,700; but
in 1836 it had risen to 10,000. Among the other principal towns of
Upper Canada were Hamilton, Kingston, London, and Bytown (now called
Ottawa), which grew rapidly. Situated so near Europe, and offering
inexhaustible supplies of fertile and cheap land, with light taxes
and a liberal government, it was natural to expect in Upper Canada a
mixed population, and an analysis of the census of 1852 showed that
its inhabitants were composed of people from most of the countries of
Europe. The largest single element was composed of Canadians, not of
French origin, upwards of half a million; the next of Irish, 176,267;
then English, 82,699; Scottish, 75,811; from the United States, 43,732;
Germany and Holland, 10,000. Many of those settlers emigrated from the
old countries to avoid the pressure of distress. They consisted, to a
large extent, of the worst paid classes of workmen, such as hand-loom
weavers, that had lost employment by the introduction of machinery.
Those persons were now found to be in the enjoyment of independence, as
the proprietors of well-cleared and well-cultivated farms, having all
the necessaries of life in abundance.

Such are the elements which constituted the nucleus of that great
nation which has been growing up under the British sceptre in North
America. The French and Roman Catholic portions of the community
could be most easily excited to disaffection against their Protestant
governors, and in 1834 the irritation of the popular mind, supposed to
be chiefly the work of the clergy, had risen to such a height that the
Home Government thought it prudent to recall the Governor, Lord Aylmer,
supposing his administration to be the cause of it. Sir Robert Peel
appointed Lord Amherst as his successor. In one respect he was not the
best that could be selected; for though his antecedents and experience
were sufficient to warrant the appointment, the name must have been
obnoxious to the priests and people of Lower Canada, as it was by the
arms of his uncle, whose title he inherited, that the province had been
wrested from France. He had been at one time ambassador to China, and
subsequently Governor-General of India. He had, however, no opportunity
of testing his administrative abilities in this new field, for after
the fall of Peel the Melbourne Government determined on associating
him with two Commissioners. Lord Melbourne thereupon sent out the
Earl of Gosford as Governor, with a Board of Commissioners, of which
he was chairman, to inquire into the grievances by which the colony
was agitated. The Government having refused to sanction a Bill that
had been brought into the Lower House of Assembly for the purpose of
rendering the Upper House elective, the Lower House had recourse to
the extreme proceeding of stopping the supplies. The salaries of all
the public servants ceased to be paid, in consequence of which the
Colonial Secretary authorised the Governor to advance £31,000 from the
military chest to meet the emergency. The Governor having required
time to consider the answer he should give in these circumstances, the
Opposition members all withdrew; and they were so numerous that they
did not leave a quorum to carry on the public business.

It was in these peculiar circumstances that the extraordinary measure
was adopted of sending out a commission. The king, however, was furious
at what he regarded as a breach of his prerogative. He told Sir George
Grey, one of the Commission, in the presence of his Ministers, that he
was to assert the prerogative of the Crown, which persons who ought
to have known better had dared to deny, and that he was to recollect
that Lower Canada had been conquered by the sword. A week later he
favoured Lord Gosford with this outburst--"By God I will never consent
to alienate the Crown lands, nor to make the Council elective. Mind,
my lord, the Cabinet is not my Cabinet. They had better take all, or
by God I will have them impeached." As Lord Glenelg, the Colonial
Secretary, was the person alluded to in the first sally, the Ministry
drew up a strongly worded remonstrance which was read to the king
by Lord Melbourne. But Lord Glenelg's instructions to Lord Gosford
were toned down, and his mission was therefore foredoomed to failure.
It was found that the sense of grievance and the complaints of bad
government prevailed in both provinces, though of a different character
in each. The _habitants_ of the Lower Province complained of the
preference shown by the Government to the British settlers and to the
English language over the French. Englishmen, they said, monopolised
the public offices, which they administered with the partiality and
injustice of a dominant race. They complained also of the interference
of the Government in elections, and of its unreasonable delay in
considering or sanctioning the Bills passed by the Assembly. They
insisted, moreover, that the Upper House, corresponding to the House
of Peers, should be elective, instead of being appointed by the Crown
and subject to its will. In the Upper Province the chief grounds of
discontent arose from the want of due control over the public money
and its expenditure. Many of the electors had gone out from Great
Britain and Ireland during the Reform agitation, bearing with them
strong convictions and excited feelings on the subject of popular
rights, and they were not at all disposed to submit to monopoly in
the colony of their adoption, after assisting to overthrow it in the
mother country. Lord Gosford opened the Assembly in November, 1835,
and in the course of his speech he said, "I have received the commands
of our most gracious Sovereign to acquaint you that his Majesty is
disposed to place under the control of the representatives of the
people all public moneys payable to his Majesty or to his officers in
this province, whether arising from taxes or from any other source.
The accounts which will be submitted to your examination show the
large arrears due as salaries to public officers and for the ordinary
expenditure of the Government; and I earnestly request of you to pass
such votes as may effect the liquidation of these arrears, and provide
for the maintenance of the public servants, pending the inquiry by the
Commissioners."

This concession, though deemed by the Home Government a large one, did
not satisfy the Canadians. They took it as an instalment, but gave no
pledge to make the return that was sought, by liquidating the arrears.
In their answer to the Governor they said, "The great body of the
people of this province, without distinction, consider the extension
of the elective principle, and its application to the constitution
of the Legislative Council in particular, and the repeal of the Acts
passed in Great Britain on matters concerning the internal government
of the province, as fully within the jurisdiction of the provincial
Parliament, as well as the privileges conferred by such Acts; and
the full and unrestrained enjoyment on the part of the legislature
and of this House of their legislative and constitutional rights,
as being essential to the prosperity and welfare of his Majesty's
faithful subjects in Canada, as well as necessary to insure their
future confidence in his Government, their future contentment under
it, and to remove the causes which have been obstacles to it." Mr.
Roebuck had become their champion and paid agent in the British House
of Commons, and one of their first acts was to insert the agent's bill
for the amount of his expenses (£500) in the public accounts. This the
Government refused to sanction, whereupon the Assembly took it upon
them to pass it themselves without such sanction. The temper exhibited
on both sides in these proceedings indicated no sign of a fair prospect
of conciliation between the ruler and the ruled, more especially as
the British Government exhibited anything but a conciliatory spirit.
The discontent and agitation went on increasing during the following
year. The Assembly rose in its demands, still persisting in refusing
to vote the supplies. They required that the "executive council" of
the Governor should be subjected to their control, and that their
proceedings should be made public. The Assembly, in fact, had become
quite refractory, owing to the violent measures of the democratic
party, led on by Papineau, the Canadian O'Connell.

The result of the general election in the Upper Province was favourable
to the Government; for of the 62 members returned, 44 were opposed to
the organic changes demanded by the majority of the old Assembly. The
result was that the Government and the legislature of this province
were able to work together harmoniously and satisfactorily. This
result, however, was said to be obtained by extraordinary, and not
always legitimate influence, on the part of the Government, and there
was a large body of malcontents who joined the Lower Province in its
rebellion, which occurred in 1837. The Governor of Upper Canada,
who brought about this favourable change, was Sir Francis Head, who
held the post of major in the army in 1835, when he was employed as
Assistant Poor Law Commissioner in the county of Kent. Lord Glenelg,
recognising in him a man of capacity and energy, fitted for a great
emergency, suddenly appointed him Governor of Upper Canada. He rendered
most important service afterwards in conducting the military operations
by which the rebellion was put down. Lord Gosford was not so successful
in the Lower Province. He was accused of having misled the people
by holding out false hopes, and both he and the Colonial Secretary,
under whose instructions he acted, were charged with something like
treachery, by hinting at great concessions and keeping the word of
promise to the ear, for the mere purpose of quieting the agitation and
evading the reforms demanded. Lord Gosford, unable to stem the torrent
of disaffection, dissolved the Assembly, and was recalled in order to
make way for Sir J. Colborne. Both these Governors rendered the most
important service in putting down the rebellion which soon afterwards
broke out, and effecting the pacification and union of the provinces,
which, as we shall hereafter see, were placed upon the solid basis of
self-government and equal rights.

The Great Seal had remained in commission ever since the resignation of
Sir Robert Peel, and it was supposed to be reserved for Lord Brougham
when the king's objections to his reappointment should be overcome.
Such, however was not the case, as Lord Melbourne was determined to
have nothing more to do with him. On the 1st of January, 1836, Sir
Charles Pepys, Master of the Rolls, was appointed to the office of
Lord Chancellor, and created a peer by the title of Lord Cottenham.
At the same time Mr. Henry Bickersteth, appointed Master of the
Rolls, was called to the Upper House by the title of Baron Langdale.
Lord Brougham, thus passed over, was too ill to make any protest,
but before long he assumed an attitude of active opposition to the
Ministry. Parliament was opened by the king in person on the 4th of
February, 1836, in a Speech remarkable for the number and variety of
its topics. It gave the usual assurances of the maintenance of friendly
relations with all Foreign Powers--expressed regret at the continuance
of the civil contest in the northern provinces of Spain, and hope of
a successful result to our mediation between France and the United
States. Referring to domestic affairs, the state of commerce and
manufactures was declared to be highly satisfactory; but difficulties
continued to press on agriculture. Measures were to be submitted
for increasing the efficiency of the Church, for the commutation of
tithes, for alleviating the grievances of Dissenters; and improvements
in the administration of justice were recommended, especially in the
Court of Chancery. The special attention of Parliament was directed
to the condition of the poor of Ireland, and it was suggested that as
experience had proved the salutary effect of the Poor Law Amendment
Act in England, a similar measure might be found useful in alleviating
the social condition of Ireland. Allusion was also made to the reform
of Irish corporations, and the adjustment of the Irish Tithe question,
which we have already disposed of in preceding pages. Chiefly with
reference to these questions, amendments to the Address were moved in
both Houses; in the Upper by the Duke of Wellington, whose amendment
was carried without a division; in the Commons Ministers won by 284
against 243.

On the 8th of February Lord John Russell brought forward the paragraph
of the Speech relating to agricultural distress, and moved for a
select committee to inquire into the causes of the depression of the
agricultural interest, although he confessed that he did not anticipate
any satisfactory result from the investigation. In this the noble lord
did not miscalculate, for after sitting for eight months the committee
could not agree to any report, and all the benefit they conferred
upon the public was an outline of the evidence which was laid before
the House at the end of the Session. On the 9th and the 12th the same
Minister submitted three measures to the House, which were passed
into law this Session--namely, a Bill for the Commutation of Tithes
in England; a Bill for a General Registration of Marriages, Births,
and Deaths; and another for the amendment of the Law of Marriage. On
the 16th of this month Mr. Hardy brought before the House of Commons
the case of Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Raphael. The latter gentleman was
one of the sheriffs of London, and he wished to represent an Irish
constituency. Mr. O'Connell thought it was possible to get him in
for the borough of Carlow; but he warned him that the expenses would
be £2,000, and that this sum should be deposited in a bank as a
preliminary, "say £2,000." It was alleged that this was a corrupt
bargain, and Mr. O'Connell was accused of selling a Parliamentary
seat. Mr. Hardy, therefore, moved for a select committee to investigate
the transaction. The committee was obtained, and the result was a
complete acquittal of Mr. O'Connell. So strong, however, was the
feeling against him that no less than sixty members of Brooks's Club
resigned, having failed to procure his expulsion.

[Illustration: JOSEPH HUME.]

Attention was now turned to a matter of the highest importance in a
commercial, an intellectual, and a moral point of view. The stamp
duty on newspapers had been the subject of keen agitation for some
months, and newspaper vendors had incurred repeated penalties for
the sale of unstamped newspapers; some of them having been not only
fined, but imprisoned. A general impression prevailed that such an
impost was impolitic, if not unjust, and that the time had come when
the diffusion of knowledge must be freed from the trammels by which it
had been so long restrained. A deputation, consisting of Dr. Birkbeck,
Mr. Hume, Colonel Thompson, Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Grote, Mr. Roebuck, Mr.
Brotherton, Mr. Wallace, and Mr. Buckingham, having, on the 11th of
February, waited upon Lord Melbourne, to ask for an entire abolition of
the stamp on newspapers, he promised to give his most serious attention
to the matter; and he kept his word, for on the 15th of the next month
the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought the subject before Parliament,
and announced the intentions of Government with regard to it. He stated
that it was proposed to revise the whole of the existing law respecting
stamp duties, first by consolidating into one statute the 150 Acts of
Parliament over which the law was at present distributed; secondly, by
the apportionment of the various rates on a new principle--namely, by
the simple and uniform rule of making the price of the stamp in every
case correspond to the pecuniary value involved in the transaction for
which it is required. The effect of this change would be to reduce
the stamp duty upon indentures of apprenticeship, bills of lading,
and many others of the more common instruments, and to increase it
upon mortgages and conveyances of large amounts of property. It was
intimated that the proposed Consolidation Act would contain no less
than 330 sections. With regard to the stamp on newspapers, then
fourpence with discount, it was proposed to reduce it to one penny
without discount. This would be a remission of a proportion, varying
according to the price of the newspaper, of between two-thirds and
three-fourths of the tax. To this remission Parliament assented,
and the illicit circulation of unstamped papers was in consequence
abandoned. Some of the members very reasonably objected to any stamp
whatever on newspapers; but the time was not yet come when Government
would venture entirely to remove it, although the advantages which
must necessarily arise from such a proceeding could not but have been
foreseen. It was considered unfair that the public at large should pay
for the carriage of newspapers by post; and it does not seem to have
been remembered that, as only a portion of them would be transmitted
in this way, an injustice would be committed by demanding payment for
all. The difficulty of the case was, however, in due time, easily
surmounted; and political knowledge was, by the change even then made,
in a great degree exempted from taxation--a good preparation for the
time, which was not very far off, when a newspaper of a high order
might be obtained, even for the reduced price of the stamp.

The condition of the Irish poor, and the expediency of a State
provision for their support, had long been a subject of anxious
consideration with the Imperial Government and the legislature, and
also with public men of every party who took an interest in the state
of the country. It was at length resolved that something should be done
for their regular relief. At the close of 1835 there had been a Poor
Law Commission in existence for more than two years, consisting of
men specially selected on account of their fitness for the task, and
standing high in public estimation, including the Protestant and Roman
Catholic Archbishops of Dublin. They were appointed, in September,
1833, "to inquire into the condition of the poorer classes in Ireland,
and into the various institutions at present established by law for
their relief, and also whether any and what further remedial measures
appear to be requisite to ameliorate the condition of the Irish poor or
any portion of them." In July, 1835, they made their first report, in
which they refer to the various theories with which they were assailed
in the course of their inquiries. "One party attributed all the poverty
and wretchedness of the country to an asserted extreme use of ardent
spirits, and proposed a system for repressing illicit distillation, for
preventing smuggling, and for substituting beer and coffee. Another
party found the cause in the combinations among workmen, and proposed
rigorous laws against trades unions. Others, again, were equally
confident that the reclamation of the bogs and waste lands was the only
practical remedy. A fourth party declared the nature of the existing
connection between landlord and tenant to be the root of all the evil.
Pawn-broking, redundant population, absence of capital, peculiar
religious tenets and religious differences, political excitement,
want of education, the maladministration of justice, the state of
prison discipline, want of manufactures and of inland navigation,
with a variety of other circumstances, were each supported by their
various advocates with earnestness and ability, as being either alone,
or conjointly with some other, the primary cause of all the evils
of society; and loan-funds, emigration, the repression of political
excitement, the introduction of manufactures, and the extension of
inland navigation, were accordingly proposed each as the principal
means by which the improvement of the country could be promoted."

In consequence of the difficulty of getting impartiality combined
with local information, the Commissioners determined to unite in the
inquiry "a native of Great Britain with a resident native of Ireland."
They were very slow in their investigations, and complaints were
made in Parliament and by the public of the time and money consumed
in the inquiry. In the early part of 1836 they made a second report,
in which they gave an account of the various institutions that had
been established for the relief of the poor, such as infirmaries,
dispensaries, fever hospitals, lunatic asylums, foundling hospitals,
houses of industry, the total charge of which amounted to about
£205,000, of which £50,000 consisted of Parliamentary grants, the
remainder being derived from grand jury presentments, voluntary
contributions, and other local sources. This second report, which
added little or nothing to the knowledge of the public on the subject,
and suggested no general plan for the relief of the poor, was by no
means satisfactory to the public. Mr. Nicholls was then a member of
the English Poor Law Commission; and the state of the Irish poor
being pressed upon his attention, he prepared for the consideration
of Government a series of suggestions, founded upon a general view
of social requirements and upon his experience of the English Poor
Law, coupled with the evidence appended to the Irish Commissioners'
first report. These suggestions were presented to Lord John Russell
in January, 1836, about the same time as the Commissioners' second
report. In due time that body published their third report, containing
the general results of their inquiry upon the condition of the people,
which may be summed up as follows:--There is not the same division
of labour which exists in Great Britain. The labouring class look to
agriculture alone for support, whence the supply of agricultural labour
greatly exceeds the demand for it, and small earnings and widespread
misery are the consequences. It appeared that in Great Britain the
agricultural families constituted little more than one-fourth, whilst
in Ireland they constituted about two-thirds of the whole population;
that there were in Great Britain, in 1831, 1,055,982 agricultural
labourers; in Ireland, 1,131,715, although the cultivated land of Great
Britain amounted to about 34,250,000 acres, and that of Ireland only to
about 14,600,000. So that there were in Ireland about five agricultural
labourers for every two that there were for the same quantity of land
in Great Britain. It further appeared that the agricultural progress
of Great Britain was more than four times that of Ireland; that
agricultural wages varied from sixpence to one shilling a day; that
the average of the country is about eightpence-halfpenny; and that the
earnings of the labourers come, on an average of the whole class, to
from two shillings to two and sixpence a week or thereabouts for the
year round. The Commissioners state that they "cannot estimate the
number of persons out of work and in distress during thirty weeks of
the year at less than 585,000, nor the number of persons dependent
upon them at less than 1,800,000, making in the whole 2,385,000. This,
therefore," it is added, "is about the number for which it would be
necessary to provide accommodation in workhouses, if all who required
relief were there to be relieved;" and they consider it impossible
to provide for such a multitude, or even to attempt it with safety.
The expense of erecting and fitting up the necessary buildings would,
they say, come to about £4,000,000; and, allowing for the maintenance
of each person twopence-halfpenny only a day (that being the expense
at the mendicity establishment of Dublin), the cost of supporting
the whole 2,385,000 for thirty weeks would be something more than
£5,000,000 a year; whereas the gross rental of Ireland (exclusive of
towns) is estimated at less than £10,000,000 a year, the net income of
the landlords at less than £6,000,000, and the public revenue is only
about £4,000,000. They could not, therefore, recommend the present
workhouse system of England as at all suited to Ireland.

Long quotations are then given from the several reports of the
Assistant Commissioners, showing that the feelings of the suffering
labourers in Ireland are also decidedly in favour of emigration.
They do not desire workhouses, it is said, but they do desire a free
passage to a colony where they may have the means of living by their
own industry. The Commissioners then declare that, upon the best
consideration they have been able to give to the whole subject, they
think that a legal provision should be made and rates levied for the
relief and support of curable as well as incurable lunatics, of idiots,
epileptic persons, cripples, deaf and dumb, and blind poor, and all
who labour under permanent bodily infirmities; such relief and support
to be afforded within the walls of public institutions; also for the
relief of the sick poor in hospitals and infirmaries, and convalescent
establishments; or by external attendance, and a supply of food as
well as medicine, where the persons to be relieved are not in a state
to be removed from home; also for the purpose of emigration, for the
support of penitentiaries--to which vagrants may be sent--and for the
maintenance of deserted children; also towards the relief of aged and
infirm persons, of orphans, of helpless widows, and young children, of
the families of sick persons, and of casual destitution. This report
was not signed by all the Commissioners. Three of them set forth their
reasons, in thirteen propositions, for dissenting from the principle of
the voluntary system, as recommended by the report.

At the opening of the Session of 1836, as we have seen, the king stated
in his Speech that a further report of the commission of inquiry into
the condition of the poorer classes in Ireland would be speedily laid
before Parliament. "You will approach this subject," he said, "with
the caution due to its importance and difficulty; and the experience
of the salutary effect produced by the Act for the amendment of the
laws relating to the poor in England and Wales may in many respects
assist your deliberations." On the 9th of February Sir Richard
Musgrave moved for leave to bring in a Bill for the relief of the
poor in Ireland in certain cases, stating that he himself lived in an
atmosphere of misery, and being compelled to witness it daily, he was
determined to pursue the subject, to see whether any and what relief
could be procured from Parliament. A few days later another motion was
made by the member for Stroud for leave to introduce a Bill for the
relief and employment of the poor of Ireland; and on the 3rd of March
a Bill was submitted by Mr. Smith O'Brien, framed upon the principles
of local administration by bodies representing the ratepayers, and a
general central supervision and control on the part of a body named
by the Government, and responsible to Parliament. On the 4th of May
Mr. Poulett Scrope, a gentleman who had given great attention to
questions connected with the poor and the working classes, moved a
series of resolutions affirming the necessity for some provision for
the relief of the Irish poor. Lord Morpeth was then Chief Secretary;
and in commenting upon these resolutions in the House of Commons, he
admitted "that the hideous nature of the evils which prevailed amongst
the poorer classes in Ireland called earnestly for redress, and he
thought no duty more urgent on the Government and on Parliament than
to devise a remedy for them." On the 9th of June following, on the
motion for postponing the consideration of Sir Richard Musgrave's Bill,
Lord Morpeth again assured the House that the subject was under the
immediate consideration of Government, and that he was not without
hope of their being enabled to introduce some preparatory measure in
the present Session; but, at all events, they would take the first
opportunity in the next Session of introducing what he hoped to be a
complete and satisfactory measure. Nothing, however, was done during
the Session, Government seeming to be puzzled to know what to do with
such conflicting testimony on a subject of enormous difficulty.

In order to get, if possible, more trustworthy information and a
clue out of the labyrinth, they gave directions to Mr. Nicholls to
proceed to Ireland, taking with him the reports of the Commissioners
of Inquiry, and there to examine how far it might be judicious or
practicable to offer relief to whole classes of the poor; whether
of the sick, the infirm, or orphan children; whether such relief
might not have the effect of promoting imposture without suppressing
mendicity; whether the condition of the great bulk of the poorer
classes would be improved by such a measure; whether any kind of
workhouse could be established which should not give its inmates
a superior degree of comfort to the common lot of the independent
labourer; whether the restraint of a workhouse would be an effectual
check to applicants for admission; and whether, if the system were
once established, the inmates would not resist by force the restraints
which would be necessary. He was further to inquire by what machinery
the funds for carrying out a Poor Law system could be best raised and
expended. He was dispensed from inquiring as to the extent and the
occasional severity of the destitution, though he properly questioned
the estimate of 2,385,000 as being excessive, and it was no doubt a
great exaggeration. On this point, Mr. Nicholls thought it enough to
state at the end of his mission that the misery prevalent among the
labouring classes in Ireland appeared to be "of a nature and intensity
calculated to produce great demoralisation and danger." His first
report was delivered on the 15th of November, 1836. His attention had
been particularly directed to the south and west, "everywhere examining
and inquiring as to the condition of the people, their character and
wants; and endeavouring to ascertain whether, and how far, the system
of relief established in England was applicable to the present state
of Ireland." The route from Cork round by the western coast, and
ending at Armagh, was deemed most eligible, because the inhabitants
of the manufacturing and commercial districts of the north and east
more nearly resembled the English than those of the southern and
western parts of Ireland; and if the English system should be found
applicable to the latter, there could be no doubt of its applicability
to the others. It was impossible, he said, to pass through the country
without being struck with the evidence of increasing wealth everywhere
apparent. Great as had been the improvement in England during the same
period, he believed that in Ireland it had been equal. The increase
of capital was steadily progressive. The great obstacles to its
more general application to the improvement of the country were the
excessive subdivision of land, and the dependence of the people for
subsistence upon the possession of a plot of potato-ground. One of the
most striking circumstances resulting from the want of employment was
the prevalence of mendicancy, with the falsehood and fraud which formed
part of the profession, and which spread its contagion among the lower
orders.

[Illustration: IRISH TRAMPS.]

Mr. Nicholls next applied himself to the solution of the problem how
the workhouse system, which had been safely and effectually applied
to depauperise England, might be applied with safety and efficiency
to put down mendicancy and relieve destitution in Ireland. In that
country the task was beset with peculiar difficulties. Assuming the
principle that the pauper should not be better off than the labourer,
it would be difficult to devise any workhouse dress, diet, or lodging
that would not be better than what many of the poor actually enjoyed.
But, on the other hand, the Irish poor were fond of change, hopeful,
sanguine, migratory, desultory in their habits, hating all restraints
of order and system, averse from the trouble of cleanliness; and rather
than be subject to the restrictions and regularity of a workhouse, an
Irishman, in health and strength, would wander the world over to obtain
a living. Hence, no matter how well he might be lodged, fed, and clad
in a workhouse, he could not endure the confinement. Consequently,
Mr. Nicholls found in the state of Ireland no sufficient reason for
departing from the principle of the English Poor Law, which recognises
destitution alone as the ground of relief, nor for establishing a
distinction in the one country that does not exist in the other.

It was upon this very able report of Mr. Nicholls that the Irish Poor
Law was based. After undergoing much consideration, it was finally
adopted by the Government on the 13th of December, 1836, and on the
following day he was directed to have a Bill prepared, embodying
all his recommendations. This was accordingly done; and after being
scrutinised, clause by clause, in a committee of the Cabinet specially
appointed for the purpose, and receiving various emendations, the Bill
was introduced on the 13th of February, 1837, by Lord John Russell,
then Home Secretary, and Leader of the House of Commons. His speech
on the occasion was able and comprehensive. "It appears," he said,
"from the testimony both of theory and experience, that when a country
is overrun by marauders and mendicants having no proper means of
subsistence, but preying on the industry and relying on the charity of
others, the introduction of a Poor Law serves several very important
objects. In the first place, it acts as a measure of peace, enabling
the country to prohibit vagrancy, which is so often connected with
outrage, by offering a substitute to those who rely on vagrancy and
outrage as a means of subsistence. When an individual or a family
is unable to obtain subsistence, and is without the means of living
from day to day, it would be unjust to say they shall not go about
and endeavour to obtain from the charity of the affluent that which
circumstances have denied to themselves. But when you can say to such
persons, 'Here are the means of subsistence offered to you'--when
you can say this on the one hand, you may, on the other hand, say,
'You are not entitled to beg, you shall no longer infest the country
in a manner injurious to its peace, and liable to imposition and
outrage.'" Another way, he observed, in which a Poor Law is beneficial
is, that it is a great promoter of social concord, by showing a
disposition in the State and in the community to attend to the welfare
of all classes. It is of use also by interesting the landowners and
persons of property in the welfare of their tenants and neighbours. A
landowner who looks only to receiving the rent of his estate may be
regardless of the numbers in his neighbourhood who are in a state of
destitution, or who follow mendicancy and are ready to commit crime;
but if he is compelled to furnish means for the subsistence of those
persons so destitute, it then becomes his interest to see that those
around him have the means of living, and are not in actual want. He
considered that these objects, and several others collateral to them,
were attained in England by the Act of Elizabeth. Almost the greatest
benefit that could be conferred on a country was, he observed, a high
standard of subsistence for the labouring classes; and such a benefit
was secured for England chiefly by the Quest Act of Elizabeth. Lord
John Russell then alluded to the abuses which subsequently arose, and
to the correction of those abuses then in progress under the provisions
of the Poor Law Amendment Act, and said that we ought to endeavour to
obtain for Ireland all the good effects of the English system, and to
guard against the evils which had arisen under it.

In the course of his speech Lord John Russell stated that he had made
inquiry with respect to the amount of relief afforded to wandering
mendicants, and the result was that in most cases a shilling an acre
was paid by farmers in the year, and he calculated that it amounted on
the whole to perhaps £1,000,000 a year. Among those thus relieved, he
said, the number of impostors must be enormous. It was not proposed,
however, to prohibit vagrancy until the whole of the workhouses
should be built and ready for the reception of the destitute. A
lengthened discussion then took place in reference to the proposed
measure, in which Mr. Shaw, Mr. O'Connell, Lord Howick, Sir Robert
Peel, Lord Stanley, and other members took part. The Bill was read a
first time, and on the 25th of April, 1837, Lord John Russell moved
the second reading, when the debate was adjourned till the 1st of
May. Notwithstanding a good deal of hostile discussion the second
reading was carried without a division. On the 9th of May the House
went into committee on the Bill. Twenty clauses were passed with only
two unimportant divisions. The introduction of a settlement clause
was rejected by a majority of 120 to 68. The vagrancy clauses were
postponed for future consideration. The committee had got to the
sixtieth clause on the 7th of June, when the king's illness became so
serious that his recovery was highly improbable, and the business of
Parliament was consequently suspended. He died on the 20th of June,
and on the 17th of July Parliament was prorogued, so that there was an
end for the present to the Irish Poor Relief Bill, and all the other
measures then before Parliament.

The Conservative party had got the impression that the commercial
interest in the House of Commons would swamp the landed interest, in
consequence of the preponderance of the representatives of cities
and boroughs. But that impression was shown to be a delusion by many
votes. The number who supported a motion of Lord Chandos on the 27th
of April, 1836, was, considering its nature, remarkable:--"That in
the application of any surplus revenue towards the relief of the
burdens of the country, either by remission of taxation or otherwise,
due regard should be had to the necessity of a portion thereof being
applied to the relief of the agricultural interest." That interest had
been relieved to a considerable extent in a variety of ways during
the recent progress of legislation, and especially by the Poor Law
Amendment Act, which had been an immense boon to both landlords and
tenants. The policy of the motion of Lord Chandos was so unsound that
Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, and Sir James Graham felt constrained to
vote with Ministers for its rejection. The motion was defeated by 211
votes to 150.

On the 6th of May, 1836, the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought
forward the Budget, which placed in a strong light the long standing
anomaly of distress among the agricultural classes, contrasting with
general prosperity in the commercial classes. He was enabled to exhibit
a more favourable state of the finances than he had anticipated in
his estimate the previous year. The total income of the nation was
£46,980,000, its total expenditure £45,205,807, which would give a
surplus of £1,774,193. Of this surplus all but £662,000 would be
absorbed by the interest on the West Indian Loan, which had now become
a permanent charge. There was an addition of 5,000 seamen to the navy,
for which the sum of £434,000 was required. This addition seemed to be
quite necessary from the feeble condition of the navy as compared with
the navies of other nations. On the 4th of March Mr. Charles Wood had
stated that the French would have twelve sail of the line at sea during
summer; that in 1834 the Russians had five sail of the line cruising
in the Black Sea, and eighteen besides frigates in the Baltic. During
this period there never were in the English Channel ports more than
two frigates and a sloop, with crews perhaps amounting to 1,000 men,
disposable for sea at any one time, and that only for a day or two.
Moreover all the line-of-battle ships Great Britain had afloat in every
part of the world did not exceed ten. The land forces voted for the
year were 81,319 men, not counting the Indian army. Of these one-half
were required in the colonies. France had 360,000 regular soldiers, and
three times that number of National Guards. With the surplus at his
disposal the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to reduce the duty on
first-class paper from fivepence to threepence-halfpenny--a suitable
accompaniment to the reduction of the stamp on newspapers, already
noticed--and to abolish the duty on stained paper; to remit the South
Sea duties, amounting to £10,000; to reduce the duties on insurances
of farming-stock, on taxed carts, and on newspapers. He estimated the
total amount of repeals for the present year at £351,000, which would
be increased to £520,000 when they all came into operation. This was
the best of Mr. Spring-Rice's indifferent Budgets.

The measures of Church Reform that had been adopted in Ireland
suggested the propriety of adopting similar measures in England, where
the relations between the clergy and the people were not at all as
satisfactory as they should be, and where the system of ecclesiastical
finances stood greatly in need of improvement. Accordingly, a Royal
Commission was appointed during the Administration of Sir Robert Peel,
dated the 4th of February, 1835, on the ground that it was "expedient
that the fullest and most attentive consideration should be forthwith
given to ecclesiastical duties and revenues." The Commissioners were
directed to consider the state of the several dioceses in England and
Wales with reference to the amount of their revenues and the more equal
distribution of episcopal duties, and the prevention of the necessity
of attaching by _commendam_ to bishoprics benefices with cure of souls.
They were to consider also the state of the several cathedral and
collegiate churches in England and Wales, with a view to the suggestion
of such measures as might render them conducive to the efficiency
of the Established Church; and to devise the best mode of providing
for the cure of souls, with special reference to the residence of
the clergy on their respective benefices. They were also expected to
report their opinions as to what measures it would be expedient to
adopt on the various matters submitted for their consideration. The
Commissioners were the two Archbishops, the Bishops of London, Lincoln,
and Gloucester, the Lord Chancellor, the First Lord of the Treasury,
with other members of the Government and laymen not in office. When the
change of Government occurred a few months afterwards, it was necessary
to issue a new commission, which was dated the 6th of June, for the
purpose of substituting the names of Lord Melbourne and his colleagues
for those of Sir Robert Peel and the other members of the outgoing
Administration. But before this change occurred the first report had
been issued, dated the 17th of March, 1835. Three other reports were
published in 1836, dated respectively March 4th, May 20th, and June
24th. A fifth had been prepared, but not signed, when the death of the
king occurred. It was, however, presented as a Parliamentary paper in
1838.

The first report related to the duties and revenues of bishops.
The Commissioners suggested various alterations of the boundaries
of dioceses. They recommended the union of the sees of Gloucester
and Bristol, and of Bangor and St. Asaph. They also recommended the
establishment of two new sees, Ripon and Manchester. They calculated
the net income of the bishoprics of England and Wales at £148,875.
They found that, owing to the unequal manner in which this revenue
was distributed, the income of one-half the bishoprics was below the
sum necessary to cover the expenses to which a bishop is unavoidably
subject, which rendered it necessary to hold livings _in commendam_.
To do away with this state of things, and with a view to diminish the
inducements to episcopal translations, they recommended a different
distribution of episcopal revenues. In the second and fourth reports,
and the draft of the fifth report, they presented the result of their
inquiries on cathedral and collegiate churches. They recommended the
appropriation of part of their revenues, and of the whole of the
endowments for non-residentiary prebends, dignitaries, and officers,
and that the proceeds in both cases should be carried to the account of
a fund, out of which better provision should be made for the cure of
souls. In their second report they stated that they had prepared a Bill
for regulating pluralities and the residence of the clergy.

[Illustration: BRITISH LINE-OF-BATTLE SHIPS (1836).]

On the 13th of August, 1836, an Act was passed establishing the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners permanently as "one body politic and
corporate, by the name of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for
England." The number of Commissioners incorporated was thirteen, of
whom eight were _ex officio_ members--namely: the Archbishops of
Canterbury and York, the Bishop of London, the Lord Chancellor, the
Lord President of the Council, the First Lord of the Treasury, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and one of the Principal Secretaries of
State, who was to be nominated by the sign-manual. There were five
other Commissioners, including two bishops, who were to be removable
at the pleasure of the Crown. The lay members were required to sign
a declaration that they were members of the united Church of England
and Ireland by law established. A subsequent Act, passed in August,
1840, considerably modified the constitution of this Commission. The
following were added to the list of _ex officio_ members: all the
Bishops of England and Wales; the Deans of Canterbury, St. Paul's, and
Westminster; the two Chief Justices; the Master of the Rolls; the Chief
Baron; and the Judges of the Prerogative and Admiralty Courts. By this
Act the Crown was empowered to appoint four laymen, and the Archbishop
of Canterbury two, in addition to the three appointed under the former
Act; and it was provided that, instead of being removable at the
pleasure of the Crown, the non _ex officio_ members should continue so
long as they should "well demean themselves" in the execution of their
duties.

[Illustration: RIPON CATHEDRAL.]

By the Acts 6 and 7 William IV., c. 71, a Board of Commissioners,
called the "Tithe Commissioners of England and Wales," was appointed,
the object of which was to convert the tithes into a rent-charge,
payable in money, but varying in amount according to the average price
of corn for seven preceding years. The amount of the tithes was to
be calculated on an average of the seven years preceding Christmas,
1835; and the quantity of grain thus ascertained was to remain for
ever as the annual charge upon the parish. The annual money value was
ascertained from the returns of the Comptroller of Corn, who published
annually, in January, the average price of an Imperial bushel of
wheat, barley, and oats, computed from the weekly averages of the corn
returns during the seven preceding years. The Commissioners reported
in 1851 that voluntary commutations had been commenced in 9,634 tithe
districts; 7,070 agreements had been received, of which 6,778 had been
confirmed; and 5,529 drafts of compulsory awards had been received,
of which 5,260 had been confirmed. Thus in 12,038 tithe districts the
rent charges had been finally established by confirmed agreements or
confirmed awards.

One of the most important measures of the Session was the Marriage
Act, a subject which had been taken up by Sir Robert Peel during
his short-lived Ministry. By this Act Dissenters were relieved from
a galling and degrading grievance, one which, of all others, most
painfully oppressed their consciences. Notwithstanding their strong
objection to the ceremonies of the Established Church, they were
obliged, in order to be legally married, to comply with its ritual in
the marriage service, the phraseology of which they considered not the
least objectionable part of the liturgy. By this Act marriages were
treated as a civil contract, to which the parties might add whatever
religious ceremony they pleased, or they might be married without
any religious ceremony at all, or without any other form, except
that of making a declaration of the Act before a public officer, in
any registered place of religious worship, or in the office of the
superintendent registrar. This was a great step towards religious
equality, and tended more than anything, since the repeal of the Test
and Corporation Acts, to promote social harmony and peace between
different denominations.

In connection with this reform an Act was passed which supplied a
great want--namely, the uniform registration of marriages, births,
and deaths. The state of the law on these matters had been very
unsatisfactory, notwithstanding a long series of enactments upon the
subject. Although the law required the registration of births and
deaths, it made no provision for recording the date at which either
occurred, and so it was essentially defective. It only provided
records of the performance of the religious ceremonies of baptism,
marriage, and burial, according to the rites of the Established Church,
affording, therefore, an insufficient register even for the members of
that Church; while for those who dissented from it, and consequently
did not avail themselves of its services for baptism and burial, it
afforded no register at all. Even this inadequate system was not fully
and regularly carried out, and the loud and long-continued complaints
on the subject led to an inquiry by a Select Committee of the House
of Commons in 1833. In order, therefore, to secure a complete and
trustworthy record of vital statistics, the committee recommended
"a national civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths,
including all ranks of society, and religionists of every class." In
pursuance of these recommendations, a General Registration Bill was
brought into Parliament; and in August, 1836, the Act for registering
marriages, births, and deaths in England became law, as a companion
to the Marriage Act, which passed at the same time. Their operation,
however, was suspended for a limited time by the Act of 7 William IV.,
c. 1, and they were amended by the Act of 1 Victoria, c. 22, and came
into operation on the 1st of July, 1837. One of the most important
and useful provisions of this measure was that which required the
cause of death to be recorded, with the time, locality, sex, age, and
occupation, thus affording data of the highest importance to medical
science, and to all who were charged with the preservation of the
public health. In order that fatal diseases might be recorded in a
uniform manner, the Registrar-General furnished qualified medical
practitioners with books of printed forms--"certificates of cause of
death"--to be filled up and given to registrars of births and deaths;
and he caused to be circulated a nosological table of diseases, for
the purpose of securing, as far as possible, uniformity of nomenclature
in the medical certificates. In order to carry out this measure, a
central office was established at Somerset House, London, presided
over by an officer named the Registrar-General, appointed under the
Great Seal, under whom was a chief clerk, who acted as his secretary
and assistant registrar-general, six superintendents, and a staff of
clerks, who were appointed by the Lords of the Treasury. From this
office emanated instructions to all the local officers charged with
the duties of registration under the Act--superintendent registrars,
registrars of births and deaths, and registrars of marriages, any of
whom might be dismissed by the Registrar-General, on whom devolved the
entire control and responsibility of the operations.

Great attention was drawn at this time to the operation of the new
Poor Law Act, which seemed, in some respects, repugnant to humane and
Christian feeling, and was strongly denounced by a portion of the
press. An attempt was made by Mr. Walter to get the stringency of the
law in some measure relaxed, and on the 1st of August he moved for a
Select Committee to inquire into its operation, particularly in regard
to outdoor relief, and the separation of husbands from their wives, and
children from their parents. But it seemed to be the opinion of the
House that the workhouse test would lose its effect in a great measure
if the separation in question did not take place. The operation of the
Act was certainly successful in saving the pockets of the ratepayers,
for on a comparison between the years 1834 and 1836 there was a saving
to the amount of £1,794,990. The question did not seem to excite much
interest, for the attendance was thin, as appears by the numbers on the
division, which were--for the motion, 46; against it, 82.

The winter of 1836-7 was marked by great commercial activity, and a
strong tendency to over-trading, chiefly on the part of the banks. The
result was a reaction, and considerable monetary embarrassment. In the
reckless spirit of enterprise which led to these consequences, the
American houses took the lead. The American speculators indulged an
inordinate thirst for gain by land jobs, and over-trading in British
produce. The most remarkable examples of this were afforded by three
great American houses in London, called "the three W.'s." From an
account of these firms, published in June, 1837, it appeared that the
amount of bills payable by them from June to December, was as follows:
Wilson and Co., £936,300; Wigan and Co., £674,700; Wildes and Co.,
£505,000; total acceptances, £2,116,000. This was upwards of one-sixth
of the aggregate circulation of the private and joint-stock banks of
England and Wales, and about one-eighth of the average circulation
of the Bank of England. The shipments to America by Wigan and Co.
amounted to £1,118,900. The number of joint-stock banks that started
into existence at this time was remarkable. From 1825 to 1833 only
thirty joint-stock banks had been established. In that year the Charter
of the Bank of England being renewed, without many of the exclusive
privileges it formerly enjoyed, and the spirit of commercial enterprise
being active, joint-stock banks began to increase rapidly. There was an
average of ten new companies annually, till 1836, when forty-five of
these establishments came into existence in the course of ten months.
In Ireland there were ten started in the course of two years. The
consequence of this greatly increased banking accommodation produced a
wild spirit of commercial adventure, which collapsed first in America,
where the monetary confusion was unexampled--bankers, importers,
merchants, traders, and the Government having been all flung into a
chaos of bankruptcy and insolvency. This state of things in America had
an immediate effect in England. Discounts were abruptly refused to the
largest and hitherto most respectable houses of Liverpool and London.
Trade, in consequence, became paralysed; prices suddenly dropped
from thirty to forty per cent.; and the numerous share bubbles--the
railway projects, the insurance companies, the distillery companies,
the cemetery companies, the sperm oil, the cotton twist, zoological
gardens, and other speculations--which had floated on the pecuniary
tide, all suddenly collapsed, and there was an end to the career of
unprincipled adventurers. It is satisfactory, however, to observe
that the sound commerce of the country soon recovered the shock thus
given; and in less than two years the pecuniary difficulties had passed
away. Commerce had resumed its wonted activity, and flowed steadily
in legitimate channels. The American banks resumed payment, and the
three great American houses, which had involved themselves to such an
enormous extent, were enabled to meet all their liabilities.

The foreign relations of England at this period were, on the whole,
satisfactory--as might be expected from the fact that our foreign
policy was committed to the able management of Lord Palmerston, who,
while sympathising with oppressed nationalities, acted steadily
upon the principle of non-intervention. Considering, however, the
comparative smallness o£ our naval and military forces, the formidable
military powers of Russia and France created a good deal of uneasiness,
which the king expressed in one of his odd impromptu speeches at
Windsor. On the 19th of February there was a debate in the House of
Commons on Eastern affairs, in which the vast resources and aggressive
policy Of Russia were placed in a strong light. On that occasion
Lord Dudley Stuart said, "Russia has 50,000,000 subjects in Europe
alone, exclusive of Asia; an army of 700,000 men, and a navy of eighty
line-of-battle ships and frigates, guided by the energy of a Government
of unmitigated despotism, at whose absolute and unlimited disposal
stand persons and property of every description. These formidable means
are constantly applied to purposes of territorial aggrandisement, and
every new acquisition becomes the means of gaining others. Who can tell
that the Hellespont may not be subject to Russia at any moment? She
has a large fleet in the Black Sea, full command of the mouths of the
Danube, and of the commercial marine cities of Odessa and Trebizond.
In three days she may be at Constantinople from Sebastopol; and if
once there, the Dardanelles will be so fortified by Russian engineers
that she can never be expelled except by a general war. She could be
in entire possession of these important straits before any expedition
could be sent from this country, even if such a thing could be thought
of against the enormous military force at the command of Russia. That
Russia is determined to have the Dardanelles is evident from the treaty
of Unkiar-Skelessi, by which she began by excluding the ships of all
other nations. The effect of this treaty was to exclude any ship of war
from these straits, except with the permission of Russia. Russia might
at any moment insist on the exclusion of our ships of war from the
Dardanelles--nay, she has already done so; for when Lord Durham, going
on his late embassy to the Court of St. Petersburg, arrived at the
Dardanelles in a frigate, he was obliged to go on board the _Pluto_,
an armed vessel without her guns, before he could pass the straits;
and when he arrived at Sebastopol no salute was fired, and the excuse
given was that they did not know the _Pluto_ from a merchant vessel.
But both before and since Lord Durham went, Russian ships of war, with
their guns out and their streamers flying, passed through the Black Sea
to the Dardanelles, and again through the Dardanelles to the Black
Sea. Russia has now fifteen ships of the line and seven frigates in the
Black Sea. Sebastopol is only three days' sail from the Hellespont.
Turkey has no force capable of resisting such an armament; the forts
of the Hellespont are incapable of defence against a land force, for
they are open in the rear. Russia might any day have 100,000 men in
Constantinople before England or France could even fit out expeditions
to defend it."

Lord Palmerston and Mr. Poulett Thompson treated the apprehensions of
Lord Dudley Stuart as visionary, and expressed their conviction that
there was nothing in the conduct of the Czar to excite either alarm or
hostility in Great Britain. Their real opinions were very different. A
few days later an event occurred which showed how little Russia was to
be relied upon; and that it was impossible to restrain her aggressive
propensities, even by the most solemn treaty obligations, undertaken in
the face of Europe, and guaranteed by the Great Powers. Cracow, which
comprised a small territory about 490 square miles in extent, with a
population of about 123,000, including the city, was at the general
settlement in 1815 formed into a free State, whose independence was
guaranteed by the Treaty of Vienna in the following terms:--"The town
of Cracow, with its territory, is declared to be for ever a free,
independent, and strictly neutral city, under the protection of Russia,
Austria, and Prussia." During the insurrection of Poland in 1830 the
little State of Cracow could not repress its sympathies, and the news
of the outbreak was received there with the greatest enthusiasm. After
the destruction of the Polish army, persons who were compromised by the
revolt sought an asylum in Cracow; and 2,000 political refugees were
found settled there in 1836. This served as a pretext for the military
occupation of the city in February of that year, notwithstanding the
joint guarantee that it should never be entered by a foreign army. This
was only a prelude to the ultimate extinction of its independence,
which occurred ten years later. Lord Palmerston launched a vigorous
protest, but it had no result.

Meanwhile, the attention of the Western Powers was called to the
constitutional monarchy of Spain. For, whatever were its merits
in comparison with the systems that preceded it, it had not the
merit of securing good government, protecting life and property,
and maintaining public tranquillity. During the summer of 1836 that
country, always more or less disturbed, was the scene of fresh
tumults and insurrections, breaking out at different points, at
Malaga, Cadiz, Seville, and Cordova. The Constitution of 1812 was
proclaimed, and provincial juntas were established in defiance of
the queen's authority. Madrid was also the scene of insurrection,
which was repressed, and the city was put in a state of siege. Soon
afterwards a more determined demand was made for the Constitution of
1812, when a regiment of militia forced themselves into the apartments
of the queen regent, in spite of the remonstrances of the French and
British Ambassadors, and extorted from her a promise to accept that
Constitution. This daring act was the signal for a general rising in
the capital. The Prime Minister, Isturitz, fled to Lisbon, and there
took ship for England. He was fortunate in escaping with his life,
for had he fallen into the hands of the enraged populace he would
probably have shared the fate of General Quesada, the military governor
of Madrid, who was caught about three miles from the capital and
killed. Order was at length restored by the queen regent proclaiming
the Constitution, subject to the revision of the Cortes and by the
appointment of a decidedly Liberal Administration, which commenced by
calling for a conscription of 50,000 men to carry on the war against
the Carlists, who were still in active rebellion. The Constitution
so imperatively demanded by the people was first proclaimed at Cadiz
in 1812, and again by Riego in 1820. It now was brought forward once
more, and on the 24th of February, 1837, adopted by the general
Cortes assembled for the purpose, having been previously revised by a
committee.

The Spanish Revolution had a marked effect on French politics.
M. Thiers and his colleagues had been pressing for an effective
intervention against Don Carlos; but they were unable to overcome
the reluctance of the king to send a French army into Spain, even to
sustain the _régime_ which the king had recognised and approved. This
was completely superseded by the changes that had just taken place.
He should now interpose, not to protect the reigning dynasty against
pretenders, but to take part in a war between Constitutionalists and
Liberals of different shades. When, therefore, Louis Philippe was asked
to send aid to the French legion of volunteers serving as auxiliaries
in Spain, and to adopt other measures against the Carlists, as the only
means of preventing the queen's Government from being carried away by
the torrent of revolution, he positively refused. Lord Palmerston,
influenced by the continued ill-success of the Spanish Legion, made
overtures to the same effect, but without result. Louis Philippe was,
in fact, listening to the overtures of Metternich, and inclined to
desert the British alliance.

Spain and Portugal are so bound together by natural sympathy that they
generally share the same vicissitudes. Bad feeling had arisen between
the national party and the Government in consequence of the appointment
of Prince Ferdinand, the husband of the queen, to be commander-in-chief
of the army. Other causes increased the popular discontent, which
was at its height when the public was electrified by the news of the
Spanish Revolution. The Ministers were obliged to make concessions;
but, besides being inadequate, they were too late. The steamboat from
Oporto was loaded with opposition members, who were received with the
most enthusiastic demonstrations of welcome. On the 9th of September
the clubs had everything arranged for a revolution, and a mixed array
of troops of the line, caçadors, and National Guards, proclaimed the
Constitution adopted by John VI.; and, having sung a constitutional
hymn, they appointed a deputation, headed by Viscount Sa Bandiera, to
wait upon Queen Donna Maria. She had first contemplated resistance, but
the army would not act against the people. The National Guards were in
possession of the city, having occupied the Rocio Square in Lisbon all
night, and in the morning they were informed that the queen had yielded
to their wishes, appointing a new Ministry, with Bandiera at its head.
Some of the most obnoxious of the ex-Ministers took refuge from popular
vengeance on board the ships of the British squadron lying in the
Tagus. Most of the peers protested against the Revolution; but it was
an accomplished fact, and they were obliged to acquiesce.

[Illustration: DEPUTATION OF CONSTITUTIONALISTS BEFORE THE QUEEN OF
PORTUGAL. (_See p._ 413.)]

The state of parties in the House of Commons at the opening of the
Session of 1837 was so evenly balanced, that Government had a very
narrow majority. The number of Whigs was calculated at 150, of Liberals
100, and of Radicals 80, making the total number of Ministerialists
330. On the other side, the Tories counted 139, the Ultra-Tories 100,
and the Conservatives, belonging to the new school which Sir Robert
Peel had constituted, 80. Parliament was opened by commission on the
last day of January. The Royal Speech announced the continuance of
friendly relations with Foreign Powers, alluded to the affairs of Spain
and Portugal, and directed the attention of Parliament to the state
of Lower Canada. It recommended a renewal of the inquiry into the
operation of joint-stock banks; also measures for the improvement of
civil and criminal jurisprudence, and for giving increased stability
to the Established Church. Special attention was directed to the state
of Ireland, with reference to its municipal corporations and the
collection of tithes, and to "the difficult and pressing question of
a legal provision for the poor." Animated debates on the Address took
place in both Houses. The Radicals, led on by Mr. Roebuck, strongly
condemned the want of earnest purpose on the part of Ministers, whom he
represented as "worse than the Tories." He accused them of pandering
to popular passions on one side, and to patrician feelings on the
other. But, situated as they were, what could they do? Their majority
was small and uncertain in the Commons, while the Opposition in the
Lords was powerful and determined. Lord Lyndhurst mutilated measure
after measure, and then at the end of each Session taunted Ministers
with their failure. They were trying to get on with a House of Commons
elected under the influence of a Conservative Administration. Of
course, Lord Melbourne could have dissolved Parliament and appealed
to the country, in the hope of getting a working majority; but the
king was decidedly averse from a dissolution; and it would have been
an exceedingly unwise course to adopt, at a time when the precarious
state of his health plainly indicated that the reign was fast drawing
to a close, and its termination would necessitate another general
election. It was unreasonable to expect that in consequence of weakness
proceeding from such causes a Liberal Cabinet should surrender the
reins of power to the Tory party, on the eve of a new reign, and with
all the bright prospects that would be opened by the accession of a
youthful queen to the Throne. At the close of the Session of 1836 they
had, indeed, contemplated resignation, but eventually determined to go
on.

The Ministry lost no time in introducing their Irish measures--the
new Municipal Reform Bill and the Bill for the Relief of the Poor.
The former, after three nights' debate, passed the Commons by a
majority--302 to 247. It was during this debate that Mr. Sheil
delivered his brilliant reply to the indiscreet and unstatesmanlike
taunt of Lord Lyndhurst, who, when speaking on the same question in
the Upper House, declared that the Irish were "aliens in blood, in
language, and religion." "The Duke of Wellington," said Mr. Sheil,
"is not a man of sudden emotions; but he should not, when he heard
that word used, have forgotten Vimiera, Badajoz, and Salamanca, and
Toulouse, and the last glorious conflict which crowned all his former
victories. On that day, when the destinies of mankind were trembling
in the balance, when the batteries spread slaughter over the field,
and the legions of France rushed again and again to the onset, did the
'aliens' then flinch? On that day the blood of the men of England, of
Ireland, and of Scotland was poured forth together. They fought on the
same field, they died the same death, they were stretched in the same
pit; their dust was commingled; the same dew of heaven fell on the
grass that covered them; the same grass sprang from the soil in which
they reposed together. And is it to be endured that we are to be called
aliens and strangers to that empire for whose salvation our best blood
has been poured out?"

The subject of Church rates having created much ill-feeling in towns
and districts where the Dissenters were most numerous, an attempt
was made by the Government to abolish the impost. It was found that
the sum which they produced was about £250,000 a year, and it was
proposed to obtain that amount by a better management of the estates
of bishops, deans, and chapters, by placing them under the control of
eleven Commissioners, who should first pay the bishops and dignitaries'
salaries out of the proceeds, and devote the rest of the fund thus
realised to the objects for which Church rates were levied, namely,
the repair of churches and the supply of the necessaries for public
worship. But an outcry was raised against this plan as being based upon
the principle of Church spoliation. The bishops and clergy resisted
strenuously, and the friends of the Church were roused to such an
extent that the majority in the House of Commons on the second reading
of the Bill was only five. This majority was tantamount to defeat, and
therefore the measure was abandoned.

On the 9th of June a bulletin was published, which fixed public
attention on the precarious state of the king's health. It announced
that his Majesty had suffered for some time from an affection of the
chest, which had produced considerable weakness. The burden of regal
state, assumed at so late a period of life, seemed to have been too
much for his strength, and to have caused too great a change in his
habits. In the preceding month of April his eldest natural daughter,
Lady De Lisle, died, and also the queen's mother, the Dowager Duchess
of Meiningen. These events made a deep impression upon his mind, which
acted upon his enfeebled constitution and aggravated the symptoms of
his disease. From the 9th of June, when the first bulletin was issued,
he grew daily worse; the circulation became more languid, and the
general decay more apparent. On the 20th of June he expired, in the
seventy-third year of his age, having reigned nearly seven years. His
kindness of heart and simplicity of character, which had endeared him
greatly to all classes of his subjects, caused him to be generally and
sincerely lamented. In the House of Peers Lord Melbourne referred to
his death as a loss which had deprived the nation of a monarch always
anxious for the interest and welfare of his subjects; and added, "which
has deprived me of a most generous master, and the world of a man--I
would say one of the best of men--a monarch of the strictest integrity
that it has ever pleased Divine Providence to place over these realms.
The knowledge which he had acquired in the course of his professional
education of the colonial service and of civil matters, was found by
him exceedingly valuable, and he dealt with the details of practical
business in the most familiar and most advantageous manner. A more
fair or more just man I have never met with in my intercourse with the
world. He gave the most patient attention, even when his own opinion
was opposed to what was stated, being most willing to hear what could
be urged in opposition to it. These were great and striking qualities
in any man, but more striking in a monarch." The declaration doubtless
came from the heart, and was the more creditable, because the king's
opposition to the Ministry had been most pronounced. He looked upon
the second Melbourne Cabinet as forced upon him, and, though he had
regard for one or two of them--particularly Lord Melbourne and Lord
Palmerston--he made no secret of his dislike to the whole, and never
invited them to Windsor. We have already given an instance of one of
his discreditable outbursts, and his conduct during his later years
was in other respects eccentric in the extreme. Besides, his zeal for
reform had long passed away; and he was in complete sympathy with the
factious proceedings of the majority of the House of Lords when each
Ministerial measure was proposed--for instance, the Church Rates Bill
he met with a long and ably argued list of objections which it required
all Lord Melbourne's tact and firmness to overcome. But, with all his
oddities and faults, William IV. was a thoroughly honourable man, and
his opposition to his Ministers entirely aboveboard.




CHAPTER XII.

THE PROGRESS OF THE NATION DURING THE REIGNS OF GEORGE IV. AND WILLIAM
IV.

    Increase of Population--Nature of its Employment--Wealth
    of the Nation--The Cotton Trade--Hosiery--The Silk and
    Woollen Trades--Linen Goods--Minerals and Coal--Hardware and
    Cutlery--Roads--Railways--Steamboats--The Coasting Trade--Traffic
    between England and Ireland--Imports and Exports--Coffee and
    Tea--The Revenue--Houses and Carriages--Real Property and
    Savings-banks--Popular Education--Amelioration of Criminal
    Legislation--Effect of Education on Crime--The Religious
    Bodies--The Irvingites--Religious Leaders in England, Scotland,
    and Ireland--Progress of Science--Mathematicians--Astronomers:
    Herschel and Lord Rosse--Discoveries in Light by Brewster and
    others--Irish Men of Science--Mrs. Somerville, Wheatstone,
    Daguerre, and Fox Talbot--Cavendish and Dalton--Mechanicians:
    Sir Marc Brunel--Babbage--The Fine Arts: Turner--Lawrence and
    Wilkie--Haydon--Sculpture--Architects: Soane, Barry, and the
    Pugins--Historians: Mackintosh, Lingard, and Hallam--Napier
    and Gurwood--Biographers: Moore and Lockhart--Miscellaneous
    Writers--Cheap Literature--Sir Walter Scott--Lady Blessington
    and Lady Morgan--Mrs. Hemans--L. E. L.--Pollok--Professor Wilson
    ("Christopher North")--Sheridan Knowles and Bulwer Lytton--Manners
    and Morals--Almack's--Other Amusements--English Cookery--Hyde
    Park--Male and Female Costume.


It is a singular fact, and by no means creditable to the "collective
wisdom of the nation," that we have had no authentic enumeration of
the English people till the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
result, however, of the census of 1800 showed that the population
of England had made progress throughout the whole of the preceding
century, with the exception of the first ten years, when it seemed to
have declined. Mr. Finlayson, the actuary, drew up a statement founded
on the returns of births, marriages, and deaths, giving an estimate
of the population at decennial periods, from which it appears that in
the year 1700 it was 5,134,516, and in 1800 it was 9,187,176. Further,
from the decennial census we gather that the population of Great
Britain and Ireland, which in 1821 amounted to 21,193,458, was at the
enumeration in 1831, 24,306,719; the percentage rate of increase during
that interval being 14.68, or very nearly 1½ per cent. per annum;
and that at the enumeration in 1841 the numbers were 26,916,991, being
an increase since 1831 of 2,610,272, or 10·74 per cent., which is very
little beyond 1 per cent. per annum. Comparing 1841 with 1821, it
appears that the increase in the twenty years was in England 33·20, or
1·66 per cent. per annum; Wales, 27·06, or 1·35; Scotland, 25·16, or
1·25; Ireland, 20·50, or 1·02; the United Kingdom, 27·06, or 1·35 per
cent. per annum. For the purpose of comparison with the corresponding
number of years in the nineteenth century, it may be stated that the
increase during thirty years, from 1700 to 1800, is computed to have
amounted to 1,959,590, or 27-1/10 per cent., while the actual increase
in England and Wales, in the same space of time between 1801 and 1831,
as found by numeration, reached to 5,024,207 souls, or 56-3/5 per
cent.[2]

A very instructive point of comparison is the relative increase of
different classes of occupations in the decennial period from 1831 to
1841. A comparative return of the Commissioners includes males only,
ages twenty years and upwards, and exhibits the following results. The
number of occupiers and labourers in agriculture had decreased in that
period from 1,251,751 to 1,215,264; but the Commissioners explained
this result by supposing that numerous farm servants had been returned
in 1841 as domestic servants instead of as agricultural labourers.
Persons engaged in commerce, trade, and manufactures had increased
from 1,572,292 to 2,039,409 (or 29·7 per cent.); capitalists, bankers,
professional, and other educated men, from 216,263 to 286,175 (or
32·3 per cent.); labourers employed in labour not agricultural had
decreased from 611,744 to 610,157; other males, twenty years of age,
except servants, had increased from 237,337 to 392,211; male servants,
twenty years of age and upwards, had increased from 79,737 to 164,384;
including, however, as already noticed, many farm servants. For the
purpose of instituting a just comparison of the relative increase of
particular employments, it must be understood that the total number
of male persons, twenty years of age and upwards (exclusive of army,
navy, and merchant seamen), had increased in this period of ten years
from 3,969,124 to 4,707,600 (or 18·6 per cent.). These people were
better fed than their ancestors, and had more work to do. There are
three kinds of raw material the consumption of which is particularly
indicative of social advancement, as giving employment to the people,
adding to their comforts, and increasing the national wealth. These are
timber, cotton, and wool. Taking all the different kinds of imported
timber, there was an increase during the ten years of 37 per cent.;
in cotton there was an increase of 61 per cent.; and of sheep and
lamb's wool, in addition to the home production, there was an increased
importation of more than 78 per cent.

[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF THE MAIL COACH. (_See p._ 420.)]

The population of Great Britain had thus rapidly increased, and the
condition of the people had improved, notwithstanding heavy taxation,
and the burden of an enormous National Debt, incurred by one of the
most protracted and expensive wars on record, which strained the
national energies to the uttermost. How vast, then, must have been the
national resources by which all demands were met, leaving the State
stronger and wealthier than ever! The extent of these resources is
shown in some measure by the amount of our exports. The total declared
value of all British and Irish produce and manufactures exported in
1831 was £37,164,372; in 1841 the value of exports had increased to
£51,634,623, being at the rate of 38·9 per cent. Another example of the
greatly increased commerce of the country is afforded by the returns of
shipping. In 1831 the number of ships, British and foreign, engaged in
the colonial and foreign trades was 20,573, of which the total tonnage
amounted to 3,241,927. In 1841 the number of ships had increased to
28,052, and the tonnage to 4,652,376, giving an increase of 43 per
cent. In the former year the tonnage employed in our coasting trade
amounted to 9,419,681; in the latter it had increased to 11,417,991,
showing an increase of 20 per cent. But other indications of national
wealth were referred to by the Census Commissioners of 1841. During the
same period the accumulations in savings-banks were very large, and
went on increasing. In 1831 there were nearly 500,000 depositors, whose
deposits amounted to about £14,000,000. In 1841 it was found that both
the depositors and the amount deposited had very nearly doubled. From
the proceeds of the property tax, which in 1815 was about £52,000,000,
and in 1842 over £82,000,000, an estimate has been formed, in the
absence of returns, for the years 1831 and 1841, which sets down the
increase of real property during that period as not less than from 20
to 25 per cent. In 1815 the annual profits of trades in England and
Wales were assessed at £35,000,000 in round numbers, and in 1841 they
had increased to £50,000,000. During the decennial period, 1831-41,
legacy duty had been paid upon a capital of about £423,000,000, or more
than one-half the aggregate amount upon which the duty had been paid in
the thirty-four preceding years. The stamp duties, also, upon probates
of wills and letters of administration in the United Kingdom amounted
to upwards of £1,000,000, having increased in ten years at the rate of
10 per cent.

The marvellous increase of national wealth in Great Britain since
the reign of George III. is to be mainly ascribed to two mechanical
agencies--the spinning-jenny and the steam-engine; both of which,
however, would have failed to produce the results that have been
attained if there had not been a boundless supply of cotton from the
Southern States of America to feed our manufactories with the raw
material. The production was estimated in bales, which in 1832 amounted
to more than 1,000,000; and in 1839 was upwards of 2,000,000 bales. It
appears from Mr. Woodbury's tables, that in 1834 sixty-eight per cent.
of all the cotton produced in the world was shipped for England. In
this case the demand, enormous as it was, produced an adequate supply.
But this demand could not possibly have existed without the inventions
of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, and Cartwright, in the improvement
of spinning machinery.

In 1817 the number of power-looms in Lancashire was estimated at 2,000,
of which only about 1,000 were then in employment, and the wages had
fallen below the rate at which goods could be produced by machinery.
To the power-loom, therefore, the hand-loom weavers gradually gave
way. In 1832 there were 80,000 power-looms in Lancashire, employing
persons of both sexes and of all ages from nine years upwards, at rates
of wages varying from half-a-crown to ten shillings a week. In 1817
the estimated number of persons employed in the spinning of cotton in
Great Britain was 110,763, and the quantity of yarn produced was under
100,000,000 lbs.; in 1853 the yarn spun was nearly 700,000,000 lbs.
In 1838 the total number of cotton factories in Great Britain and
Ireland was 1,815, of which there were in England and Wales, 1,599; in
Scotland, 192; in Ireland, 24. The total number of persons employed in
these factories was 206,000, of whom 145,934 were females.

The chief seats of the hosiery manufacture are in the counties of
Derby, Nottingham, and Leicester. The number of stocking-frames in
England in 1821 was under 30,000, showing an increase in thirty
years of only 10,000. Mr. Felkin gives an estimate for 1833, which
states that there were 33,000 frames in England, producing 3,510,000
dozen stockings a year, and consuming 8,137,000 lbs. of cotton yarn,
worsted, and silk, valued at £814,000; the wages for making them
amounting to £948,000, and for finishing, £229,000; the total value
being little short of £2,000,000 sterling, and the total value of
the materials £560,000. The total number of persons employed in the
making of stockings was 73,000. The total of fixed capital engaged in
the manufacture was £385,000, and of floating capital £1,050,000. The
quantity of cotton hosiery goods made in 1833 was estimated by Mr.
Felkin to have increased more than fifty per cent. in the preceding
twenty years.

As to the silk and wool trades, in the ten years preceding 1824 the
quantity of raw and thrown silk used by our manufacturers was on an
average of 1,882,311 lbs. per annum. In the ten succeeding years the
average was nearly double, viz. 95 per cent. higher; and in the sixteen
years which ended in 1849 there was an increase of 120 per cent. over
the quantity used under the restrictive system. According to the
report of the inspectors of factories, there were, in 1835, 231 silk
factories in England, six in Scotland, and one in Ireland. The total
number of females thus employed was over 20,000, and the total number
of both sexes was about 31,000. The total number of woollen and worsted
factories at work in 1835 was returned by the inspectors of factories
as being 1,313, showing an increase of ten per cent. in four years.
The total number of persons employed in them in 1835 was 71,274, on
which there was an increase of twenty per cent. up to 1839. There was
a general depression in the price of British wool, in consequence of
which a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into
the causes. From the evidence which they received, it appeared that the
actual number of sheep in England and Wales had increased one-fifth
since the year 1800, when it was 19,000,000, yielding about 95,000,000
lbs. of wool, or about five pounds for each fleet. It was estimated
that the quantity used for manufacturing purposes increased during the
first half of the nineteenth century by 115 per cent. Yorkshire is
the chief seat of the woollen manufacture, and the best proof of its
progress, perhaps, is presented in the state of the population, which
in the whole of the West Riding increased during the first forty years
of the century at the rate of 104 per cent. At the census of 1801 it
was 563,953, while the census of 1841 showed it to be 1,154,101.

The exports from the United Kingdom of all kinds of linen goods,
and of flax yarn, amounted, in 1834, to the total declared value of
£2,579,658. The quantities of Irish linen shipped in subsequent years
continually increased from 34,500,000 yards in 1800 to 55,000,000
yards in 1835. The manufacture of linen also made great progress in
Scotland, especially in the town and neighbourhood of Dundee. In 1814
the quantity of flax imported into Dundee for use in the factories did
not exceed 3,000 tons; but in 1831 it was 15,000 tons, and in 1833 it
was nearly 18,000 tons, including 3,380 tons of hemp. The quantity of
linen sail cloth and bagging into which this material was made, and
which was shipped from Dundee in the same year, amounted to 60,000,000
yards. The manufacture of linen increased rapidly in England, and the
improvement of the quality was wonderful, owing to the perfection of
the machinery. The length of a pound of yarn of average fineness in
1814 was only 3,330 yards; but in 1833 a pound of the average quality
contained 11,170 yards; the yarn of that quality having during twenty
years fallen to one-ninth of the price; the raw material having
been reduced in price at the same time about one-half. The English
manufacturers embarked to so large an extent in the linen trade that
they became large exporters of linen yarn to Ireland and also to France.

Among the resources of Great Britain to which she is mainly indebted
for her pre-eminence as a manufacturing nation, and without which she
would not have been able to make anything like the progress she has
made, or to bid defiance to foreign competition as she may always do,
are her mines of coal and iron. The total produce of all the British
ironworks was found, after a careful estimate, to be, in 1823, 442,066
tons; in 1825, 581,367 tons; in 1828, 653,417, and in 1830, 702,584
tons. In 1844 the quantity reached 1,500,000 tons. The quantity
of tin produced in England in 1820 was 3,578 tons; in 1834 it was
4,000 tons. In addition to the quantities used at home, there was a
considerable exportation of tin plates, the value of which in 1820 was
about £161,000, and in 1840 it was more than £360,000. The produce of
the copper mines in Cornwall was much greater than that of the tin
mines; for while in 1820 it was only 7,364 tons, it had increased in
1840 to 11,000 tons. The increase during 60 years had been threefold,
and the value annually raised exceeded £1,000,000 sterling. In the
year 1820 the quantity of coals shipped from the port of Newcastle
was more than 2,000,000 tons. In the year 1840 it had increased to
nearly 3,000,000. From the port of Sunderland the quantity shipped in
1820 was considerably more than 1,000,000. In 1840 it was 1,300,000
tons. Large quantities were also shipped from the port of Stockton.
The chief coal districts have naturally become the chief manufacturing
districts; and as the coal is on the spot, it is impossible to estimate
the quantities consumed in working the factories in Lancashire, the
West Riding of Yorkshire, Nottingham, Derby, Birmingham, Wolverhampton,
Leicester, Coventry, and Staffordshire. The town of Sheffield alone,
it was estimated in 1835, required for manufacturing purposes about
515,000 tons of coals. Dr. Buckland, in his address to the Geological
Society, in 1840, stated that "the average value of the annual produce
of the mines of the British islands amounts to the enormous sum of
£20,000,000, of which about £8,000,000 arises from iron, and £9,000,000
from coals."

The progress in the manufacture of hardware is strikingly exhibited
by the increase of the population of Birmingham. According to the
census of 1821, it was 106,722; in 1831 it was 146,986; in 1841 it
was 181,116, showing an increase of 80 per cent. in twenty years. The
number of houses during the same period was nearly doubled. Mr. Babbage
has given a table, extracted from the books of a highly respectable
house in Birmingham, showing the reduction in the price of various
articles made of iron between 1812 and 1832, which varied from 40 to
80 per cent. The exportation of cutlery from England amounted in 1820
to about 7,000 tons; in 1839 it was 21,000 tons. Since 1820 the annual
value of the exportations of hardware and cutlery increased about 50
per cent. The town of Sheffield is another remarkable instance of the
growth of population in consequence of the manufacture of cutlery. In
1821 the population was 65,275; in 1841 it was 111,000. The various
manufacturers of cutlery and plated goods, and the conversion of iron
into steel, employed in 1835 upwards of 560 furnaces. The declared
value of British-made plated ware, jewellery, and watches, exported
from the United Kingdom in 1827 was £169,456; in 1839 it amounted to
£258,076. The value of machinery shipped to foreign countries in 1831
was only £29,000; in 1836 it was £166,000; in 1837, £280,000; and in
1840, £374,000.

The construction of public roads has been greatly improved in the
United Kingdom by the general adoption of the plan of Mr. Macadam,
who gave his name to the process of substituting stones broken small
for the old rough pavement. We read with astonishment of the state of
English roads a century ago, of carriages breaking down and sticking
fast in deep ruts, and of days passed in a journey which now only
occupies as many hours. Yet in early times England was better off
in this respect than other countries. Of all the proofs of social
progress which the country now exhibits to such a marvellous extent
on every side, there is nothing more decisive or more wonderful than
the rapidity with which we have improved and extended our internal
communication. From 1818 to 1839 the length of turnpike roads in
England and Wales was increased by more than 1,000 miles. In the former
year England and Wales contained paved streets and turnpike roads to
the extent of 19,725 miles. Scotland also made great progress in the
construction of highways from the commencement of the century, and
roads were thrown across the wildest districts in Ireland. By the
improvement of the common roads, and in the construction of vehicles,
stage coaches increased their speed from four to ten miles an hour.
Upon the Stamp Office returns for 1834 a calculation was based which
showed that the extent of travelling on licensed conveyances in that
year would be equal to the conveyance of one person for a distance of
597,159,420 miles, or more than six times the distance between the
earth and the sun. There were, in 1837, in England, fifty-four mail
coaches drawn by four horses each, and forty-nine by two horses each,
drawn at an average speed of nine miles an hour. Ireland had at the
same time thirty four-horse mails, and Scotland ten.

[Illustration: BELL'S "COMET." (_See p._ 421.)]

The number of Railway Acts passed during the first half of the century
was more than 1,000; and the sums which Parliament authorised the
various companies to expend in the construction of railways from 1826
to 1849 amounted to the enormous total of £348,012,188, the yearly
average being £14,500,508. The Liverpool and Manchester Company was the
first that contemplated the conveyance of passengers, which, however,
was regarded as a sort of subsidiary traffic, that might produce some
£20,000 a year, the main reliance being on the conveyance of raw
cotton, manufactured goods, coals, and cattle. It need not be remarked
how widely the result differed from their anticipation. The receipts
from passengers in 1840 amounted to £343,910, and it was estimated that
the saving to the public on that line alone was nearly a quarter of a
million annually. But as yet the system was in its infancy, though the
broad gauge had been introduced by Brunel in 1833.

[Illustration: SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. (_After the Portrait by Sir T.
Lawrence, P.R.A._)]

The first steamboat that was worked for hire in Britain was the
_Comet_, a small vessel with an engine of three horse-power. Two
years later the _Elizabeth_, of eight horse-power, and the _Clyde_,
of fourteen horse-power, were placed upon the river Clyde. Thus
Scotland has had the honour of leading the way in this great line of
improvement. In 1820 there were but three steam-vessels built and
registered in England, four in Scotland, and one in Ireland. In 1826
there were fifty in England, and twenty-two in Scotland, with 9,000
tons burden. The building of steamers proceeded regularly, with an
increasing amount of tonnage, till the number rose in 1849 to 1,296
steam-vessels, the aggregate burden of which was 177,310 tons. They
were distributed as follows:--In the ports of England, 865 vessels,
103,154 tons; Scotland, 166 vessels, 29,206 tons; Ireland, 111 vessels,
26,369 tons; the Channel Islands, 7 vessels, 955 tons; the colonies,
147 vessels, 17,626 tons. A Committee of the House of Commons was
appointed in June, 1837, to inquire into the best means of establishing
communication by steam with India by way of the Red Sea. During the
year arrangements were made for the establishment of a regular monthly
steam communication between Great Britain and India by way of the
Red Sea upon the following basis:--"The Government undertakes the
transmission of the monthly mails between Great Britain and Alexandria
at the sole charge of the public; and the East India Company undertakes
the transmission of these mails between Alexandria and Bombay, upon
condition that one-half of the expense incurred in the purchase and
navigation of steam-vessels, and of any other expense incurred in the
service, is defrayed by the Government, which is to receive the whole
money connected with postage of letters between London and Bombay."
This arrangement was carried out, and a further economy of time was
obtained by the overland route to Marseilles, instead of transmitting
the mails by steam-packets from Falmouth through the Strait of
Gibraltar. In this way the journey was shortened to the extent of
more than 1,000 miles, the direct distance by Marseilles and Malta
being 5,238 miles, and by way of Falmouth, 6,310 miles. This system of
conveyance was maintained till 1841, when the Government entered into
a contract with the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company,
which undertook to employ powerful steam-vessels for the carrying of
letters and passengers between England and Egypt, and between Suez,
Ceylon, Madras, and Calcutta, towards the expenses of which the East
India Company undertook to contribute £20,000 per annum for five years.
After some time there was a further extension of the plan, by which
the Government engaged to contribute £50,000 per annum towards the
expense of the line of steam-packets between Bombay and Suez, £115,000
per annum for the service between Calcutta and Suez, and £45,000 for
the service between Ceylon and Hong Kong, making a total of £210,000
per annum, of which one-third was to be repaid by the East India
Company. By these arrangements was obtained a regular and safe steam
communication twice a month to India, and once a month to China. We
may judge of the extent of the intercourse thus carried on by the fact
that in 1836 Great Britain received from Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and
Ceylon about 180,000 letters, and sent to those places in the same year
nearly 112,000 letters.

The coasting trade carried on by means of steamers underwent an
astounding development during the twenty years now under review. In
1820 there were but nine steamers engaged in it, with a tonnage of 500.
The next year there were 188 steamers, and thenceforth they went on
doubling for several years. In 1830 the number of vessels was nearly
7,000, with a tonnage of more than a million; in 1840 it was upwards
of 15,000, with a tonnage of nearly three millions; and in 1849 it was
18,343, with a tonnage of upwards of four millions and a quarter. This
account does not include vessels arriving and departing in ballast or
with passengers only, which are not required to enter the Custom House.
Steam-vessels were not employed in this kingdom for conveying goods
coastwise before 1820, nor in foreign trade, except for the conveyance
of passengers, earlier than 1822. In the foreign trade the number of
steamers increased gradually from that year till they reached the
number of 4,000, with an aggregate tonnage of 800,000.

The effect of steam communication between Great Britain and Ireland
was to increase very greatly the traffic of those countries. It has
been stated that in order to save the salaries of one or two junior
clerks, it was determined to cease keeping any official records of
this traffic, with the exception of grain and flour. In the absence of
such records we can only arrive at an approximation to the quantity
and value of the exports and imports. It was, however, estimated by
persons acquainted with the subject, that the quantity of agricultural
produce imported into Liverpool alone in 1832 was worth four millions
and a half sterling; and this produce consisted chiefly of live
stock--horses, sheep, and pigs--which could not have been so profitably
brought over by sailing vessels. The value of agricultural produce
brought to the port of Bristol from Ireland in the same year was one
million sterling. The total value of all sorts of live animals brought
from Ireland to Liverpool in 1837 was £3,397,760. One of the most
curious items in the traffic is the egg trade. In the course of the
year 1832 no less than £100,000 was paid for Irish eggs in Liverpool
and Bristol alone. Looking at the whole traffic between the two
islands, we perceive that the amount of tonnage employed in 1849 was
250 per cent. more than it was in 1801. Up to 1826 the increase was not
so rapid as subsequently, it being then only 62 per cent. on the whole
period, showing an annual increase of 2-2/5 per cent., whereas for the
quarter of a century that followed, the increase was 188 per cent., the
annual increase being 8 per cent.

In 1820 our imports of foreign and colonial merchandise were valued
at £32,000,000; our exports of foreign and colonial merchandise
at £10,000,000; and our exports of British and Irish produce and
manufactures at £38,000,000. In 1840 these sums had respectively
increased to £67,000,000, £13,000,000, and £102,000,000, setting aside
odd numbers. From 1831 to 1840 the average annual export of British
produce and manufactures was £45,000,000, while in the nine subsequent
years it was nearly £56,000,000. From 1830 onwards the value of our
exports to France increased sixfold, notwithstanding the jealous
system of protection that prevails in that country. The sphere of our
commercial operations was being continually enlarged from year to year,
and the enterprise of our merchants was continually opening up fresh
markets in distant parts of the world. The value of the exports of
British and Irish produce in 1820 was as follows:--To Northern Europe,
£11,000,000; to Southern Europe, £7,000,000; to Africa, £393,000;
to Asia, nearly £4,000,000; to the United States of America, nearly
£4,000,000; to the British North American Colonies and the West
Indies, £5,750,000; to Central and South America, including Brazil,
£3,000,000. The total value of our exports to foreign countries, and
to our colonies in that year, was £36,000,000. In 1840 we exported
the following quantities, which, it will be seen, show a large
increase:--To Northern Europe, about £12,000,000; to Southern Europe,
£9,000,000; to Africa, £1,500,000; to Asia, £9,000,000; to the United
States, £5,250,000; to the British North American Colonies, £6,500,000;
to the foreign West Indies, £1,000,000; to Central and Southern
America, including Brazil, £6,000,000; total, £51,000,000: showing an
increase of £15,000,000 in the annual value of our exports to foreign
countries during twenty years.

In 1821, 7,250,000 lbs. of coffee were consumed by fourteen millions
of people in Great Britain. In 1824 the consumption of coffee in the
United Kingdom was 8,250,000 lbs., and the duties were--on foreign
coffee, 2s. 6d. per lb.; East India, 1s. 6d.; British West India, 1s.
per lb. In the same year the consumption was--of foreign coffee, 1,540
lbs.; East India, 313,000 lbs.; West India, about 800,000 lbs. In
the following year Mr. Huskisson reduced the duties on these several
kinds to 1s. 3d., 9d., and 6d., respectively, which caused a rapid
increase in the consumption. In 1840 the consumption was--of East
and West India, 14,500,000 lbs.; and of foreign, 14,000,000 lbs. In
1841, 27,250,000 lbs. were consumed by eighteen and a half millions of
people. The tea trade with China was used by the East India Company for
the purpose of enriching itself by an enormous tax upon the British
consumer. During one hundred years it ranged from 2s. to 4s. in the
pound excise duty, with a customs duty of 14 per cent., down to a total
minimum duty of 12½ per cent. The former duty was estimated at 200
per cent. on the value of the common teas. The effect, as might be
expected, was an enormous amount of smuggling. The monopoly of the
Company was abolished; it was made lawful for any person to import
tea by the Act 4 William IV., c. 85; and the trade was opened on the
22nd of April, 1834. The _ad valorem_ duties were abolished, and all
the Bohea tea imported for home consumption was charged with a customs
duty of 1s. 6d. per lb.; Congou and other teas of superior quality were
charged 2s. 2d. per lb., and some 3s. per lb. In 1836 these various
duties gave place to a uniform one of 2s. 1d. per lb., which, with the
addition of 5 per cent., imposed in 1840, continued till 1851, when the
penny was removed. During the last year of restricted trade (1833) our
aggregate importations amounted to 32,000,000 lbs.; during the first
year of Free Trade, they bounded up to 44,000,000 lbs.; and in 1856
they had attained to 86,000,000 lbs. The average price of tea per lb.,
including duty, in 1834, was 4s. 4d. In 1821 the total quantity of tea
imported into Great Britain was upwards of 31,000,000 lbs., and its
value £1,873,886; in 1834 the quantity was about 35,000,000 lbs., and
the value about £2,000,000. In 1837 the quantity was about 40,000,000
lbs.

In 1820 the amount of revenue paid into the exchequer as the produce
of taxation was £54,000,000. The interest upon the National Debt was
£31,000,000, and the sums applied to the redemption of public debt
were about £2,000,000. At the same time the current annual expenditure
was £21,000,000. The revenue increased to £59,000,000 in 1824, after
which it declined to £50,000,000 in 1830, when the annual expenditure
was reduced to £18,000,000. In 1840 the revenue was £47,000,000, and
the interest on the public debt £29,000,000; the total amount paid and
expended being £49,000,000.

Great Britain bears a heavy burden of taxation, yet she does not seem
to feel it. Many years ago Mr. Disraeli, in the House of Commons,
called the National Debt a "flea-bite." It is not quite so light a
matter as that; still, it does not seem to render her step less firm,
nor retard her progress, nor give her much trouble. It is a matter of
wonder to foreigners how the British people manage to have so much
money after paying so smartly in the shape of taxes, and spending so
much on food, clothing, and household accommodation. The secret lies
in the wonderful industry and thrift in the masses of the people.
They work hard, live well, and waste little. The number of people who
live in Great Britain without labouring in any way for their support
with head or hand is very small. Of 5,812,000 males twenty years of
age and upwards, in 1831, no less than 5,466,000 were engaged in some
calling or profession. The progressive well-being of the middle classes
of England has been indicated very satisfactorily by the improved
character of their dwellings. If the country is more healthful than
the city, one cause may be found in the less crowded state of the
habitations. In the country the proportion was about five and a half
persons on an average in each house; in London about a third more.
In Scotland the proportion was six to ten in 1831, and in Ireland it
was six to twelve, taking the capital in each case as representing
the urban population. The number of inhabited houses which England
contained in 1821 was 1,952,000; in Ireland the number was 1,142,602;
in Scotland it was 341,474. In 1841 the numbers were--England,
2,753,295; Ireland, 1,328,839; Scotland, 503,357. The large increase
in Scotland is accounted for by the fact that in the returns of 1841
"flats" were set down as houses, which was not the case in the first
return. The tax on inhabited houses rated in three classes from £10
to £20, from £20 to £40, and from £40 and upwards. From 1821 to 1833
the houses rated at £40 and upwards increased in England from 69,000
to 84,000. The other two classes of houses increased in about the same
proportion. The house duty was repealed in 1834. There was a duty on
bricks till 1850, by which means the quantity consumed was ascertained,
and the increase between 1821 and 1847 was 130 per cent. Between the
years 1821 and 1841 the use of carriages with four wheels increased 60
per cent.--double the ratio of the increase of the population. In the
meantime hired carriages had increased from 20,000 to 33,000. Colonel
Sykes, at a meeting of the Statistical Society, counted the cost of
keeping a four-wheeled private carriage, including servants, at £250
a year. This may be too high an estimate; but taking four-wheeled and
two-wheeled carriages together, Mr. Porter thought the average expense
was not less than £100 a year for each, which would give more than
£5,000,000 for this luxury in 1821, more than £9,000,000 for 1831,
and more than £10,000,000 for 1841--a proof of wealth which no other
country in Europe could show.

The proofs of this prosperity have been exhibited in various other
ways. In 1815 the yearly value of dwelling-houses in England and
Wales was £14,000,000 for nearly 10,000,000 of people; in 1841 the
yearly rental was £23,000,000 for Under 16,000,000 of people; which,
reckoning the rental at twenty years' purchase, shows an investment
in houses of capital amounting to £180,000,000 in twenty-six years.
Counting since the Peace in 1815, it was estimated that the real
property of England and Wales in the form of additional dwellings
must have absorbed £240,000,000 of capital. Sir Robert Peel, in
bringing forward his proposal for an income tax in 1842, assumed the
value of real property in Great Britain to be as follows:--Rent of
land, £39,400,000; rent of houses, £25,000,000; tithes, mines, etc.,
£8,400,000: total, £72,800,000, which, at twenty-five years' purchase,
would be equal to a capital of £1,820,000,000. The annual value of
real property actually assessed to the property and income tax in 1843
turned out to be much more than Sir Robert Peel estimated, amounting to
more than £95,000,000 a year.

Savings-banks afford a very good index to the improved condition of the
working classes. In 1830 the total number of depositors in the United
Kingdom was 412,000; and the amount deposited, £13,500,000. In 1840 the
number of depositors had increased to nearly 800,000, and the amount
to £23,500,000. The total number of depositors in 1845 was 1,000,000,
and the amount of investments nearly £33,000,000. Of this sum, domestic
servants, nearly all females, deposited £80,000.

[Illustration: THE OVERLAND ROUTE: SCENE AT BOULAK.]

The earliest statistics by which the progress of popular education may
be measured are contained in the Parliamentary returns of 1813, when
there were in England and Wales nearly 20,000 day schools, with about
675,000 scholars, giving the proportion of 1 in 17 of the population.
There were also 5,463 Sunday schools, with 477,000 scholars, or 1 in 24
of the population. Lord Kerry's Parliamentary returns for 1833 showed
the number of day schools and scholars to be nearly doubled, and the
proportion to be 1 in 11 of the population. The Sunday schools, during
the same period, were trebled in number, and also in the aggregate of
children attending; while their proportion to the population was 1 in
9--the population having in the interval increased 24 per cent., the
day scholars 89 per cent., and the Sunday scholars 225 per cent. Up
to this time (1833) the work of education was conducted by private
liberality, incited mainly by religious zeal, and acting through the
agencies of the two great societies, the British and the National.
In that year Government came to their aid, and a meagre grant of
£20,000 a year continued to be made till 1839, when it was increased
to £30,000. This was shared between the two societies, representing
two educational parties. The principle of the British and Foreign
School Society, chiefly supported by Dissenters, was, that the Bible
should be read without note or comment in the schools, and that there
should be no catechism admitted, or special religious instruction of
any kind. The schools of the National Society, on the other hand, were
strictly Church schools, in which the Church Catechism must be taught.
The total number of schools in 1841 was 46,000, of which 30,000 were
private. These statistics indicate an immense amount of private energy
and enterprise, the more gratifying from the fact that the greater
portion of the progress was due to the working classes themselves.
Great improvements had been effected in the art of teaching. Both the
British and the National Societies from the beginning devoted much
attention to the training of efficient teachers. In 1828 the former
sent out 87 trained teachers; in 1838 as many as 183. The National
Society commenced a training institution in 1811, and after forty
years' progress it had five training colleges, sending out 270 teachers
every year.

The feeling of humanity that gained ground among the masses powerfully
affected the middle classes. The consequence was that the state of
public feeling produced by the practical inculcation of Christianity
and the diffusion of knowledge compelled our legislature to change
its system, despite the obstinate resistance of Lords Eldon and
Ellenborough, hardened by a long official familiarity with the
destructive operation of legal cruelty. How fearful the amount of that
destruction was we may infer from the calculation of Mr. Redgrave,
of the Home Office, who stated that had the offences tried in 1841
been tried under the laws of 1831, the eighty capital sentences
would have been increased to 2,172. Mr. Redgrave gave the following
succinct history of the mitigation of the criminal code during the
reigns of George IV. and William IV., in a series of enactments which
were extorted from a reluctant Legislature by society, humanised
through the education of the masses:--In 1826, 1827, and 1828 Sir
Robert Peel carried several very important Bills for the consolidation
and amendment of the criminal laws, but these Bills did not abolish
capital punishments. That statesman, indeed, made it a matter of
boast that he did not constitute any new capital felonies, and
pointed out an instance in which he had abated the capital punishment
by increasing from 40s. to £5, the sum of which the theft in a
dwelling-house constituted a capital offence, and by widening the
technical description of a dwelling. In 1830 Sir Robert Peel brought
in his Forgery Bill, and petitions were poured into the House from
all quarters against the re-enactment of the severe penalties for
this offence. Sir James Mackintosh again took up the subject, and
moved that the capital punishment be struck out from the Bill. He was
unsuccessful; but in the last stage of the measure Mr. Spring-Rice was
enabled to defeat the Ministry by a majority of 151 to 138, and to
remove the sentence of death from the Bill. It was, however, restored
by the Lords, and the Bill, as altered, was suffered to pass the House
of Commons at the end of the Session. In 1832 two most important Bills
for abolishing capital punishments were passed. Mr. Ewart, assisted by
the Government, was able to carry a Bill abolishing the punishment of
death in cases of horse, sheep, and cattle stealing, and larceny in a
dwelling-house. He was opposed by Sir Robert Peel, and an amendment
was made in the Lords, subjecting these offences to the fixed penalty
of transportation for life. At the same time, Ministers brought in a
Bill for abolishing capital punishment in cases of forgery. The Bill
was introduced into the Commons by the Attorney-General, and into the
House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor. It passed into law, but an
amendment was made in the House of Lords, under protest of the Lord
Chancellor, exempting the forgery of wills and powers of attorney to
transfer stock, which offences were left capital. In 1833 Mr. Leonard
carried his Bill for abolishing capital punishment for housebreaking,
executions for which offence were continued down to 1830. In 1834 Mr.
Ewart carried a Bill for abolishing capital punishment for returning
from transportation, and in the following year for sacrilege and
letter-stealing. This was the state of the criminal law when Lord John
Russell brought in Bills for its mitigation, founded on the report
of a committee which Government had appointed. The little progress
which Sir S. Romilly and Sir J. Mackintosh had made in opposition to
the Governments of their day will be seen by the foregoing sketch, as
well as the extensive and salutary changes which followed. Lord John
Russell's Bills effected an extensive abolition of the sentence of
death, and a mitigation of the secondary punishments. He was enabled
to abolish capital punishments in all cases but murder and attempts
to murder where dangerous bodily injuries were effected; burglary and
robbery when attended with violence or wounds; arson of dwelling-houses
where life was endangered; and six other offences of very rare
occurrence. The number of capital convictions in 1829 was 1,385; and in
1834, three years after the extensive abolition of capital punishments,
the number was reduced to 480.

By means of the classification of offences, which took place for
the first time in 1834, it was possible to ascertain the effects of
education upon crime; and the result was most satisfactory, falsifying
the evil prognostications of the enemies of popular instruction, and
proving that, instead of stimulating the faculties merely to give
greater development to criminal propensities, and greater ingenuity to
offenders, it really operated as an effective restraint; insomuch that
crime was confined almost entirely to the uneducated. In 1835 returns
were first obtained of the degree of instruction that had been imparted
to persons committed for trial--distinguishing, 1st, Persons who can
neither read nor write; 2ndly, Persons who can read only, or read and
write imperfectly; 3rdly, Persons who can read and write well; and,
4thly, Persons who have received instruction beyond the elementary
branches of reading and writing. The result of a comparison upon this
point, during thirteen years from that date, was all that the most
sanguine friends of popular education could desire, and more than they
could have anticipated. Out of 335,429 persons committed, and whose
degrees of instruction were ascertained, the uninstructed criminals
were more than 90 out of every 100; while only about 1,300 offenders
had enjoyed the advantages of instruction beyond the elementary degree,
and not 30,000 had advanced beyond the mere art of reading and writing.
Then, with regard to females, among the 30,000 that could read and
write there were only about 3,000, or 10 per cent. of the female sex;
and among those who had received superior instruction there were only
53 females accused of crimes, throughout England and Wales, in thirteen
years--that is, at the rate of four persons for each year. In the year
1841 not one educated female was committed for trial out of nearly
8,000,000 of the sex then living in this part of the United Kingdom.
In the disturbances which took place in Cheshire, Lancashire, and
Staffordshire, as appeared by the trials that were held in 1842, out of
567 persons tried, there were only 73 who could read and write well,
and only one person who had received a superior education--a fact full
of instruction as to the duty of the State in respect to the education
of the people.

In 1831 the number of churches and chapels of the Church of England
amounted to 11,825; the number in 1851, as returned to the census
officer, was 13,854, exclusive of 223 described as being "not separate
buildings," or as "used also for secular purposes," thus showing an
increase in the course of twenty years, of more than 2,000 churches.
Probably the increase was, in reality, still larger, as it can hardly
be expected that the returns were altogether perfect. The greater
portion of this increase is attributable to the self-extending power
of the Church--the State not having in the twenty years contributed,
in aid of private benefactions, more than £511,385 towards the
erection of 386 churches. If we assume the average cost of each new
edifice to be about £3,000, the total sum expended in this interval
(exclusive of considerable sums devoted to the restoration of old
churches) will be £6,087,000. The chief addition occurred, as was
to be expected and desired, in thickly peopled districts, where the
rapid increase of inhabitants rendered such additional accommodation
most essential. In the ten years between 1821 and 1831 there was an
addition of 276 churches; from 1831 to 1841, 667 were added. Taking the
Nonconformist communities, we find the statistics of the progress of
the Independents, or Congregationalists, to be scarcely less remarkable
than those of the Established Church. The earliest account of the
number of Independent congregations refers to 1812. Before that period
Independent and Presbyterian congregations were returned together. At
that time the number of Independent churches in England and Wales was
a little over 1,000. In 1838 the churches had increased to 1,840, and
the census of 1851 made the number 3,244, of which 640 were in Wales.
These places of worship furnished sittings for 1,063,000 persons.

The Wesleyan Methodists were next in number to the members of the
Established Church. The progress of this society was very rapid after
1820. In that year the number of its ministers was 718, and of its
members or communicants in Great Britain, 191,000. In 1830 the numbers
were respectively 824 and 248,000; and so largely did they increase
in the next ten years, that in 1840 the ministers were 1,167, and the
members 323,000. The 1851 census returns showed 6,579 chapels belonging
to this connexion in England and Wales, containing accommodation for
1,447,580 persons. The Society of Friends, on the other hand, was
declining. The Roman Catholics made considerable progress in England
during the last two reigns. In 1829 they had 394 chapels, which in
1840 had increased to 463, and in 1852 they reached 600. They had at
the same time 11 colleges, 88 religious houses, and 875 priests. Their
chapels at the time of the census furnished accommodation for 186,000,
and the number of attendants on the morning of census Sunday of 1851
was 252,983.

The Catholic and Apostolic Church, founded by the Rev. Edward Irving,
had at the time of the census of 1851 about 30 congregations,
comprising nearly 6,000 communicants, and the number was said to be
gradually increasing. Mr. Irving (who in 1819 assisted Dr. Chalmers
at Glasgow) was the minister of the Scottish Church, Regent Square,
London, very eloquent, and very eccentric; and towards the close of
1829 it was asserted that several miraculous gifts of healing and
prophecy, and of speaking with strange tongues, were displayed in his
congregation. Having been excluded from the Scottish Church, a chapel
was erected for him, in 1832, in Newman Street. In the course of a few
years other churches were erected in different places. The Apostolic
Church was established on the model of the Jewish Tabernacle, with
twelve apostles, a new order of prophets, etc. In 1836 they delivered
their testimony to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to most of the
bishops, and to many ministers in different denominations. They also
resolved to deliver their testimony to the king in person, and "to as
many Privy Councillors as could be found, or would receive it." In 1837
a "Catholic testimony" was addressed to the patriarchs, bishops, and
sovereigns of Christendom, and was subsequently delivered to Cardinal
Acton for the Pope, to Prince Metternich for the Emperor of Austria,
and to other bishops and kings throughout Europe.

On the whole, there was a fair amount of religious activity throughout
the British islands, and as a consequence drunkenness and vulgar
amusements were on the decline. Of the lights of the Establishment,
Archbishop Manners Sutton was Primate until his death in 1828, when he
was succeeded by the amiable Dr. Howley. Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter
was undoubtedly the hardest hitter on the Episcopal bench, and zeal for
the welfare of the Church was admirably represented by Bishop Blomfield
of London. He was one of the most staunch supporters of King's College,
and an earnest advocate of Church extension. It is hardly necessary
to mention the name of the witty Canon of St. Paul's, Sydney Smith.
During the earlier years of this period the tone of the Church was
distinctly evangelical, but a reaction which had its origin in Oxford
University had already begun, whose supporters were known as the
"Tractarian party," from a series of publications, called "Tracts for
the Times," written by Oxford divines, advocating patristic theology,
contending for apostolic succession as necessary to the validity of
the sacraments, for baptismal regeneration, and the real presence
in the eucharist, condemning the Reformation as a great evil, and
claiming for the Anglican Church the right to be regarded as the only
true orthodox church in England. The growing strength of the party had
manifested itself on the occasion of the appointment of Dr. Hampden to
the Regius Professorship of Divinity at Oxford in 1836. Dr. Pusey and
Dr. Newman were among the most vigorous of the protesters against that
unfortunate divine, against whom the charge was made that his Bampton
Lectures contained doctrines which savoured of Socinianism. The outcry
was great, and the Hampden controversy threatened to break up the
Establishment. Lord Melbourne, however, who had recommended Dr. Hampden
on the advice of Archbishop Whately and Bishop Coplestone, declined
to cancel the appointment, and the excitement died away for the time,
though it was renewed in a milder form when in 1847 Dr. Hampden was
created Bishop of Hereford.

[Illustration: THE FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE FREE CHURCH OF
SCOTLAND.

Signing the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission at Tanfield,
Edinburgh, May 23rd, 1843.

FROM THE PAINTING BY D. O. HILL, R.S.A.]

[Illustration: DR. CHALMERS. (_After the Portrait by John Faed,
R.S.A._)]

In Ireland Roman Catholicism was represented by Archbishop Murray
and Dr. Doyle, the eloquent Bishop of Kildare. The majority of the
Irish Churchmen were Evangelical, and hence came often into collision
with Archbishop Whately, who was a powerful supporter of the system
of mixed education. The Scottish Churches at that time possessed
a number of ministers of great power and eminence, each exerting
in his own denomination extensive influence. Dr. Andrew Thomson, a
mighty spirit, had reached the meridian of his great popularity.
Dr. Chalmers was rising fast to the commanding position he so long
occupied. Among the Baptists the most important names were those of
two laymen, James and Robert Haldane, who not only preached throughout
Scotland, but organised a vast missionary scheme for India. In the
United Presbyterian Church the ablest man was Dr. John Brown, of
Edinburgh, wielding great influence as a theological professor, and
as the pastor of a large congregation in that city. In Glasgow the
Rev. Greville Ewing had founded the Independent Church, then new to
Scotland. Associated with him was a man not less gentle in spirit, but
with intellectual power much more commanding, and of the highest
cultivation as a theologian--Dr. Wardlaw, who during his life continued
the foremost man among the Scottish Congregationalists. Dr. Russell,
of Dundee, possessing an intellect of great force, with an energetic
temperament, contributed his share to the great controversy which
continued for a number of years to agitate the whole Scottish nation,
till it issued in the disruption, and in the establishment of the Free
Church. That movement had already begun, and the decision of the House
of Lords in the Auchterarder case had made the schism inevitable. Among
English Nonconformists the greatest names of the Independents were
those of Dr. Fletcher, of Finsbury Chapel, John Burnet, of Camberwell,
John Angell James, of Birmingham, and William Jay, of Bath. John
Williams was preaching the Gospel to the Melanesians, and Dr. Moffat in
South Africa. The Baptists could boast Robert Hall, and the essayist
John Foster; their greatest missionary was perhaps Dr. Carey. Of the
leading Wesleyans we may notice the names of Dr. Bunting and Dr. Adam
Clarke. The two chief events which affected that body during the
period were--the secession in 1834, when Dr Warren and his followers,
called "Warrenites," separated from the Conference, and the last
secession, when 100,000 broke off, forming a new community. All the
seceding bodies--the Kilhamites, or New Connexion Methodists; the Bible
Christians, or Bryanites; the Wesleyan Methodist Association, formed
in 1835; and last, the Wesleyan Methodist Reformers--separated on the
alleged ground of the tyrannical powers exercised by the Conference,
and the exclusion of the laity from their due share in the management
of the body.

Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the state of mathematical
science was very low in England. The commencement of a better era
originated with Woodhouse at Cambridge and Playfair in Edinburgh, by
both of whom the Continental methods were introduced into the studies
of their respective Universities. About 1820 the translation of La
Croix's "Differential Calculus," superintended by Sir John Herschel
and Dean Peacock, came into use as a text-book. Soon afterwards
the writings of Laplace and Poisson were generally read in the
Universities; and a few men of active and daring minds, chiefly of the
Cambridge school, such as Professor Airy and Sir John Lubbock, grappled
with the outstanding difficulties of physical astronomy; whilst a
larger number applied themselves to the most difficult parts of pure
analysis, and acquired great dexterity in its use, in the solution of
geometrical and mechanical problems.

Sir John F. W. Herschel, son of Sir William Herschel, conversant with
almost every branch of science, also devoted himself with remarkable
success to the cultivation of sidereal astronomy. He evinced very
early a taste for mathematics, but did not devote himself to astronomy
until after his father's death in 1822. He then gave himself up to
it without reserve. At that period the Southern Hemisphere was to
astronomers little more than an unknown region. For the purpose of
exploring it, he visited the Cape of Good Hope in 1834, where, making
use of his father's method, he continued his observations for more than
four years, examining with great care, among other things, the nebulæ
and double stars. On his return to Europe, he gave the results of his
labours to the world in a work of deep interest, and of the highest
importance; and the value of the services he had rendered to science
was recognised, not only by the scientific world, but by his Sovereign
also, who created him a baronet. After he was appointed Master of
the Mint, in 1850, he took no further part in practical astronomy,
but he published many excellent works, not only on that subject,
but on science generally; and he displayed a thorough acquaintance
with natural history, the _belles-lettres_, and the fine arts, and
translated a portion of the "Iliad." This great astronomer and
mathematician died in May, 1871. Lord Rosse's labours to improve the
telescope commenced about 1828, and continued unremittingly until 1844.
His masterpiece was of six feet aperture and 54 feet in focal length.

Amongst the foremost of the promoters of science, and the most eloquent
of its expounders, was Sir David Brewster, who died full of years
and of honours in 1868. Arrived at manhood at the opening of the
present century, having been born in 1781, he continued his brilliant
course during fifty years, pursuing his investigations into the laws
of polarisation by crystals, and by the reflection, refraction, and
absorption of light, in which he made important discoveries. The
attention of the British public was forcibly arrested by an able
treatise on "Light," contributed by Sir John Herschel, in 1827, to
the "Encyclopædia Metropolitana." Its excellent method and lucid
explanations attracted to the theory of Young and Fresnel men of
science who had been deterred by the fragmentary and abstruse style
of the former. This was followed four years later by a most able and
precise mathematical exposition of the theory, and its application to
optical problems, by Professor Airy, who became Astronomer-Royal in
1835.

While an impulse was thus given to the mathematical theory of
light in the University of Cambridge, similar progress was being
made in the sister University of Dublin, where three of her most
eminent professors--Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Dr. Lloyd, and Mr.
M'Cullagh--devoted themselves energetically to its improvement and
verification. Sir William Hamilton, a geometer of the first order,
having undertaken a more complete discussion of the wave surface
of Fresnel, to the equation of which he gave a more elegant form,
ascertained the exact nature of that surface, and consequently the
exact direction of refracted rays in the neighbourhood of the optic
axes. The beautiful and unexpected results he obtained were verified
by his friend Dr. Lloyd. The names of Sir William R. Hamilton and
Dr. Lloyd will be handed down to posterity in connection with this
discovery. "But," says Professor Forbes, "they have other claims to
our respect. The former has generalised the most complicated cases of
common geometrical optics, by a peculiar analysis developed in his
essays on 'Systems of Rays.' To Dr. Lloyd we are indebted for several
interesting experimental papers on optics, for an impartial review of
the progress of the science, and for an excellent elementary treatise
on the wave theory."

In the galaxy of illustrious names that shed light upon this age,
not the least conspicuous is that of Mary Somerville, who is known
in British science not only as the able commentator of Laplace's
"Mécanique Céleste," but as the author of some ingenious experiments
on the magnetising power of the violet ray, and on the permeability
of different bodies to the chemical rays, similar to those of Melloni
on the heating rays; and she found great and seemingly capricious
variations in this respect. The beautiful invention of the stereoscope,
one of the most interesting contributions made to the theory of vision,
was the work of Mr. Wheatstone, who published an account of it in the
"Philosophical Transactions" of 1838. In connection with experiments
of this class should be mentioned the invention of the daguerreotype,
or the production of permanent pictures on plated copper, in 1825,
which was brought to perfection in 1839 by Daguerre, whose name it
bears. About the same time Henry Fox Talbot applied himself to similar
experiments, and invented the calotype, or the production of permanent
pictures on paper; and by a subsequent invention he obtained what he
justly called "an instantaneous process." The science of photography
was, however, in its infancy.

But far more important are the wondrous powers evolved from the study
of heat. The pioneer in this branch of work was the Hon. H. Cavendish,
who was born in 1731, and devoted his life, until his death in 1810, to
the pursuits of science. He was followed by Dalton, who made several
important discoveries in chemistry, particularly with reference to
the gases, and in the doctrine of heat. With the greatest modesty
and simplicity of character, he remained in the obscurity of the
country, neither asking for approbation nor offering himself as an
object of applause. In 1833, at the age of sixty-seven, he received a
pension from Government, which he enjoyed till 1844, when he died. His
discoveries may be said to have terminated at the age of forty, though
he laboured for thirty years after. His first sketch of the atomic
theory was propounded as early as 1807.

Sir Mark Isambard Brunel, a hero of mechanical science, made a great
step in advance by the invention of self-acting machinery to supersede
the work of artisans, by which a new epoch was created in art. The
greatest effort of Brunel was the Thames Tunnel, a structure of perfect
firmness and solidity laid on a quicksand, and forced through a quaking
mass of mud, which will endure like the _cloacæ_ of regal Rome, when
the palace and the cathedral have crumbled to dust. He was enabled to
accomplish this prodigious work by means of "the shield"--a movable
vertical frame of cast iron, provided with thirty-six cells, in each
of which a man was placed with a pick to excavate the area, this frame
or shield being moved bodily forward by powerful screws, while the
bricklayers brought up the arched masonry behind, which was then beyond
the power of injury. The works, however, were several times "drowned"
during their progress by the irruptions of the Thames, but every fresh
difficulty was met successfully by the heroic engineer. The tunnel was
commenced on the 2nd of March, 1825, and finished on the 25th of March,
1843. Brunel survived the completion of this, his greatest work, above
six years, dying on the 12th of December, 1849.

Mention must be made of the extraordinary calculating machines of
Charles Babbage. A few years after leaving college he originated the
plan of a machine for calculating tables, by means of successive orders
of differences, and having received for it, in 1822 and the following
year, the support of the Astronomical and Royal Societies, and a grant
of money from Government, he proceeded to its execution. He also in
1834 contrived a machine called the "analytical engine," extending
the plan so as to develop algebraic quantities, and to tabulate the
numerical value of complicated functions, when one or more of the
variables which they contain are made to alter their values; but the
difficulties of carrying out this plan became insurmountable. In 1839
Babbage resigned the professorship of mathematics in the University of
Cambridge. He died at the end of 1871, having devoted his life to the
study and advancement of science.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (born in 1775) has been pronounced as
"essentially the great founder of English landscape painting, the
greatest poet-artist our nation has yet produced. He excelled in
everything--from the mere diagram and topographic map to the most
consummate truth and the most refined idealism. In every touch of
his there was profound thought and meaning." He was unrivalled in
storms; as Napoleon said of Kleber, "He wakes on the day of battle."
The remark of Admiral Bowles, when looking at Turner's "Wreck of the
_Minotaur_," conveyed the highest compliment to his art--"No ship could
live in such a sea." His "Man Overboard" is a still higher effort
of genius, in conveying an expression of horror and utter despair.
He was the best illustrator of our national poets. He made known to
Englishmen the beauties of their native land, and made them acquainted
with the picturesque on the Continent. He gave our young artists love
for colour, and made us the Venetians of the modern school. From
"The fighting _Temeraire_ tugged to her last Moorings," to "Wilkie's
Burial," and the "Burning of the Houses of Parliament," he let no event
of his age pass without record or comment. He died in 1851.

[Illustration: JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER. (_After the Portrait by
C. Turner._)]

The fame of Sir Thomas Lawrence (_b._ 1769) had attained to its
meridian in this period. In portrait painting he was one of the most
distinguished artists of the day, and he attained proficiency in
it without having gone to Italy or studied the old masters. It has
been said of him, as well as of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that he painted
three generations of beauties. He went to Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, by
invitation, to take the likenesses of the most distinguished statesmen
who were there assembled for diplomatic purposes. During his residence
on the Continent he was received by the Sovereigns of the different
countries he visited, and entertained with marked distinction; and
the propriety and elegance of his deportment, we are told, made an
impression highly favourable to his character. On his return he found
that he had been unanimously elected to succeed West as the President
of the Royal Academy, and this office he continued to hold till his
death, which took place on the 7th of January, 1830.

Sir David Wilkie (_b._ 1785), one of the greatest of Scottish painters,
claims a few words here, especially regarding the latter part of his
brilliant career. In 1820-1 he accomplished his masterpiece, "The
Chelsea Pensioners listening to the News of Waterloo," for which he
received 1,200 guineas from the Duke of Wellington. His later works did
not increase his reputation, chiefly because he abandoned the style
in which he excelled and adopted the pseudo-Spanish. In 1830 he was
made painter in ordinary to his Majesty on the death of Lawrence, and
became a candidate for the Presidentship of the Royal Academy, but had
only one vote recorded in his favour. Between 1830 and 1840 he painted
a considerable number of works, among which were "John Knox preaching
before Mary," and "The Discovery of the Body of Tippoo Sahib," painted
for the widow of Sir David Baird, for £1,500. In 1836 he was knighted,
and in 1840 he set out on a tour to the East, and went as far as
Jerusalem, which he viewed with rapture. At Constantinople he had the
honour of painting the Sultan for the Queen. He returned by Egypt, but
never saw his native land again. He died off Gibraltar, and, the burial
service having been read by torchlight, his body was committed to the
deep, on the 1st of June, 1841.

[Illustration: ABBOTSFORD AND THE EILDON HILLS. (_From a Photograph by
Valentine & Sons, Dundee._)]

In the lives of English painters the story of Benjamin Robert Haydon
is perhaps the saddest. In youth he devoted himself with such zeal to
the study of art that people wondered how he ever found time to eat.
He was one of those men of genius who may be called "unlucky." He was
always in pecuniary difficulties, though his father allowed him £200
per annum in the earlier part of his career. He applied for admission
into the Academy, but did not obtain a single vote; and he got involved
in controversies, which continued to embitter his life. He succeeded
at last, however, by his energy, in commanding public attention and
winning fame. For the "Judgment of Solomon" he received £700, with
£100 voted to him by the directors of the British Institution, and the
freedom of Plymouth. His pictures were, however, very unequal; here and
there was a powerful piece of work, but the whole was generally rough
and unfinished. He committed suicide in 1846. Sculpture, which was then
at its lowest ebb, was relieved alone from vacuity by the works of
Chantrey, Flaxman, and Gibson.

In architecture the first place is due to the patriarch of the science,
Sir John Soane, who was employed in erecting or improving numerous
public edifices in the metropolis and elsewhere. The atrocious
law-courts, which he added to Westminster Hall, were happily removed
in 1883. In 1826 he built the Freemasons' Hall, in Great Queen Street,
having been chosen grand superintendent of works to the fraternity of
Freemasons some years before. In 1833 he completed the State Paper
Office in St. James's Park. He was now in his eightieth year, and he
retired from the active labours of the profession in which he had been
engaged for sixty years, during forty-five of which he had been in the
service of the Bank of England. At his death, which occurred on January
20th, 1837, his house and museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields became the
property of the public.

Sir Charles Barry was the architect of numerous buildings, but his
greatest work was the New Palace of Westminster. When the old Houses
of Parliament were burned down in 1834, amongst the numerous designs
sent in Mr. Barry's was selected, and he had the honour of constructing
the magnificent temple of legislation in which the most powerful body
in the world debates and deliberates, upon the old, classic site,
rendered sacred by so many events in our history. It has been disputed
whether the style of the building is altogether worthy of the locality
and the object, and whether grander and more appropriate effects might
not have been produced by the vast sums expended. But it has been
remarked in defence of the artist, that the design was made almost at
the commencement of the revival of our national architecture, and that,
this fact being considered, the impression will be one of admiration
for the genius of the architect that conceived such a work; and the
conviction will remain that by it Sir Charles Barry did real service to
the progress of English art.

The two Pugins, father and son, had much to do with the revival of
Gothic architecture among us. The father, Augustus, born in France
in 1769, came over to London to practise his profession. In 1821-3
he published "Specimens of Gothic Architecture," selected from
various ancient edifices in England; and in 1825-28 "Specimens of the
Architectural Antiquities of Normandy." The year before his death,
in 1832, he assisted his son in producing a work entitled "Gothic
Ornaments," selected from various buildings in England and France.
Augustus Welby Pugin, who was born in 1811, very soon eclipsed his
father's fame. Having resolved to devote his time to the archæological
study of style and symbolism in architectural ornaments, he settled
down at Ramsgate in 1833, and carried his resolution into effect both
with pen and pencil. In 1835 he published designs for furniture, in
the style of the fifteenth century; and designs for iron and brass
work, in the style of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The
year following appeared his "Designs for Gold and Silver Ornaments,
and Ancient Timber Houses." His exclusive and ardent devotion to
these studies, aided, no doubt, by his habits of seclusion, began to
produce a morbid effect upon his intellect, which was shown in the
overweening arrogance of a tract entitled "Contrasts; or, a Parallel
between Ancient and Modern Architecture." This morbid tendency probably
was increased by his becoming a member of the Roman Catholic Church,
in which a great field was opened for the display of his peculiar
tastes by the construction of buildings which he expected would shame
the degenerate taste of the age, but which, too often, were found to
be gloomy and inconvenient. His principal works were the Cathedral
of St. George, Southwark, the Church of St. Barnabas, at Nottingham,
the Cistercian Abbey of St. Bernard, in Leicestershire, the cathedral
churches of Killarney and Enniscorthy, Alton Castle, and the model
structure which he erected at his own place near Ramsgate. The Mediæval
Court in the Exhibition of 1851 was associated in all minds with the
name of Pugin. In his case genius was too nearly allied to madness.
The awful boundary was passed towards the close of his life, when his
friends were obliged to confine him in a lunatic asylum, from which he
returned only to die in 1852.

Among the historians of the time there are three or four names that
deserve to be specially mentioned. The first is that of Sir James
Mackintosh, who, notwithstanding the pressure of Parliamentary
duties and the attractions of London society, so far conquered his
constitutional indolence, increased by his residence in India, as to
produce some literary works so valuable that it has been a source of
regret that he could not find time to give to the world something
more than fragments. His dissertation on "The Progress of Ethical
Philosophy" shows what he could have accomplished in that field; while
his three volumes of "The History of England" caused a general feeling
of disappointment that he was not spared to complete the work. He was
engaged on a history of the Revolution of 1688 when he died, rather
suddenly, in May, 1832.

The English Roman Catholics produced an historian--Dr. Lingard--who,
for the correctness and strength of his diction, as well as the extent
of his learning, ranks among the first names in this department of
literature. He was a man of great force of mind, remarkable acuteness
in testing historical evidence, and considerable powers of description.
Being a priest, it was not to be expected that he would be impartial
in his treatment of the events and characters of the Reformation, and
the subsequent conflicts between the Churches of England and Rome. Of
his own Church he was a zealous defender and a skilful apologist; but
where that bias did not interfere, his judgments were generally sound.
He died in 1851.

Henry Hallam, who died in 1859, occupies a higher ground than Lingard,
having no party interests to serve, and having a mind singularly
free from prejudice, as well as a conscientious regard for truth in
his records and judgments; while his clear, impressive, and graceful
style invests dry details with interest. His "View of the State of
Europe during the Middle Ages," a work of great learning and value,
was followed, in 1827, by his "Constitutional History of England;" and
ten years later he published, in four volumes, an "Introduction to
the Literature of Europe in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth
Centuries." This is his greatest work, and in point of learning and
utility and purity of style it may be regarded as one of the greatest
in the English language. These works placed Mr. Hallam, by general
consent, at the head of contemporary historians.

The history of the Peninsular War was written very ably and faithfully
by a soldier who bore a distinguished part in it--General Sir W. F. P.
Napier, one of three brothers, all eminently distinguished for their
talents and achievements. About the time when this work was concluded
appeared further illustrations of the war, in the "Despatches of
Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington," which were edited by Colonel
Gurwood, and which are very valuable. Of these despatches it was justly
remarked in the _Edinburgh Review_ that no man ever before had the
gratification of himself witnessing the formation of such a monument to
his glory.

Thomas Moore, the poet, in the latter period of his life, published
several biographical works--namely, a "Life of Richard Brinsley
Sheridan," in 1825; "Notices of the Life of Lord Byron," in 1830;
and "Memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald," in 1831. Byron had written
memoirs of his own life, which he presented to Moore, and by the
publication of which a very large sum of money could have been made;
but Moore generously placed the MS. at the disposal of Mrs. Leigh,
the poet's sister and executrix; and from a regard to his memory,
they were consigned to the flames. It is supposed, however, that all
that was valuable in them was found in the noble lord's journals and
memorandum-books. Among literary biographies--a class of publications
highly interesting to cultivated minds--the first place is due to
Lockhart's "Life of Sir Walter Scott," a work that ranks next to
Boswell's "Life of Johnson."

The number of distinguished authors on miscellaneous subjects was very
great at this time. In jurisprudence and political economy there were
Jeremy Bentham, whose life ended in 1832; his eminent disciples, John
Stuart Mill, Dr. Bowring, and Dr. Hill Burton; Archbishop Whately,
Mr. M'Culloch, Mr. Sadler, and Mr. N. W. Senior. De Quincey began his
brilliant career as an author in 1822, by the publication of "The
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater."

In 1827 began the plan of publishing monthly volumes of valuable
scientific works, previously so expensive as to be beyond the reach
of the multitude. To Mr. Constable, of Edinburgh, belongs the credit
of this plan; but he failed before it could be carried out. His
name, however, was given to the series, and "Constable's Miscellany"
was started in 1827. The works were issued in monthly numbers, at a
shilling each, and in volumes at 3s. 6d. each. Mr. Murray, the eminent
London publisher, took up the idea, and published monthly volumes of
"The Family Library," at five shillings each. A series of "Sacred
Classics" was also published. The "Edinburgh Cabinet Library" commenced
in 1830, and contained the works of some of the first writers of
the day. There was also a series called a "Library of Entertaining
Knowledge," in four-shilling volumes, started by the Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, which was established in 1825. The first
of its sixpenny treatises on science was issued in 1827. It was "A
Discourse on the Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science," by
Henry Brougham. The society thus began to work upon a vast field, a
mere skirt of which it was able to cultivate.

[Illustration: ST. GEORGE'S CATHEDRAL, SOUTHWARK.]

Sir Walter Scott has, perhaps, left the most permanent traces
behind him. We have on many occasions mentioned this illustrious
writer; perhaps this is a fitting time to speak more in detail of
his career. He was born, in 1771, of a very respectable family, at
Edinburgh. He began his career as an author while very young; his
earlier publications, though not successful in a pecuniary way, were
greatly admired by good judges; and his undoubted talents, as well
as his family connections, introduced him to men high in rank, whose
influence became valuable to him, and also to the most distinguished
literary characters of the time. His appointment as sheriff-depute of
Selkirkshire, by securing him a competent income, while its duties
demanded but little of his time, enabled him to devote himself to
his favourite pursuits; and his resources were further augmented by
a small patrimony which he obtained at the death of his father, and
by property he received with the lady whom he married. At this period
he produced several poems, some of which were of considerable length,
and he acquired a large amount of celebrity. "Marmion" appeared in
1808, and "The Lady of the Lake" in 1810. His income from various
sources became, after some time, very considerable; and happy would it
have been for him had he been content with it. But ambition, of which
he had long shown symptoms, became a master passion, and he yielded
fatally to its influence. To hasten the acquisition of wealth, as
a means of adding to the consequence and importance of his family,
which was the dream of his life, he became a partner in a large
publishing firm, which afterwards involved him in its ruin, and whose
liabilities swallowed up the profits of a most successful career. The
demands which it continually made on his resources compelled him to
undertake literary drudgery, in addition to his ordinary labours; and
the magnitude of the enterprises filled him with continual anxiety.
His time was unremittingly occupied: from 1815 to 1825 he vanished,
indeed, from public view; yet he was never more thoroughly employed.
"Waverley" made its appearance in 1814; but the name of the writer
was, for some time, involved in impenetrable mystery. Its success was
unexampled, and it was followed by many similar productions. When the
hour of Sir Walter Scott's seemingly greatest prosperity had arrived,
and his most sanguine expectations appeared to be nearly realised,
the crash came. The firm of which he had so long been a secret partner
stopped payment; this event, besides entailing upon him immense
pecuniary loss, inflicted a deep wound on his feelings by proclaiming
to the world his connection with mercantile speculations. His conduct
upon this trying occasion was, however, in accordance with his whole
life; he refused to avail himself of any legal technicalities for the
purpose of diminishing his responsibilities; and he not only gave up
to the creditors of the concern with which he was so unfortunately
connected all he then possessed, but devoted the energies of the
remainder of his life to make up the large deficit that still remained.
He afterwards realised the enormous sum of £40,000 by his writings, and
shortly after his death his debts were paid in full by his executors.
But his exertions had been too much for him; he became ultimately a
wreck both in body and mind; every effort to recover health was in
vain; the last few months of his life passed with very rare intervals
of consciousness; and he expired, it may be said, prematurely, in the
sixty-first year of his age. He ranks high as a poet, but far higher as
the discoverer of a new world of fiction; in describing which, however
numerous those who attempt to follow the course which he pursued, he is
little likely ever to have a successful rival. He died in 1832, and so
belongs more properly to the reign of George III.

[Illustration: THOMAS MOORE.]

The age was remarkably prolific in female poets and novelists, some
of whom have taken as high a rank in literature as their sex have
done in any age. Lady Blessington and Lady Morgan were not young at
the death of George III., but many of their most celebrated works
were published during the two subsequent reigns. The former, soon
after the death of Lord Blessington in 1829, fixed her residence in
London at Gore House, which became the centre of attraction for men of
talent and distinction in every department. Even great statesmen and
Ministers of the Crown sometimes spent their evenings in her circle,
which was then unrivalled in London for the combined charms of beauty,
wit, and brilliant conversation; and besides, all the celebrities and
lions of London were sure to be met there. The ambiguous attachment
that so long subsisted between her and Count D'Orsay, one of the most
accomplished men of the age, however, excluded Lady Blessington from
the best society. The heavy expenses of her establishment compelled her
to work hard with her pen, and she produced a number of works, which
were in great demand in the circulating libraries of the day. They
are no longer read. Debt at length broke up the establishment at Gore
House, and all its precious collections passed under the hammer of the
auctioneer, to satisfy inexorable creditors. Lady Blessington removed
to Paris, where she lived in retirement for some years, and died in
1849. Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson) was before the country as an author
for nearly half a century. She was born in Dublin, in 1783, and died
in 1859. Before she was sixteen years of age she was the author of two
novels. Her third work, "The Wild Irish Girl," brought to her the fame
for which she longed, and made her a celebrity. In 1811 she married Sir
Charles Morgan, a Dublin physician. Her principal works as a novelist
were "Patriotic Sketches," "O'Donnell," "Florence M'Carthy," and "The
O'Briens and O'Flahertys," which was published in 1827.

One of the most charming poets of the time was Mrs. Hemans, whose
maiden name was Felicia Dorothea Browne, daughter of a Liverpool
merchant, and sister of Colonel Browne, a distinguished officer, who
was for many years one of the Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police
in Dublin. In 1819 she obtained a prize of £50 for the best poem on the
subject of Sir William Wallace; and in 1821 that awarded by the Royal
Society of Literature for the best poem on the subject of Dartmoor.
Her next production was a tragedy, "The Vespers of Palermo," which was
unsuccessful on the stage. "The Forest Sanctuary" appeared in 1826, and
in 1828 "Records of Woman." In 1830 appeared "Songs of the Affections,"
and four years later, "National Lyrics," "Hymns for Childhood," and
"Scenes and Hymns of Life." There was a collective edition of her
works published, with a memoir by her sister, in 1839, and several
other editions subsequently, not only in Great Britain, but in America,
where her poems were exceedingly popular. She died in 1835.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon, known as one of the most eminent female
poets of her time, by the signature "L. E. L." which she appended to
her numerous contributions in the magazines, was born at Hans Place,
Chelsea, in 1802. Her "Poetical Sketches" were published first in the
_Literary Gazette_. In 1824 appeared her "Improvisatrice." She was the
author of two other volumes of poetry, and of a successful novel. A
spirit of melancholy pervades her writings; but it is stated by Mr. L.
Blanchard, in the "Life and Literary Remains," which he published, that
she was remarkable for the vivacity and playfulness of her disposition.
Her poetry ranked very high in public estimation for its lyric beauty
and touching pathos; but the circumstances of her early death, which
was the subject of much controversy, invested her name with a tragic
and romantic interest. In 1838 she was married to Mr. George Maclean,
Governor of Cape Coast Castle, but the marriage was unhappy, and she
died, shortly afterwards, from an overdose of laudanum.

Robert Pollok was a young Scottish minister, who rose suddenly to
popularity by the publication of a poem in blank verse, entitled "The
Course of Time." It was long and discursive, extending to ten books.
The style was very unequal, sometimes rising to a high level, and often
sinking to tame prose. The author had a wonderful command of words for
one so young, and time would, no doubt, have mellowed what was crude
and refined what was coarse, if he had not been prematurely cut off,
just when his genius and his goodness had gathered round him a host of
warm friends. He died of consumption, on the 15th of September, 1827.
His early death contributed to the popularity of the poem, which ran
through many editions.

John Wilson, though born so far back as 1785, was one of the writers of
this period distinguished for originality, freshness, power, and rich
fancy, combined with learning and eloquence. As "Christopher North"
he was long the delight of the readers of _Blackwood's Magazine_. His
criticisms on poetry were distinguished by a profusion of thought and
imagery, which flowed forth so rapidly, and sometimes so little under
the control of judgment, that there seemed no reason why the stream
of illustration should not flow on for ever. He was a poet as well as
a critic; but it is a singular fact that his imagination, like that
of Milton, was more active in prose than in verse. In the latter,
his genius was like a spirited horse in harness; in the former, like
the same horse unbridled, and bounding wildly over the prairies. His
principal poetical work was "The Isle of Palms," published in 1812,
which was followed by one more elaborate, "The City of the Plague."
Among the most popular of his prose fictions are, "The Lights and
Shadows of Scottish Life," "The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay," and "The
Foresters." But it was in periodical literature that he shone most
brightly. Soon after the establishment of _Blackwood's Magazine_, in
1817, he became its chief editor, and thenceforward he poured forth
through this organ all the treasures of his intellect. In 1820 he
succeeded Dr. Thomas Brown as Professor of Moral Philosophy in the
University of Edinburgh, which he held till 1851, when he resigned, in
consequence of ill-health, receiving about the same time a pension of
£300 a year from the Crown. As a professor he was greatly beloved by
his students, on account of his genial nature and the warm interest
he took in their welfare; and he was always surrounded by troops of
friends, who respected his character almost as much as they admired his
genius. He died in 1854.

The most distinguished dramatic writers of the time were Sheridan
Knowles, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Mr. Justice Talfourd, and Miss
Mitford. Mr. Knowles's first drama, _Caius Gracchus_, appeared in 1815,
and was followed by more successful efforts, namely, _The Wife_, _a
Tale of Mantua_, _The Hunchback_, _Virginius_, _The Blind Beggar of
Bethnal Green_, _William Tell_, _The Love Chase_, _Old Maids_, and _The
Daughter_. Ultimately, however, he became disgusted with the stage
from religious scruples, and taking a fancy to polemics, he published
two attacks upon Romanism, entitled, "The Rock of Rome" and "The Idol
demolished by its own Priest." He ended his career as a preacher in
connection with the Baptist denomination, and died in 1862, having
enjoyed a literary pension of £200 a year since 1849.

Sir E. Bulwer Lytton (afterwards Lord Lytton) is chiefly known as a
most successful novelist, but he won fame also as a dramatic author,
his chief productions in this line being _The Lady of Lyons_ and
_Richelieu_. He was born in 1805, and was the youngest son of General
Bulwer, of Haydon Hall. He commenced the career of authorship
very early, having written "Weeds and Wild Flowers," "O'Neil, the
Rebel," and "Falkland," before the appearance of "Pelham" in 1828.
Then in rapid succession appeared "The Disowned," "Devereux," "Paul
Clifford," "Eugene Aram," "The Last Days of Pompeii," "Rienzi," "Ernest
Maltravers," "Alice, or the Mysteries," "The Last of the Barons,"
"Harold, or the Last of the Saxon Kings," and several others. In 1831
he entered the House of Commons, and represented Lincoln till 1841. His
political career, however, belongs to the reign of Queen Victoria.

The success of the Waverley Novels turned the main force of the genius
and literary resources of the country into the ever widening channel of
prose fiction. Many names of note appeared before the public as novel
writers about that time. In Scotland, under the immediate shadow of the
author of "Waverley," came John Galt, Mrs. Johnstone, Miss Ferrier,
the Ettrick Shepherd, Allan Cunningham, Gibson Lockhart, Picken, Moir.
In Ireland, and of Irish birth, there were Colley, Grattan, Crofton
Croker, Banim, Gerald Griffin, Samuel Lover, and last, though not
least, William Carleton. In England, and chiefly of English birth, were
Mrs. Shelley, Peacock, Thomas Hope, Theodore and James Hook, Morier,
Lister, Ward, Gleig, Horace Smith, Miss Mitford, Mrs. Gore, Mrs.
Trollope, Captain Marryat, and Mr. James.

The changes in the manners and morals of the age since the reign
of George III. have been sufficiently indicated in the preceding
pages. Corresponding changes were gradually introduced in the world
of fashion, though the conservative instinct of the aristocracy and
the spirit of exclusiveness resisted innovation as long as possible.
What was called "good society" was wonderfully select. The temple of
fashion at the beginning of the reign of George IV. was Almack's;
and the divinities that under the name of lady patronesses presided
there were the Ladies Castlereagh, Jersey, Cowper, and Sefton, the
Princess Esterhazy and the Countess Lieven. These and their associates
gave the tone to the _beau monde_. We can scarcely now conceive
the importance that was then attached to the privilege of getting
admission to Almack's. Of the 300 officers of the Foot Guards, not more
than half a dozen were honoured with vouchers. The most popular and
influential amongst the _grandes dames_ was Lady Cowper, afterwards
Lady Palmerston. Lady Jersey was not popular, being inconceivably
rude and insolent in her manner. Many diplomatic arts, much finesse,
and a host of intrigues were set in motion to get an invitation to
Almack's. Very often persons whose rank and fortune entitled them
to the entrée anywhere were excluded by the cliquism of the lady
patronesses. Trousers had come into general use. They had been first
worn by children, then adopted in the army, and from the army they
came into fashion with civilians. But they were rigidly excluded from
Almack's, as well as the black tie, which also came into use about
this time. The female oligarchy who ruled the world of fashion, or
tried to do so, issued a solemn proclamation that no gentleman should
appear at the assemblies without being dressed in knee-breeches, white
cravat, and chapeau bras. On one occasion, we are told, the Duke of
Wellington was about to ascend the staircase of the ball-room, dressed
in black trousers, when the vigilant Mr. Willis, the guardian of
the establishment, stepped forward, and said, "Your Grace cannot be
admitted in trousers." Whereupon the great captain quietly retreated,
without daring to storm the citadel of fashion. The principal dances at
Almack's had been Scottish reels, and the old English country dance. In
1815 Lady Jersey introduced from Paris the quadrille which has so long
remained popular. The mazy waltz was also imported about the same time.
Among the first who ventured to whirl round the _salons_ of Almack's
was Lord Palmerston, his favourite partner being Madame Lieven. This
new dance was so diligently cultivated in the houses of the nobility
and gentry that the upper classes were affected with a waltzing mania.

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AT ALMACK'S. (_See p._ 440.)]

The coarse manners of the gentlemen were gradually yielding to refining
influences, but the society of ladies amongst the upper classes was
generally neglected. Husbands spent their days in hunting or other
masculine occupations, and their evenings in dining and drinking; the
dinner party, which commenced at seven, not breaking up before one in
the morning. Four- or five-, or even six-bottle men were not uncommon
among the nobility. Lord Eldon and his brother Lord Stowell used to
say that they had drunk more bad port than any two men in England.
The Italian Opera was then the greatest attraction. It became less
exclusive in its arrangements when the Opera House was under the
management of Mr. Waters; but the strictest etiquette was still kept
up with regard to the dress of gentlemen, who were only admitted with
knee-buckles, ruffles, and _chapeaux bras._ If there happened to be a
Drawing Room, the ladies as well as the gentlemen would come to the
opera in their Court dresses.

[Illustration:

    _Reproduced by André & Sleigh, Ld., Bushey, Herts._

THE "FIGHTING TÉMÉRAIRE" TUGGED TO HER LAST BERTH TO BE BROKEN UP, 1838.

FROM THE PAINTING BY J. M. W. TURNER, R.A., IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY.]

[Illustration: ROTTEN ROW IN 1830. (_See p._ 442.)]

English cookery, even in the greatest houses, had not yet been much
affected by French art. The dinners were remarkably solid, hot, and
stimulating. Mulligatawny and turtle soups came first, then at one end
of the table was uncovered the familiar salmon, and at the other the
turbot surrounded by smelts. Next came a saddle of mutton, or a joint
of roast beef, and for the fourth course came fowls, tongue, and ham.
French dishes were placed on the sideboard, but for a long time such
weak culinary preparations were treated with contemptuous neglect. The
boiled potato was then very popular, and vegetables generally were
unaccompanied with sauce. The dessert, which was ordered from the
confectioner's, was often very costly. The wines used at dinner were
chiefly port, sherry, and hock. "A perpetual thirst seemed to come over
people, both men and women," says Captain Gronow, "as soon as they had
tasted their soup, as from that moment everybody was taking wine with
everybody else till the close of the dinner, and such wine as produced
that class of cordiality which frequently wanders into stupefaction.
How this sort of eating and drinking ended was obvious from the
prevalence of gout; and the necessity of every one making the pill-box
a constant bedroom companion."

There was a sort of understanding in those times that Hyde Park was
the peculiar preserve of the aristocracy. Women of notoriously bad
reputation would not then have dared to show themselves in Rotten Row,
and the middle and lower classes of London did not think of intruding
themselves as equestrians upon the pleasure-ground of the nobility.
At that time it was every way more retired; the walks were fewer, and
cows and deer were seen quietly grazing under clumps of trees. The
frequenters of the park, who then congregated daily about five o'clock,
were chiefly composed of dandies and ladies in the best society; the
former, well-mounted and dressed in a blue coat, with brass buttons,
leather breeches and top-boots, with a tremendously deep, stiff, white
cravat, and high shirt-collar, which rendered stooping impossible.
Many of the ladies used to drive round the park in a carriage, called
a _vis-à-vis_, which held only two persons, having a hammer-cloth rich
in heraldic designs, powdered footmen in smart liveries, and a coachman
who assumed all the airs and importance of a wigged archbishop.

The growing importance of the middle classes, the rapid multiplication
of men of wealth and high social position in the mercantile community;
the marriage of their daughters into noble families rendered insolvent
by extravagance, and the diffusion of knowledge among all classes
of the community, gradually levelled or lowered the barriers of
exclusiveness, increased the facilities of social intercourse, and
rendered the fashions in the clothing of both sexes more accordant with
good taste, more convenient, and more conducive to health. With the
use of the trousers, and Hessian or Wellington boots, came the loose
and easy surtout, and frock-coat; and instead of the deep stiff white
cravat, black stocks or black ties were worn except in full dress at
evening parties. The clergy, however, retained the white neckcloth,
and, strange to say, it also became the necessary distinction of
footmen, butlers, hotel-waiters, and shop-assistants. The old Court
dress coat, with its bag-like skirt, was abandoned by gentlemen who
attended dinner parties and balls, for the "swallow-tailed" dress coat.

The style of ladies' dresses in the days of George IV. forms a striking
contrast to the fashions of the present day. The ordinary walking
dresses were made loosely and simply--not high to the throat, as they
were afterwards, nor yet low; the waist, with utter disregard to its
natural length, was portioned off by a belt coming almost immediately
under the arms, from which descended a long, straight, ungraceful
skirt, without any undulation or fulness whatever, reaching to the
feet, but short enough to leave them visible. The sleeves were plain
and close to the arms, and fastened at the wrist with a frill. The same
scantiness of material was observed in the evening dresses; they wore
low bodices and short sleeves, with long gloves reaching to the elbow.
The trimmings varied according to the taste of the wearer, as in our
own day. Small flowers at the bottom of the skirt seem to have been the
prevailing style. The hair was generally arranged in short curls round
the face; but this was also subject to variations, of course, and some
wore it plaited. The head-dress was composed of a bouquet of flowers
placed on the top of the head. But the ugliest and the most uncouth
part of the dress and the most irreconcilable with modern ideas of
taste was the bonnet. The crown was in itself large enough for a hat
of reasonable proportions; and from it, the leaf grew out, expanding
round the face, in shape somewhat like a coal-scuttle, and trimmed
elaborately with feathers and flowers.

Towards the end of William IV.'s reign the style of ladies' dress
suddenly changed. The unshapely short-waisted robe was succeeded by
one of ampler dimensions, longer and fuller, with a moderate amount
of crinoline--enough to give dignity and grace to the figure, but not
expanding to the same absurd extent as afterwards--and long pointed
stomachers. The bonnets were considerably reduced in size. The ball
dresses at the beginning of the Victorian reign became more like
those of a later day, except that they were then made of heavy, rich
materials--silk, satin, brocade, etc. The style of the sleeve varied,
but one of the fashions at this time was a puffing at the shoulder, and
sloping gradually down, commonly called the "leg-of-mutton sleeve." The
cloaks were large and full, enveloping the whole figure, and reaching
almost to the ground.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 2: In this chapter we have not confined ourselves strictly to
the period under review, as it is too short to give the reader a good
idea of the progress achieved, and statistics are frequently wanting
for the exact seventeen years.]




CHAPTER XIII.

THE REIGN OF VICTORIA.

    The Queen's Accession--Separation of Hanover from England--The
    Civil List--The General Election--Rebellion in Lower Canada--Its
    prompt Suppression--Sir Francis Head in Upper Canada--The Affair
    of the _Caroline_--Lord Durham's Mission--His Ordinance--It is
    disallowed--Lord Durham resigns--Renewal and Suppression of the
    Rebellion--Union of the Canadas--The Irish Poor Law Bill--Work of
    the Commissioners--Attack on Lord Glenelg--Compromise on Irish
    Questions--Acland's Resolution--The Tithe Bill becomes Law--The
    Municipal Bill abandoned--The Coronation--Scene in the Abbey--The
    Fair in Hyde Park--Rejoicings in the Provinces--Dissolution of
    the Spanish Legion--Debate on the Intervention in Spain--Lord
    Ashley's Factory Bills--Prorogation of Parliament--The Glasgow
    Strike--Reference to Combinations in the Queen's Speech--Remarks
    of Sir Robert Peel--Rise of Chartism--The Six Points--Mr.
    Attwood's Petition--Lord John Russell's Proclamation--The
    Birmingham Riots--Dissolution of the National Convention--The
    Newport Riots--Murder of Lord Norbury--Meeting of the
    Magistrates--The Precursor Association--Debates in Parliament--Lord
    Normanby's Defence of his Administration--The Lords censure
    the Government--The Vote reversed in the Commons--The Jamaica
    Bill--Virtual Defeat of the Ministry--They resign.


A combination of circumstances invested the accession on the 20th
of June, of the Princess Victoria, with peculiar interest. She was
the third female Sovereign called to occupy the throne since the
Reformation; and like those of Elizabeth and Anne, her reign has served
to mark an era in British history. The novelty of a female Sovereign,
especially one so young, had a charm for all classes in society. The
superior gifts and the amiable disposition of the Princess, the care
with which she had been educated by her mother, and all that had been
known of her private life and her favourite pursuits, prepared the
nation to hail her accession with sincere acclamations. There was
something which could not fail to excite the imagination and touch
the heart, in seeing one who in a private station would be regarded
as a mere girl, just old enough to come out into society, called upon
to assume the sceptre of the greatest empire in the world, and to
sit upon one of the oldest thrones, receiving the willing homage of
statesmen and warriors who had been historic characters for half a
century. We are not surprised, therefore, to read that the mingled
majesty and grace with which she assumed her high functions excited
universal admiration, and "drew tears from many eyes which had not been
wet for half a lifetime;" and that warriors trembled with emotion, who
had never known fear in the presence of the enemy. When the ceremony
of taking the oath of allegiance had been gone through, her Majesty
addressed the Privy Council:--"The severe and afflicting loss which the
nation has sustained by the death of his Majesty, my beloved uncle,
has devolved upon me the duty of administering the government of this
empire. This awful responsibility is imposed upon me so suddenly, and
at so early a period of my life, that I should feel myself utterly
oppressed by the burden, were I not sustained by the hope that Divine
Providence, which has called me to this work, will give me strength
for the performance of it; and that I shall find in the purity of my
intentions, and in my zeal for the public welfare, that support and
those resources which usually belong to a more mature age and to long
experience. I place my firm reliance upon the wisdom of Parliament, and
upon the loyalty and affection of my people."

The young Queen enjoyed, in the new King of Hanover, the advantage of a
foil which, with all the force of contrast, placed her character as a
constitutional Sovereign in the best possible light. At her accession,
the Crown of Hanover, which could not be inherited by a female, was
separated from the Crown of England, with which it had been united
since the accession of George I. in 1714, and had descended to the
Duke of Cumberland, the next surviving male heir of George III. This
severance, instead of being regarded as a loss, was really felt as
a great relief by the British nation, not only as terminating its
connection with German politics, from which nothing but annoyance and
expense could result, but, what was regarded as much more important,
freeing the country from the presence of the Duke of Cumberland, who
was detested for his arbitrary temper. On the 24th of June, Ernest
Augustus, King of Hanover, left London, apparently in a very churlish
spirit, and breathing hostility to constitutional freedom in the
country which was to be cursed by his rule. So strong were his feelings
against constitutional government that he had not the grace to receive
a deputation of the Chambers, who came to offer him their homage and
their congratulations; and on the 5th of July he hastened to issue a
proclamation, announcing his intention to abolish the Constitution. He
not only did this, but he ejected from their offices, and banished from
their country, some of the most eminent professors in the University of
Göttingen. It was thus he inaugurated a rule of iron despotism worse
than that of the native princes, who had not the advantage of being
brought up in a free country.

The Queen did not disturb the Administration which she found in office.
The Premier, Lord Melbourne, who was now fifty-eight years old, had
had much experience of public life. He had been Chief Secretary for
Ireland, Home Secretary, and Prime Minister, to which position he had
been called the second time, after the failure of Sir Robert Peel's
Administration in the spring of 1835. The young Queen seems to have
looked to his counsel with a sort of filial deference; and from the
time of her accession to the close of his career he devoted himself to
the important task of instructing and guiding his royal mistress in the
discharge of her various official duties--a task of great delicacy,
which he performed with so much ability and success as not only to win
her gratitude, but to secure also the approbation of the country, and
to disarm the hostility of political opponents. No royal pupil, it
may be safely said, ever did more credit to a mentor than did Queen
Victoria. For the time being, Lord Melbourne took up his residence at
Windsor, and acted as the Queen's Secretary.

Prior to the Revolution the sums voted for the Civil List were granted
without any specification as to whether they should be applied to
the maintenance of the army, the navy, the civil government, or the
household. The king got a lump sum for carrying on the government,
defending the country, and supporting the royal dignity; and was
allowed to apportion it according to his own discretion--the plan most
agreeable to an arbitrary monarch. After the Revolution the expenses
of the army and navy were separately voted, and the charges for civil
government have been gradually removed from the Civil List. At the
accession of William IV. these charges were reduced to the amount
required for the expenses of the Royal Household, by the removal of
the salaries of the judges, the ambassadors, and the Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland, together with a number of Civil List pensions. This fact
should be borne in mind in connection with the sums on the Civil List
of former Sovereigns. For example: William III., Anne, and George I.
had £700,000 a year; George II. and George III., £800,000; George IV.,
£850,000; William IV., £500,000; Queen Victoria received £385,000. The
application was thus limited: Privy Purse, £60,000; household salaries
and retired allowances, £131,260; household expenses, £172,500; royal
bounty, alms, and special services, £13,200; leaving an unappropriated
balance of upwards of £8,000 to be employed in supplementing any of the
other charges, or in any way her Majesty thought proper. The Pension
List was limited to £1,200 per annum, and the incomes from the Duchies
of Lancaster and Cornwall, estimated at £50,000 a year, were secured to
the Crown. Economists grumbled about the magnitude of these allowances,
and Lord Melbourne was accused of being over-indulgent to the youthful
Sovereign; but her immense popularity silenced all murmurers, and the
nation felt happy to give her any amount of money she required.

On the 17th of July--a week after the burial of the King--the Queen
went in state to meet Parliament. She was received along the line of
procession with extraordinary enthusiasm; and never on the accession
of a Sovereign was the House of Peers so thronged by ladies of rank.
A tone of kindness, mercy, and conciliation, befitting her youth and
sex, marked her first Speech from the Throne. She stated that she
regarded with peculiar interest the measures that had been brought to
maturity for the mitigation of the criminal code, and the reduction of
the number of capital punishments; promised that it should be her care
to strengthen our institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, by discreet
improvement, wherever improvement was required, and to do all in her
power to compose and allay animosity and discord. Immediately on the
delivery of the Royal Speech Parliament was prorogued in order to its
dissolution. The general elections speedily followed, and were all over
early in August. The Ministerial candidates were accused of making
an unconstitutional use of the Queen's name in their addresses, and
availing themselves of her popularity to strengthen the position of
the Government, and the Conservatives asserted that the Queen had no
partiality for her present advisers, whom she found in office, and bore
with only till Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues should feel strong
enough to take their places. The elections did not materially alter the
balance of parties, the Whigs still commanding a small majority.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN'S FIRST COUNCIL.

AFTER THE PAINTING BY SIR DAVID WILKIE, R. A., IN THE ROYAL COLLECTION.]

[Illustration: NIAGARA FALLS.]

Parliament met on the 15th of November, when Mr. Abercromby was
unanimously re-elected Speaker. On the 20th the Queen opened the new
Parliament in person. In the Royal Speech the serious attention of the
Legislature was requested to the consideration of the state of the
province of Lower Canada, which had now become a question that could
not be any longer deferred. The demands of the inhabitants of that
province were so extravagant that they were regarded by Sir Robert
Peel as revolutionary. They demanded, not only that the Executive
Council should be responsible to the House of Representatives, but
also that the Senate, or Upper House, then nominated by the Crown,
should be elected by the people. The Home Government, sustained by an
overwhelming majority of the House of Commons, rejected the demand; and
when the news reached Canada, the Lower Province was quickly in a flame
of rebellion. Violent harangues were delivered to excited assemblies of
armed men, who were called upon to imitate the glorious example of the
United States, and break the yoke of British oppression. Fortunately,
disaffection in the Upper Provinces was confined to a minority.
The Loyalists held counter-demonstrations at Montreal; regiments
of volunteers to support the Government and maintain the British
connection were rapidly formed, and filled up by brave men determined
to lay down their lives for the fair young Queen who now demanded their
allegiance. Sir Francis Head had so much confidence in the inhabitants
of the Upper Provinces that he sent all the regular troops into Lower
Canada for the purpose of suppressing the insurrection. A small force,
under the command of Colonel Gore, encountered 1,500 of the rebels so
strongly posted in stone houses in the villages of St. Denis and St.
Charles that they were obliged to retreat before the well directed fire
from the windows, with the loss of six killed and ten wounded, leaving
their only field-piece behind. Among the wounded was Lieutenant Weir,
who was barbarously murdered by the insurgents. At St. Charles, Colonel
Wetherall, at the head of another detachment, stormed the stronghold of
the rebels, and completely routed them, after an obstinate resistance,
with a loss of only three killed and eighteen wounded. The strength
of the insurgents, however, lay in the country of the Two Mountains,
where they were pursued by Sir John Colborne in person, with a force
of 13,000 men, including volunteers. Many of them took to flight at
his approach, including their commander Girod, who, on being pursued
and captured, shot himself. But 400 rebels, commanded by Dr. Chenier,
took up a position in a church and some other buildings, around which
they erected barricades, and there made a desperate resistance for two
hours. Next day the British troops proceeded to another stronghold
of the rebels, St. Benoit, which they found abandoned, and to which
the exasperated loyalists set fire. Papineau, the leader of the
insurrection, had escaped to New York.

Sir Francis Head had made a somewhat dangerous experiment in denuding
Upper Canada of troops, conceiving it to be his duty to lay before the
American people the incontrovertible fact that, by the removal of her
Majesty's forces and by the surrender of 600 stand of arms to the civil
authorities, the people of Upper Canada had virtually been granted an
opportunity of revolting; consequently, as the British Constitution had
been protected solely by the sovereign will of the people, it became,
even by the greatest of all republican maxims, the only law of the
land. This was not done, however, without an attempt at revolt, made
chiefly by Irish Roman Catholics. The leader of this movement was W.
L. Mackenzie, the editor of a newspaper. On the night of the 3rd of
December, 1837, this leader marched at the head of 500 rebels, from
Montgomery's Tavern, his headquarters, upon Toronto, having initiated
the war by the murder of Colonel Moodie. They were, however, driven
away. Mackenzie fled in disguise to Buffalo, in New York; a large
number of the rebels were taken prisoners, but almost immediately
released, and sent to their homes.

It was on this occasion that the loyalty of the British settlers in
Upper Canada shone forth with the most chivalrous devotion to the
throne of the Queen. The moment the news arrived of Mackenzie's attack
upon Toronto, the militia everywhere seized their arms, mustered in
companies, and from Niagara, Gore, Lake Shireve, and many other places,
set out on their march in the heavy snow in the depth of winter. So
great was the excitement, so enthusiastic the loyalty, that in three
days 10,000 armed volunteers had assembled at Toronto. There was,
however, no further occasion for their services in that place, and
even the scattered remnants of the insurrection would have been
extinguished but for the interference of filibustering citizens of
the United States, who were then called "sympathisers," and who had
assembled in considerable numbers along the Niagara River. They had
established their headquarters on Navy Island in the Niagara River,
about two miles above the Falls, having taken possession of it on the
13th of December, and made it their chief depôt of arms and provisions,
the latter of which they brought from the American shore by means
of a small steamer called the _Caroline_. Colonel M'Nab resolved to
destroy the _Caroline_, and to root out the nest of pirates by whom
she was employed. On the 28th of December a party of militia found her
moored opposite Fort Schlosser, on the American side, strongly guarded
by bodies of armed men, both on board and on shore. Lieutenant Drew
commanded the British party, and after a fierce conflict the vessel
was boarded and captured, a number of those who manned her being taken
prisoners. These being removed, the British set the vessel on fire,
and the flaming mass was swept down the rapids, and precipitated into
the unfathomable abyss below. According to the American version of
this affair, the British had made an unprovoked and most wanton attack
upon an unarmed vessel belonging to a neighbouring State, on American
territory, at a time of profound peace. The truth came out by degrees,
and the American President, Van Buren, issued a proclamation on the
5th of January, 1838, warning all citizens of the United States that
if they interfered in any unlawful manner with the affairs of the
neighbouring British provinces, they would render themselves liable to
arrest and punishment.

Such was the state of things in Canada which the Imperial Parliament
was called upon to consider in the spring of 1838. The first feeling
which the news of the insurrection produced in Britain was one of
alarm; the next was that all the forces that could be spared should
be immediately dispatched for the purpose of crushing the revolt;
and a ship of the line was employed for the first time in carrying a
battalion of 800 Guards across the Atlantic. The Duke of Wellington
censured the Government for not having had a sufficient military force
to preserve the peace in Canada, and used the oft-repeated expression
that was stultified on several occasions during the latter portion of
Victoria's reign, that a great nation cannot make a little war. On
the 22nd of January Lord John Russell moved for leave to bring in
a Bill suspending the Constitution in Lower Canada for three years,
and providing for the future government of that province, with a
view to effecting a satisfactory settlement of the affairs of the
colony. He stated that her Majesty's Government had resolved to send
out an experienced statesman, of high character and position, and of
well-known popular sympathies, with ample powers, and that Lord Durham
had consented to go. The Government measure was carried in the House of
Commons by a majority of 262 to 16, and unanimously in the Lords.

The Lord High Commissioner immediately proceeded on his great mission,
and after a tedious voyage landed at Quebec on the 29th of May. He
took with him, as his private secretary, Mr. Charles Buller, a man of
singular ability, an ardent friend of free institutions, gifted with a
large mind and generous sympathies, and a spirit that rose superior to
all party considerations. A more suitable man could scarcely have been
found for such a work. But he also took out with him Mr. Turton and Mr.
Gibbon Wakefield, men of ability but hopelessly damaged in character.
He promptly proceeded to dismiss his Council and to select another of
five who had no acquaintance with Canadian politics. He found on his
arrival 116 state prisoners, whose trial had been postponed, awaiting
his instructions. On the 28th of June the Lord High Commissioner
published an ordinance, in which it was stated that Wolfred Nelson,
and seven other persons therein named, had acknowledged their guilt,
and submitted themselves to her Majesty's pleasure; that Papineau,
with fifteen others, had absconded. The former were sentenced to be
transported to Bermuda during pleasure, there to be submitted to
such restraints as might be thought fit; the latter, if they should
return to Canada, were to be put to death without further trial. In
each of these cases an unfortunate error was committed. The Lord High
Commissioner had no legal authority out of Canada, and could not
order the detention of any one at Bermuda; and to doom men to be put
to death without further trial, was denounced in Parliament, by Lord
Brougham and others, as unconstitutional. Lord Brougham described it
as "an appalling fact." Such a proceeding, he said, was "contrary to
every principle of justice, and was opposed to the genius and spirit
of English law, which humanely supposed every accused party to be
innocent until he was proved to be guilty." His reasons for the course
he had adopted were given by Lord Durham, in a despatch to the Home
Secretary, dated June 29th. The British party, he said, did not require
sanguinary punishment; but they desired security for the future, and
the certainty that the returning tranquillity of the province would not
be arrested by the machinations of the ringleaders of rebellion, either
there or in the United States. He said: "I did not think it right to
transport these persons to a convict colony, for two reasons; first,
because it was affixing a character of moral infamy on their acts,
which public opinion did not sanction; and, secondly, because I hold
it to be impolitic to force on the colony itself persons who would be
looked on in the light of political martyrs, and thus acquire perhaps a
degree of influence which might be applied to evil uses in a community
composed of such dangerous elements."

The ordinance was disallowed at home. Lord Brougham, who had never
forgiven his former colleagues the constitution of the Cabinet without
his forming a part of it, signalised himself by the extreme bitterness
with which he headed the onslaught. The result was that, after
protracted debates in both Houses of Parliament, which occupied the
whole of the summer, and fill up nearly 500 pages of the Parliamentary
Proceedings, the ordinance was annulled by Act of Parliament; but an
Act was passed indemnifying Lord Durham and the Canadian authorities.
The majority in the Commons was so large that the Opposition did not
venture on a division; and in the Lords the disallowance was carried
by a majority of 54 to 36. This result occurred on the 10th of August,
and Lord Durham saw the news first in the American newspapers. Lords
Melbourne and Glenelg softened the matter to him as well as they could;
the former communicated the intelligence with the greatest regret and
the deepest apprehension as to its consequences. Lord Durham betrayed
his mortification unwisely in a proclamation which he immediately
issued. As the banishment was an exception to the general amnesty he
had published, he informed the prisoners at Bermuda that her Majesty
being advised to refuse her assent to the exceptions, the amnesty
existed without qualification, and added--"No impediment, therefore,
exists to the return of the persons who have made the most distinctive
admission of guilt, or have been excluded by me from the province on
account of the danger to which it would be exposed by their presence."

Lord Durham at once resigned, and was succeeded by Mr. Poulett Thomson,
afterwards Lord Sydenham, who fully adopted his policy, which was
ably expounded in an important report from the pen of Mr. Charles
Buller, with additions by Gibbon Wakefield. It was characterised by
profound statesmanship, and was the basis of the sound policy which
has made united Canada a great and flourishing State. Meanwhile, the
returned prisoners from Bermuda showed their sense of the leniency
with which they had been treated by immediately reorganising the
rebellion. Sir John Colborne, the commander-in-chief, who had, on
Lord Durham's departure, assumed provisionally the government of
the colonies, thereupon proclaimed martial law, and stamped out the
insurrection. Only twelve of the principal offenders were ultimately
brought to trial, of whom ten were sentenced to death, but only four
were executed. The persons convicted of treason, or political felony,
in Upper Canada, from the 1st of October, 1837, to the 1st of November,
1838, were disposed of as follows:--pardoned on giving security, 140;
sentenced to confinement in penitentiary, 14; sentenced to banishment,
18; transported to Van Diemen's Land, 27; escaped from Fort Henry,
12. The American prisoners had been sent to Kingston, and tried by
court-martial on the 24th of November. Four of them were sentenced
to death, and executed, complaining of the deception that had been
practised on them with regard to the strength of the anti-British
party, and the prospects of the enterprise. Five others were afterwards
found guilty and executed. The American Government, though deprecating
those executions on grounds of humanity, disclaimed all sanction or
encouragement of such piratical invasions, and denied any desire on its
part for the annexation of Canada.

Out of these troubles arose a new state of things, a new era of peace
and prosperity. Lord Durham saw that disaffection and disturbance
had arisen from the animosity of race and religion, exasperated by
favouritism in the Government, and the dispensation of patronage
through "a family compact." He recommended a liberal, comprehensive,
impartial, and unsectarian policy, with the union of the two provinces
under one legislature, and this, after several failures, became law
in 1840. It was a revolution quite unexpected by both parties. The
disaffected French Catholics feared, as the consequence of their
defeat, a rule of military repression; the British Protestants
hoped for the firm establishment of their ascendency. Both were
disappointed--the latter very painfully, when, notwithstanding
their efforts and sacrifices for the maintenance of British power,
they saw Papineau, the arch-traitor, whom they would have hanged,
Attorney-General in the new Government. However, the wise government
of Lord Sydenham soon reconciled them to the altered state of affairs.
The new Constitution was proclaimed in Canada on the 10th of February,
1841; and the admirable manner in which it worked proved that Lord
Durham, its author, was one of the greatest benefactors of the colony,
though his want of tact had made his mission a failure.

[Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA IN THE CORONATION ROBES, 1838.

FROM THE PICTURE BY C. R. LESLIE, R.A., IN THE POSSESSION OF THE
VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON.]

On the 1st of December, 1837, shortly after the opening of Parliament,
Lord John Russell introduced a question of great urgency--the relief
of the Irish poor. After going through, and commenting on, the several
recommendations of the Inquiry Commissioners, and noticing the
objections to which they were all more or less open, he explained, by
way of contrast, the principles on which the present Bill was founded,
much in the same manner that he had done on the first introduction
of the measure. The statement was generally well received, although
there were some marked exceptions in this respect; and the Bill was
read a first time without a division. It was, in like manner, read a
second time on the 5th of February, 1838; but, on the motion for going
into committee, on the 9th, Mr. O'Connell strongly opposed it, and
moved that it be committed that day six months. The amendment was,
however, negatived by 277 to 25, a majority which made the passing
of the measure in some form pretty certain. On the 23rd of February
the question of settlement was again very fully discussed, and its
introduction opposed by 103 to 31, the latter number comprising all
that could be brought to vote for a settlement law of any kind. The
vagrancy clauses were for the present withdrawn from the Bill, on the
understanding that there would hereafter be a separate measure for
the suppression of mendicancy. The Bill continued to be considered in
successive committees until the 23rd of March, when, all the clauses
having been gone through and settled, it was ordered to be reported,
which was done on the 9th of April. On the 30th of April the Bill was
read a third time and passed by the Commons, and on the day following
was introduced and read a first time in the Lords. Many of the peers,
whose estates were heavily encumbered, were alarmed at the threatened
imposition of a poor-rate, which might swallow up a large portion
of their incomes. Those who were opposed to a poor law on economic
principles, appealed to their lordships' fears, and excited a
determined opposition against the measure. On the 21st of May there
was a stormy debate of nine hours' duration. Lord Melbourne moved the
second reading in a judicious speech, in which he skilfully employed
the best arguments in favour of a legal provision for the poor, stating
that this measure was, in fact, but the extension to Ireland of the
English Act of 1834, with such alterations as were adapted to the
peculiar circumstances of that country. It would suppress mendicancy,
and would abate agrarian violence, while relieving the destitute in a
way that would not paralyse the feeling of energy and self-reliance.
Among the most violent opponents of the measure was Lord Lyndhurst, who
declared that it would lead to a dissolution of the Union. The Duke of
Wellington, on the contrary, contended that the Bill, if amended in
committee, would improve the social relations of the people of Ireland,
and would induce the gentry to pay some attention to their properties,
and to the occupiers and labourers on their estates. He objected,
however, to a law of settlement as leading to unbounded litigation and
expense. Owing chiefly to the support of the Duke, the second reading
was carried by a majority of 149 to 20. On the motion that the Bill
be committed, on the 28th of May, a scene of confusion and violence
was presented, surpassing anything that could have been expected in
such a dignified assembly. The Irish peers especially were in a state
of extreme excitement. The discussion was adjourned to the 31st, and,
after a debate of eight hours, the clause embodying the principle
of the Bill was adopted by a majority of 107 to 41. The Bill was
considered in committee on the 7th, 21st, 22nd, and 26th of June, and
was read a third time on the 6th of July. It had now passed the Lords,
altered, and in some respects improved; although, in the opinion of its
author, the charge upon electoral divisions approximated too nearly to
settlement to be quite satisfactory. The Royal Assent was given to the
measure on the 31st of July, and thus a law was at length established
making provision for the systematic and efficient relief of destitution
in Ireland.

[Illustration: THE CAPTURE OF THE "CAROLINE." (_See p._ 446.)]

Armed with their Act of Parliament, the Poor Law Commissioners who
had been appointed to carry it out hastened to Ireland for the
purpose of forming unions, providing workhouses, and making all the
necessary arrangements. Mr. Nicholls was accompanied by four Assistant
Commissioners, Mr. Gulson, Mr. Earle, Mr. Hawley, and Mr. Voules. They
assembled in Dublin on the 9th of October, where they were joined
by four Irish Commissioners, namely, Mr. Clements, Mr. Hancock, Mr.
O'Donoghue, and Dr. Phelan. The erection of workhouses was proceeded
with without loss of time. Reports of the progress made were annually
published, and in May, 1842, the whole of Ireland had been formed into
130 unions; all the workhouses were either built or in progress of
building, and eighty-one had been declared fit for the reception of
the destitute poor. Mr. Nicholls left Ireland in 1842, his functions
being delegated to a board consisting of Mr. Gulson and Mr. Power. It
was indeed a most providential circumstance that the system had been
brought into working order before the potato failure of 1846, as it
contributed materially to mitigate the nameless horrors of the awful
famine.

On the 6th of March, Sir William Molesworth, with a view to bringing
the whole colonial administration of the empire before the House of
Commons, moved that an Address be presented to her Majesty, expressing
the opinion of the House that in the present critical state of many of
her foreign possessions "the Colonial Minister should be a person in
whose diligence, activity, and firmness the House and the public may
be able to place reliance;" and declaring that "her Majesty's present
Secretary of State for the Colonies does not enjoy the confidence of
the House or the country." The honourable baronet made a speech of
two hours' duration, which was a dissertation on colonial policy,
containing a survey of the whole of her Majesty's dominions in both
hemispheres. He disclaimed all party considerations in bringing
forward his motion, or any intention to make an invidious attack on
Lord Glenelg. But as the colonies were so numerous, so diversified in
races, religions, languages, institutions, interests, and as they were
unrepresented in the Imperial Parliament, it was absolutely necessary
that the colonial administration should be vigilant, prompt, sagacious,
energetic, and firm. Lord Glenelg was wanting in these qualities,
and the colonies were all suffering more or less from the errors and
deficiencies of this ill-fated Minister, "who had, in the words of
Lord Aberdeen, reduced doing nothing to a system." Lord Glenelg was
defended by Lord Palmerston, who regarded the attack upon him as an
assault upon the Cabinet, which would not allow one of its members to
be made a scapegoat. The House divided, when the numbers were--ayes,
287; noes, 316; majority for Ministers, 29. Nevertheless the Ministry
were greatly damaged by the debate, which emphasised the growing
Radical revolt. In the following year Lord Glenelg, having declined to
exchange his office for the Auditorship of the Exchequer, resigned.

At the close of the Session of 1837 an earnest desire was expressed by
the leaders of both parties in the House for an amicable adjustment
of two great Irish questions which had been pending for a long time,
and had excited considerable ill-feeling, and wasted much of the
time of the Legislature--namely, the Irish Church question, and the
question of Corporate Reform. The Conservatives were disposed to
compromise the matter, and to get the Municipal Reform Bill passed
through the Lords, provided the Ministry abandoned the celebrated
Appropriation Clause, which would devote any surplus revenue of the
Church Establishment, not required for the spiritual care of its
members, to the moral and religious education of all classes of the
people, without distinction of religious persuasion; providing for the
resumption of such surplus, or any part of it, as might be required, by
an increase in the numbers of the members of the Established Church.
The result of this understanding was the passing of the Tithe Bill.
But there were some little incidents of party warfare connected with
these matters, which may be noticed here as illustrative of the temper
of the times. On the 14th of May Sir Thomas Acland brought forward a
resolution for rescinding the Appropriation Clause. This Lord John
Russell regarded as a breach of faith. He said that the present motion
was not in accordance with the Duke of Wellington's declared desire
to see the Irish questions brought to a final settlement. Sir Robert
Peel, however, made a statement to show that the complaint of Lord John
Russell about being overreached, was without a shadow of foundation.
The noble lord's conduct he declared to be without precedent. He
called upon Parliament to come to the discussion of a great question,
upon a motion which he intended should be the foundation of the final
settlement of that question; and yet, so ambiguous was his language,
that it was impossible to say what was or was not the purport of his
scheme. Sir Thomas Acland's motion for rescinding the Appropriation
resolution was rejected by a majority of 19, the numbers being 317
and 298. On the following day Lord John Russell gave Sir Robert
Peel distinctly to understand that the Tithe measure would consist
solely of a proposition that the composition then existing should be
converted into a rent charge. On the 29th of the same month, Lord
John Russell having moved that the House should go into committee on
the Irish Municipal Bill, Sir Robert Peel gave his views at length
on the Irish questions, which were now taken up in earnest, with a
view to their final settlement. The House of Commons having disposed
of the Corporation Bill, proceeded on the 2nd of July to consider
Lord John Russell's resolutions on the Church question. But Mr. Ward,
who was strong on that question, attacked the Government for their
abandonment of the Appropriation Clause. He concluded by moving a
series of resolutions reaffirming the appropriation principle. His
motion was rejected by a majority of 270 to 46. The House then went
into committee, and in due course the Irish Tithe Bill passed into law,
and the vexed Church question was settled for a quarter of a century.
The Municipal Bill, however, was once more mutilated by Lord Lyndhurst,
who substituted a £10 for a £5 valuation. The amendment was rejected
by the Commons, but the Lords stood firmly by their decision, and a
conference between the two Houses having failed to settle the question,
the measure was abandoned. In these events the Ministry had incurred
much disrepute.

The approaching coronation of the Queen became, as the season advanced,
the prevailing topic of conversation in all circles. The feeling
excited by it was so strong, so deep, and so widespread, that a Radical
journal pronounced the people to be "coronation mad." The enthusiasm
was not confined to the United Kingdom. The contagion was carried to
the Continent, and foreigners of various ranks, from all nations,
flocked into the metropolis to behold the inauguration of the maiden
monarch of the British Empire. There were, however, some dissentients,
whose objections disturbed the current of public feeling. As soon as
it was understood that, on the score of economy, the time-honoured
custom of having the coronation banquet in Westminster Hall would not
be observed, the Marquis of Londonderry and others zealously exerted
themselves to avert the innovation, but their efforts were fruitless.
The coronation took place on the 28th of June. The only novel feature
of importance consisted in the substitution of a procession through
the streets for a banquet in Westminster Hall. It was certainly an
improvement, for it afforded the people an opportunity of enjoying
the ceremony. Persons of all ages, ranks, and conditions, embodied
visibly in one animated and exalted whole, exultant and joyful, came
forth to greet the youthful Sovereign. All the houses in the line
of march poured forth their occupants to the windows and balconies.
The behaviour of the enormous multitude which lined the streets, and
afterwards spread over the metropolis, was admirable. The utmost
eagerness was shown to furnish all the accommodation for spectators
that the space would allow, and there was scarcely a house or a vacant
spot along the whole line, from Hyde Park Corner to the Abbey, that was
not occupied with galleries or scaffolding. At dawn the population were
astir, roused by a salvo of artillery from the Tower, and towards six
o'clock chains of vehicles, of all sorts and sizes, stretched along the
leading thoroughfares; while streams of pedestrians, in holiday attire,
poured in continuously, so that the suburbs seemed to empty themselves
of all their inhabitants at once. At ten o'clock the head of the
procession moved from the palace. When the Queen stepped into the State
coach a salute was fired from the guns ranged in the enclosure, the
bands struck up the National Anthem, a new royal standard was hoisted
on the Marble Arch, and the multitude broke forth in loud and hearty
cheers. The foreign ambassadors extraordinary looked superb in their
new carriages and splendid uniforms. Among them shone conspicuous the
state coach of Marshal Soult, and the old hero was received with vast
enthusiasm by the populace.

The Queen reached the western entrance of Westminster Abbey at
half-past eleven o'clock, and was there met by the great officers of
State, the noblemen bearing the regalia, and the bishops carrying the
paten, the chalice, and the Bible. The arrangements in the interior
of the Abbey were nearly the same as at the previous coronation, but
the decorations were in better taste. Galleries had been erected for
the accommodation of spectators, to which about 1,000 persons were
admitted. There was also a gallery for the members of the House of
Commons, and another for foreign ambassadors. Soon after twelve o'clock
the grand procession began to enter the choir, in the order observed
on former occasions. The Queen was received with the most hearty
plaudits from all parts of the building, and when she was proclaimed
in the formula--"Sirs, I here present unto you Queen Victoria--the
undoubted Queen of this realm. Wherefore, all you who are come this day
to do your homage, are you willing to do the same?"--there was a loud
and universal burst of cheering, with cries of "God save the Queen."
When the crown was placed on her Majesty's head there was again an
enthusiastic cry of "God save the Queen," accompanied by the waving of
hats and handkerchiefs. At this moment the peers and peeresses put on
their coronets, the bishops their caps, and the kings-of-arms their
crowns, the trumpets sounding, the drums beating, the Tower and park
guns firing by signal. The Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex removing their
coronets, did homage in these words:--"I do become your liege man of
life and limb, and of earthly worship and faith and truth I will bear
unto you to live and die against all manner of folk, so help me God."
They touched the crown on the Queen's head, kissed her left cheek, and
then retired. It was observed that her Majesty's bearing towards her
uncles was very affectionate. The dukes and other peers then performed
their homage, the senior of each rank pronouncing the words. As they
retired, each peer kissed her Majesty's hand. The Duke of Wellington,
Earl Grey, and Lord Melbourne were loudly cheered as they ascended the
steps to the throne. Lord Rolle, who was upwards of eighty, stumbled
and fell on the steps. The Queen immediately stepped forward, and
held out her hand to assist the aged peer. This touching incident
called forth the loudly expressed admiration of the entire assembly.
While the ceremony of doing homage was being performed, the Earl of
Surrey, Treasurer of the Household, was scattering silver medals of
the coronation about the choir and the lower galleries, which were
scrambled for with great eagerness. The ceremonials did not conclude
till past four o'clock.

The procession, on its return, presented a still more striking
appearance than before, from the circumstance that the Queen wore her
crown, and the royal and noble personages their coronets. The mass of
brilliants, relieved here and there by a large coloured stone, and the
purple velvet cap, became her Majesty extremely well, and had a superb
effect. The sight of the streets "paved with heads," and the houses
alive with spectators, was most impressive. The Queen entertained a
party of one hundred at dinner, and in the evening witnessed, from
the roof of her palace, the fireworks in the Green Park. The Duke
of Wellington gave a grand banquet at Apsley House, and several
Cabinet Ministers gave official State dinners next day. The people
were gratified, at the solicitation of Mr. Hawes, M.P. for Lambeth,
with permission to hold a fair in Hyde Park, which continued for
four days, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Monday. The area allotted
comprised nearly one-third of the park, extending from near the
margin of the Serpentine river to a line within a short distance of
Grosvenor Gate. To the interior there were eight entrances, the main
one fifty feet wide, and the others thirty feet each. The enclosed
area was occupied by theatres, taverns, and an endless variety of
exhibitions, the centre being appropriated to lines of stalls for the
sale of fancy goods, sweetmeats, and toys. The Queen condescended
to visit the fair on Friday. The illuminations on the night of the
coronation were on a larger and more magnificent scale than had been
before seen in the metropolis, and the fireworks were also extremely
grand. All the theatres in the metropolis, and nearly all the other
places of amusement, were opened gratuitously that evening by her
Majesty's command, and though all were crowded, the arrangements were
so excellent that no accident occurred. In the provinces, rejoicing
was universal. Public dinners, feasts to the poor, processions, and
illuminations were the order of the day. At Liverpool was laid the
first stone of St. George's Hall, in presence of a great multitude.
At Cambridge 13,000 persons were feasted on one spot, in the open
field, called Parker's Piece, in the centre of which was raised an
orchestra for 100 musicians, surrounded by a gallery for 1,600 persons.
Encircling this centre were three rows of tables for the school
children, and from them radiated, like the spokes of a wheel, the main
body of the tables, 60 in number, and 25 feet in length. Beyond their
outer extremity were added 28 other tables, in a circle; and outside
the whole a promenade was roped in for spectators, who were more
numerous than those who dined. The circumference of the whole was more
than one-third of a mile. Other great towns similarly distinguished
themselves.

[Illustration: THE CORONATION OF QUEEN VICTORIA. (_After the Picture by
Sir George Hayter._)]

In this year the Spanish Legion, which had been sent to help the
Constitutionalists in Spain was dissolved, after an inglorious career.
It had been constantly attacked by the Conservatives in Parliament.
Thus, in the Session of 1837, Lord Mahon, who had been Under-Secretary
for Foreign Affairs in Sir Robert Peel's Government, reviewed the line
of policy pursued by Lord Palmerston. He complained that the public
had been kept in a state of ignorance whether they were at peace or
at war, and in his opinion it was a peace without tranquillity and a
war without honour. The object of the Quadruple Alliance had been to
appease the civil dissensions in Portugal, and not to sanction the
intervention of France and Britain in Spain. He lamented the policy
that led to the additional articles signed in 1834, which stipulated
for a certain degree of interference. But Lord Palmerston had thought
proper to proceed still further, in suspending the Foreign Enlistment
Act, and allowing 12,000 Englishmen to enlist under the banners of the
Queen of Spain. More than £540,000 had been already expended in the
war; and in Lord Mahon's opinion the influence of Great Britain in
Spain had not been augmented by these measures, in proof of which he
alleged that British merchants got less fair play there than French
merchants. Lord Palmerston defended his policy against the attacks of
Lord Mahon and other speakers. The Quadruple Treaty, he contended,
contemplated assistance to the Constitutional party in Spain as well
as in Portugal. It was concluded because there was a civil war in
Portugal; and when the civil war was transferred to Spain, the same
parties who took part with Portugal by treaty were bound at an early
period to extend its provisions to Spain, its object being expressly
"the pacification of the Peninsula by the expulsion of the two Infants
from it." He differed widely from Lord Mahon in thinking the suspension
of the Foreign Enlistment Act was disgraceful to the Government.
Examples of the same kind were to be found in the most brilliant
periods of the history of England.

General Evans had taken the command of the Spanish Legion, which
throughout the whole of the campaign was encompassed with difficulties
and pursued by disasters, without any military success sufficiently
brilliant to gild the clouds with glory. Within a fortnight after the
debate on Lord Mahon's motion came the news of its utter defeat before
Hernani. This defeat encouraged the opponents of Lord Palmerston's
policy to renew their attacks. Accordingly, immediately after the
recess, Sir Henry Hardinge brought forward a motion on the subject. He
complained that no adequate provision was made for the support of those
who were in the Legion. At Vittoria they were placed for four months in
uninhabited convents, without bedding, fuel, or supplies of any kind.
Not less than 40 officers and 700 men fell victims to their privations.
The worst consequence was, however, the total demoralisation of the
troops. Theirs was not honourable war, it was butchery. They were
massacring a fine and independent people, who had committed no offence
against Britain. Ill treatment, want of food and of clothing, habits of
insubordination and mutiny, and want of confidence in their officers,
had produced their natural effects. Let them palliate the disaster
as they would, there was no doubt, he said, of the fact that a large
body of Britons had suffered a defeat such as he believed no British
soldiers had undergone in the course of the last five or six hundred
years. The motion was defeated by 70 votes to 62, but as the Legion was
dissolved in the following year, 1838, the object of the Opposition was
gained.

The employment of children in factories also occupied the attention
of Parliament at this time. A Bill had been framed in 1833 with the
most benevolent intentions for the protection of factory children.
The law excluded from factory labour all children under nine years of
age, except in silk factories, and prohibited those under thirteen
from working more than thirteen hours any one day; the maximum in silk
mills alone being ten hours. The provisions of the law were, however,
evaded by fraud. Children were represented as being much older than
they really were, and abuses prevailed that induced Lord Ashley to
bring in a Bill upon the subject. Accordingly, on the 22nd of June the
noble lord moved, by way of amendment to the order of the day, the
second reading of his Bill for the Better Regulation of Factories. The
order of the day was carried by a majority of 119 to 111. The Bill was
therefore lost by a majority of eight. On the 20th of July Lord Ashley
again brought the whole matter under the consideration of the House in
a speech full of painful details, and concluded by moving a resolution
to the effect that the House deeply regretted that the imperfect and
ineffective law for the regulation of labour in factories had been
suffered to continue so long without any amendment. He was answered
by the usual arguments of the Manchester school about the evils of
interfering with free contract. Lord John Russell argued that, in
the present condition of the manufacturing world, we could not, with
restricted hours of labour, compete with other nations. A ten hours'
Bill would drive the manufacturers abroad; and it would no longer be
a question as to an hour or two more or less work to be performed by
the children, but as to how their starvation was to be averted. On a
division, the motion was lost by a majority of 121 to 106. On the
16th of August the Queen proceeded to Westminster for the purpose of
proroguing Parliament.

The system of combination had spread very widely in 1837 and 1838.
So great was the terrorism produced that conviction for an outrage
was very rare. The utmost precautions were taken to prevent discovery
in committing assassination. Strangers were sent to a great distance
for the purpose; and even if they were detected, few persons would
run the risk of coming forward as witnesses. The consequence was that
in nine cases out of ten combination murders were perpetrated with
impunity. In 1837 the Cotton Spinners' Association at Glasgow struck
to prevent a reduction of wages in consequence of the mercantile
embarrassments arising from the commercial crash in the United States.
This association had its branches all over Scotland and the North of
England. During sixteen years a total of £200,000 had passed through
its hands. So extensive were its ramifications that, when it struck in
the spring of 1837, no less than 50,000 persons, including the families
of the workers, were deprived of the means of existence, and reduced
to the last degree of destitution. Crowds of angry workmen paraded the
streets and gathered round the factory gates, to prevent other people
from going in to work; fire-balls were thrown into the mills for the
purpose of burning them. At length the members of the association went
so far as to shoot one of the new hands in open day in a public street
of Glasgow. In consequence of this outrage the sheriff of Lanarkshire
proceeded with a body of twenty policemen and arrested the members of
the secret committee, sixteen in number, who were found assembled in a
garret, to which they obtained access by a trap-ladder, in Gallowgate
of that city. This was on Saturday night, August 3rd. On the Monday
following the strike was at an end, and all the mills in Glasgow were
going. The jury found the prisoners guilty of conspiracy, and they were
sentenced to transportation, but the murder not proven--a result which
excited some surprise, as the evidence was thought to have warranted
a general verdict of "Guilty." This was, two years after, followed by
their being all liberated from confinement by Lord Normanby, then Home
Secretary.

However, the agitation of the working classes continued; and, when
Parliament met in February, 1839, the concluding paragraph of the
Speech referred to the disturbances and combinations among the working
classes: "I have observed with pain the persevering efforts which
have been made in some parts of the country to excite my subjects to
disobedience and resistance to the law, and to recommend dangerous and
illegal practices. For the counteraction of all such designs I depend
upon the efficacy of the law, which it will be my duty to enforce,
upon the good sense and right disposition of my people, upon their
attachment to the principles of justice, and their abhorrence of
violence and disorder." In the course of the debate in the Commons Sir
Robert Peel adverted to the paragraph referring to illegal meetings.
Having read several extracts from the speeches of Mr. Stephens, Dr.
Wade, and Mr. Feargus O'Connor delivered at Chartist meetings, he
quoted, for the purpose of reprehending, a speech delivered by Lord
John Russell at Liverpool in the previous month of October, when,
alluding to the Chartist meeting, the noble lord said, "There are some
perhaps who would put down such meetings, but such was not his opinion,
nor that of the Government with which he acted. He thought the people
had a right to free discussion which elicited truth. They had a right
to meet. If they had no grievances, common sense would speedily come
to the rescue, and put an end to these meetings." These sentiments,
remarked Sir Robert Peel, might be just, and even truisms; yet the
unseasonable expression of truth in times of public excitement was
often dangerous. The Reform Bill, he said, had failed to give permanent
satisfaction as he had throughout predicted would be the case, and
he well knew that a concession of further reform, in the expectation
of producing satisfaction or finality, would be only aggravating the
disappointment, and that in a few years they would be encountered by
further demands.

It was during the year 1838 that the Chartists became an organised
body. The working classes had strenuously supported the middle
classes in obtaining their political rights during the agitation for
the Reform Bill, and they expected to receive help in their turn to
obtain political franchises for themselves, but they found Parliament
indifferent or hostile to any further changes in the representation,
while the middle class, satisfied with their own acquisitions, were
not inclined to exert themselves much for the extension of political
rights among the masses. The discontent and disappointment of the
latter were aggravated by a succession of bad harvests, setting in
about 1835. The hardships of their condition, with scanty employment
and dear provisions, the people ascribed to their want of direct
influence upon the Government. This gave rise to a vigorous agitation
for the extension of the franchise, which was carried on for ten years.
In 1838 a committee of six members of Parliament and six working men
prepared a Bill embodying their demands. This was called the "People's
Charter." Its points were six in number:--First, the extension of the
right of voting to every male native of the United Kingdom, and every
naturalised foreigner resident in the kingdom for more than two years,
who should be twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and unconvicted
of crime; second, equal electoral districts; third, vote by ballot;
fourth, annual Parliaments; fifth, no property qualification for
members; sixth, payment of members of Parliament for their services.

The popular agitation became so alarming, however, that Mr. Stevens,
one of its instigators, was indicted and held to bail on a charge of
sedition. But this interference with liberty of speech served only to
inflame the excitement, and to render the language of the orators more
violent. In June, 1839, Mr. Attwood presented the Chartist petition to
the House of Commons, bearing 1,200,000 signatures, and on the 15th of
July he moved that it should be referred to a select committee, but
the motion was rejected by a majority of 289 to 281. This gave a fresh
impulse to the agitation. The most inflammatory speakers besides Mr.
Stephens were Mr. Oastler and Mr. Feargus O'Connor. The use of arms
began to be freely spoken of as a legitimate means of obtaining their
rights. Pikes and guns were procured in great quantities; drilling was
practised, and armed bands marched in nocturnal processions, to the
terror of the peaceable inhabitants. At length, Lord John Russell,
as Home Secretary, reluctant as he was to interfere with the free
action of the people, issued a proclamation to the lieutenants of the
disturbed counties, authorising them to accept the armed assistance
of persons who might place themselves at their disposal for the
preservation of the public peace. As a means of showing their numerical
strength, the Chartists adopted the plan of going round from house
to house with two books, demanding subscriptions for the support of
the Charter, entering the names of subscribers in one book, and of
non-subscribers in the other. Each subscriber received a ticket,
which was to be his protection in case of insurrection, while the
non-subscribers were given to understand that their names would be
remembered. Another striking mode of demonstrating their power and
producing an impression, though not the most agreeable one, was to go
in procession to the churches on Sunday some time before Divine service
began, and to take entire possession of the body of the edifice. They
conducted themselves quietly, however, although some were guilty of the
impropriety of wearing their hats and smoking pipes.

Monster meetings, not unaccompanied by disturbance, were held in
various places, the most serious of which occurred at Birmingham. The
inhabitants of this town had been kept in a state of almost incessant
alarm by the proceedings of disorderly persons calling themselves
Chartists. Representations to this effect having been sent to the Home
Office, sixty picked men of the metropolitan force were sent down to
aid the civil authorities in the preservation of peace. They arrived
at Birmingham by the railway on Thursday, July 4th, and speedily
mustering, they marched two abreast into the Bull Ring, where about
2,000 Chartists were assembled, at nine o'clock in the evening. They
endeavoured, at first, to induce the meeting quietly to disperse, but
failed in the attempt. They then seized the flags with which Lord
Nelson's monument in the centre of the square was decorated, and among
which was one that bore a death's head; but the Chartists, who had at
first been disconcerted, recaptured them, after a desperate struggle,
and broke their staves into pieces, to be used as clubs. A conflict
immediately ensued, in which the police, who were armed only with
batons, were seriously injured; and the Chartists were retiring in
triumph when the 4th Dragoons charged them, by concert, through all the
streets leading to the Bull Ring, and they fled in every direction.
Further riots ensued, and on the 15th an organised mob attacked the
houses in the High Street and Spiral Street. They broke into the
warehouses, flinging their contents into the streets. A large pile of
bedding was set on fire in the Bull Ring. Windows and shop-fittings
were remorselessly demolished by the infuriated multitude. A few
minutes past nine o'clock the cry of "Fire!" was raised. Scarcely
had the words been uttered when the rioters carried immense heaps of
burning materials from the streets, forcing them into the houses of
Mr. Bourne and Mr. Legatt. Within a quarter of an hour the flames
burst out with awful violence from both houses, amidst the exulting
shouts of the rioters. While this work of destruction was going on they
had the streets to themselves. The general cry among the inhabitants
was, "Where are the military? Where are the magistrates?" At length,
about ten o'clock, sixty of the metropolitan police, with a posse of
special constables, made their appearance, and rushed upon the rioters
sword in hand, causing them to fly in all directions. The dragoons,
under the command of Colonel Chatterton, were now discerned galloping
down Moore Street, and another squadron at the same moment down High
Street, and in five minutes about 300 of the Rifle Brigade marched to
the Bull Ring. The inhabitants, feeling like people sore pressed by
a long siege, clapped their hands with joy at the approach of their
deliverers. The fire engines also came under escort, having been driven
away before, and set about arresting the conflagration. In the meantime
the cavalry were scouring and clearing the streets and suburbs, and
the police were busily engaged bringing in prisoners. About midnight
the roofs of the two houses fell in, and about one o'clock the fire
was got under. Next day the shops were nearly all closed, the middle
classes full of suspicion, and the populace vowing vengeance against
the police and the soldiers. A piece of artillery placed at the head
of High Street contributed materially to prevent further disturbance.
About twenty prisoners were made, and the evidence produced before the
magistrates showed the determined purpose of the rioters. When these
outrages were the subject of discussion in the House of Lords, the Duke
of Wellington said, "That he had seen as much of war as most men; but
he had never seen a town carried by assault subjected to such violence
as Birmingham had been during an hour by its own inhabitants."

[Illustration: CHARTISTS AT CHURCH. (_See p._ 456.)]

The excitement was kept up during the summer and autumn by meetings
held in various places, and the arrest of persons taking a prominent
part in the proceedings. On the 4th of August there was an evening
meeting at Manchester held in Stephenson's Square, when about 5,000
persons attended. The object was to determine whether "the sacred
month" should commence on the 12th of August or not. Mr. Butterworth,
who moved the first resolution, said he considered that the Chartists
of 1839 were the Whigs of 1832, and the Whigs of 1839 were the Tories
of 1832. The Whigs were more violent then than the Chartists now, and
yet the Whigs were the very men to punish the Chartists. During the
meeting persons in the crowd continued to discharge firearms. There
was, however, no disturbance of the public peace.

Government now resorted to vigorous measures; the Chartist leaders were
brought to trial, and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. At
a meeting of the National Convention held on the 14th of September,
it was moved by Mr. O'Brien, and seconded by Dr. Taylor, that the
Convention be dissolved. On a division, the numbers were for the
dissolution eleven; against it eleven. The chairman gave his casting
vote in favour of the dissolution. It was thereupon hoped, and, indeed,
publicly declared by the Attorney-General, that Chartism was extinct
and would never again be revived. It soon appeared, however, that this
was a delusion, and that a most formidable attempt at revolution by
force of arms had been planned with great care and secrecy, and on a
comprehensive scale, the principal leader being a justice of the peace.
Among the new borough magistrates made by the Whigs after the passing
of the Reform Bill was Mr. John Frost, a linendraper at Newport. At
the beginning of the Chartist agitation in 1838 Mr. Frost attended
a meeting in that town, when he made a violent speech, for which he
was reprimanded by the Home Secretary. But this warning was far from
having the desired effect. During the autumn of 1839 he entered into a
conspiracy with two other leaders--Jones, a watchmaker, of Pontypool,
and Williams, of the Royal Oak Inn, in the parish of Aberystwith--to
take possession of the town of Newport, which was to be the signal for
a simultaneous rising of the Chartists in Birmingham and in all other
parts of the kingdom. But the weather was unfavourable and the night
was dark. The divisions under the command of Jones and Williams failed
to arrive at the appointed time, and the party under the command of
Frost himself was late. The intention was to surprise Newport at about
midnight on Sunday, the 3rd of November; but owing to the wetness of
the weather it was not till ten o'clock on Monday morning that the
insurgents entered the town in two divisions, one headed by Frost, and
another by his son, a youth of fourteen or fifteen. They were armed
with guns, pistols, pikes, swords, and heavy clubs. The mayor, Mr.
Thomas Philips, apprised of their approach, had taken prompt measures
for the defence of the place.

When the insurgents, about 8,000 strong, drew up in front of the
Westgate Hotel, the principal point of attack, Frost commanded the
special constables to surrender. On their refusal the word was given
to fire, and a volley was discharged against the bow window of the room
where the military were located, and at the same moment the rioters,
with their pikes and other instruments, drove in the door and rushed
into the passage. It was a critical moment, but the mayor and the
magistrates were equal to the emergency. The Riot Act having been read
by the mayor amidst a shower of bullets, the soldiers charged their
muskets, the shutters were opened, and the fighting began. A shower
of slugs immediately poured in from the street, which wounded Mr.
Philips and several other persons. But the soldiers opened a raking
discharge upon the crowd without, and after a few rounds, by which a
great many persons fell dead on the spot, the assailants broke and fled
in all directions. Frost, Williams, and Jones were tried by a special
commission at Monmouth, and found guilty of high treason. Sentence of
death was pronounced upon them on the 16th of January, 1840, but on
the 1st of February the sentence was commuted to transportation for
life. A free pardon was granted to them on the 3rd of May, 1856, and
they returned to England in the September following. Mayor Philips was
knighted for his gallantry.

The first day of 1839 was marked in Ireland by an atrocious crime.
The Earl of Norbury, an amiable nobleman, regarded as one of the most
exemplary of his class, both as a man and a landlord, was shot by
an assassin in the open day near his own house at Kilbeggan, and in
presence of his steward. The murderer escaped. This event deserves
special mention, because it was, during the year, the subject of
frequent reference in Parliament. There was a meeting of magistrates
at Tullamore, at which Lord Oxmantown presided, at which the Earl
of Charleville took occasion to animadvert very strongly upon an
expression in a letter, in answer to a memorial lately presented by the
magistrates of Tipperary, in which Mr. Drummond, the Under-Secretary,
uttered the celebrated maxim, that "property had its duties as well
as its rights." This, in the circumstances of the country, he felt
to be little less than a deliberate and unfeeling insult. He did not
hesitate to say that the employment of those terms had given a fresh
impulse to feelings which had found their legitimate issue in the late
assassination. In the course of the meeting resolutions were proposed
and carried to the following effect:--"That the answer to the Tipperary
magistrates by Mr. Under-Secretary Drummond has had the effect of
increasing the animosities entertained against the owners of the soil,
and has emboldened the disturbers of the public peace. That there being
little hope for a successful appeal to the Irish executive, they felt
it their duty to apply to the people of England, the Legislature, and
the Throne for protection."

These resolutions may be taken as expressing the feelings of the
landed gentry as a body against the Melbourne Administration and
the agitators. But the latter were not idle. O'Connell had then his
"Precursor Association" in full operation. It received its name from
the idea that it was to be the precursor of the repeal of the Union.
On the 22nd of January a public dinner was given in honour of the
"Liberator" in a building then called the Circus, in Dublin, for which
one thousand tickets were issued. Two days later a similar banquet was
given to him in Drogheda, and there he made a significant allusion
to the murder of Lord Norbury, insinuating that he had met his death
at the hands of one who was bound to him by the nearest of natural
ties, and had the strongest interest in his removal. Mr. O'Connell
volunteered the assertion that the assassin of Lord Norbury had left
on the soil where he had posted himself, "not the impress of a rustic
brogue [a coarse rough shoe, usually made of half-dressed leather],
but the impress of a well-made Dublin boot." There was no ground
whatever for the malignant assertion, which was one of those errors of
judgment and of taste that too often disfigured the great "Liberator's"
leadership.

These occurrences in Ireland led to hostile demonstrations against the
Government in Parliament. On the 7th of March Mr. Shaw, the Recorder
of Dublin, as the representative of the Irish Protestants, commenced
the campaign by moving for returns of the number of committals,
convictions, inquests, rewards, and advertisements for the discovery of
offenders in Ireland from 1835 to 1839, in order to enable the House to
form a judgment with regard to the actual amount and increase of crime
in that country. The debate was adjourned till the following Monday,
when it was resumed by Mr. Lefroy, after which the House was counted
out, and the question dropped; but it was taken up in the Lords on the
21st of March, when Lord Roden moved for a Select Committee of inquiry
on the state of Ireland since 1835, with respect to the commission
of crime. His speech was a repetition of the usual charges, and the
debate is chiefly worthy of notice on account of the elaborate defence
by Lord Normanby of his Irish administration. "I am fully aware,"
said the noble marquis, "of the awful responsibility that would lie
upon my head if these charges rested upon evidence at all commensurate
with the vehemence of language and earnestness of manner with which
they have been brought forward; but they rest upon no such foundation.
I am ready, with natural indignation, to prove now, on the floor of
this House, that I have grappled with crime wherever I have found it,
firmly and unremittingly, and have yielded to none of my predecessors
in the successful vindication of the laws." Among the mass of proofs
adduced by Lord Normanby, he quoted a vast number of judges' charges,
delivered from time to time between 1816 and 1835, which presented
only one continuously gloomy picture of the prevailing practice of
violence and atrocious outrage. Passing from this melancholy record,
he proceeded to refer to numerous addresses of judges delivered on
similar occasions since 1835. All of these contained one common topic
of congratulation--the comparative lightness of the calendar--a
circumstance, the noble marquis argued, which went far to establish his
position, however it might fail to prove the extinction of exceptional
cases of heinous crime. With regard to the wholesale liberation of
prisoners, Lord Normanby distinctly denied that he had set free any
persons detained for serious offences without due inquiry; or that any
persons were liberated, merely because he happened to pass through the
town, who would not have met with the same indulgence upon facts stated
in memorials. "No; this measure," he insisted, "had been adopted upon
the conviction that, in the peculiar case of Ireland, after severity
had been so often tried, mercy was well worth the experiment. It was
one which was not lightly to be repeated; but while he had received
satisfactory evidence of the success of the measure, it was in his
power to produce the testimony of judges with whom he had no political
relations, to the pains taken in the examination of each case, and the
deference shown to their reports."

In spite of Lord Melbourne's declaration that he would regard the
success of the motion as a pure vote of censure, it was carried by a
majority of five. In consequence of this result, Lord John Russell
announced his intention, next day, of taking the opinion of the House
of Commons on the recent government of Ireland, in the first week after
the Easter recess. Accordingly, on the 15th of April, he moved--"That
it is the opinion of this House that it is expedient to persevere in
those principles which have guided the Executive Government of late
years, and which have tended to the effectual administration of the
laws, and the general improvement of that part of the United Kingdom."
The debate emphasised the discontent of the Radicals. Mr. Leader
was particularly severe on the Government. "In what position is the
Government?" he asked. "Why, the right hon. member for Tamworth governs
England, the hon. and learned member for Dublin governs Ireland--the
Whigs govern nothing but Downing Street. Sir Robert Peel is content
with power without place or patronage, and the Whigs are contented with
place and patronage without power. Let any honourable man say which is
the more honourable position." On a division, the numbers were--for
Sir Robert Peel's amendment, 296; against it, 318. Majority for the
Ministry, 22.

The majority obtained on their Irish policy was about the number
the Ministry could count upon on every vital question. It was not
sufficiently large to exempt them from the imputation of holding office
on sufferance; but if they were defeated, and were succeeded by the
Conservatives, the new Government, it was plain, could not hope to
exist even on those terms; while Lord Melbourne had this advantage over
Sir Robert Peel, that he was cordially supported by the Sovereign.
Having escaped the Irish ordeal, it might be supposed that he was
safe for a considerable time. But another question arose very soon
after, on which the Cabinet sustained a virtual defeat. The Assembly
in Jamaica had proved very refractory, and, in order to avoid the
evil consequences of its perversity, Mr. Labouchere, on the 9th of
April, brought forward a measure which was a virtual suspension of the
constitution of the island for five years, vesting the government in
the Governor and Council, with three commissioners sent from England to
assist in ameliorating the condition of the negroes, improving prison
discipline, and establishing a system of poor laws. This measure was
denounced by the whole strength of the Opposition. The question may
be thus briefly stated. Before the Act of Emancipation in 1833, all
punishments were inflicted on slaves by the domestics of the master,
who was unwilling to lose the benefit of their services by sending
them to prison. But when emancipation took place, that domestic power
was terminated, and new prison regulations became necessary. The
Colonial Legislature, however, persistently refused to adopt any, and
continued a course of systematic resistance to the will of the supreme
Government, whose earnest and repeated recommendations had been utterly
disregarded. Under the apprenticeship system negroes were treated
worse than they were under the old condition of slavery, because the
planters knew that the time of enfranchisement was at hand. But though,
when the hour of liberty, August 1st, 1840, was seen to be very near,
the Jamaica Assembly voluntarily brought the apprenticeship system
to a termination, they accompanied the measure with an angry protest
against any interference by the British Parliament. It was contended,
on the part of the Government, that if such a state of things were
permitted to exist, the authority of Great Britain over its colonies
would speedily be lost, and every little island that owed its political
existence to the protection afforded by the Imperial Government, would,
without scruple, set its power at defiance. Such being the state of the
case, it might be supposed that no serious objection would be raised to
the course adopted, in the interests of humanity and good government.
But the Conservatives seized the opportunity for another party contest,
and became quite vehement in their defence of the constitutional rights
of the Jamaica planters. The debate was protracted for several nights,
and counsel against the Bill were heard at great length. Eventually
the division took place at five in the morning on the 6th of May, when
the numbers were 294 to 289, giving the Government a majority of only
five, which was regarded as tantamount to a defeat. On the 7th of May,
therefore, Lord John Russell announced that Ministers had tendered
their resignation, which was accepted by the Queen. He assigned as
the reason for this step that the vote which had passed must weaken
the authority of the Crown in the colonies, by giving support to the
contumacy of Jamaica, and encouraging other colonies to follow its bad
example. This obvious consideration rendered more painfully apparent
the weakness of the Government, arising from division among its
supporters; for if anything could have induced the different sections
of the Liberal party to suppress their differences, it would have been
the necessity of interposing, in the manner proposed by the Government,
to shield the unhappy negroes from the oppression of their exasperated
taskmasters. Indeed, in spite of various attempts to patch up the
Cabinet, its members were at hopeless cross-purposes.

[Illustration: BUCKINGHAM PALACE, FROM THE GARDEN.]




CHAPTER XIV.

THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    The Bedchamber Crisis--Peel's Explanation--The Whigs return to
    Office--Mr. Shaw Lefevre is elected Speaker--Education Scheme--It
    is carried in a modified form--Post Office Reform--Rowland Hill's
    Pamphlet--The Proposal scouted by the Authorities--Select Committee
    appointed--The Scheme becomes Law--Cabinet Changes--Political
    Demonstrations--Announcement of the Queen's Marriage--Lady
    Flora Hastings--The Queen's Speech--Insertion of the word
    "Protestant"--Debate on the Prince's Precedence--His Income fixed
    by the Commons--Stockdale _v_. Hansard--Stockdale's second and
    third Actions--Stockdale and the Sheriffs committed--His fourth
    and fifth Actions--Russell's Bill settles the Question--Other
    Events of the Session--The Queen's Marriage--Oxford's Attempt
    on her Life--His Trial for High Treason--Foreign Affairs; the
    Opium Traffic--Commissioner Lin confiscates the Opium--Debates
    in Parliament--Elliot's Convention--It is Disapproved and
    he is Recalled--Renewal of the War--Capture of the Defences
    of Canton--Sir Henry Pottinger assumes Command--Conclusion
    of the War--The Syrian Crisis; Imminent Dissolution of the
    Turkish Empire--The Quadrilateral Treaty--Lord Palmerston's
    Difficulties--The Wrath of M. Thiers--Lord Palmerston's
    Success--Fall of Acre--Termination of the Crisis--Weakness
    of the Ministry--The Registration Bills--Lord Howick's
    Amendment--The Budget--Peel's Vote of Censure is carried--The
    Dissolution--Ministers are defeated in both Houses--Resignation of
    the Melbourne Ministry.


After the lapse of a week the House of Commons met again on the 13th
of May, when Lord John Russell immediately rose and stated that since
he had last addressed them Sir Robert Peel had received authority from
her Majesty to form a new Administration; and the right hon. baronet
having failed, her Majesty had been graciously pleased to permit
that gentleman to state the circumstances which led to the failure.
Sir Robert Peel then proceeded to detail all the facts necessary for
the explanation of his position to the country. He had waited upon
the Queen according to her desire, conveyed at the suggestion of the
Duke of Wellington, who had been sent for by her Majesty in the first
instance. The Queen candidly avowed to him that she had parted with
her late Administration with great regret, as they had given her
entire satisfaction. No one, he said, could have expressed feelings
more natural and more becoming than her Majesty did on this occasion,
and at the same time principles more strictly constitutional with
respect to the formation of a new Government. He stated his sense of
the difficulties a new Government would have to encounter; but having
been a party to the vote that led to those difficulties, nothing
should prevent him from tendering to her Majesty every assistance
in his power. He accordingly, the next day, submitted the following
list for her approval in the formation of a new Ministry:--The Duke
of Wellington, Lord Lyndhurst, Earl of Aberdeen, Lord Ellenborough,
Lord Stanley, Sir James Graham, Sir Henry Hardinge, and Mr. Goulburn.
It was not until Thursday that any difficulty or misconception arose
to lead to his relinquishing his attempt to form an Administration.
His difficulty related to the Ladies of the Household. With reference
to all the subordinate appointments below the rank of a Lady of the
Bedchamber he proposed no change; and he had hoped that all above that
rank would have relieved him of any difficulty by at once relinquishing
their offices. This not having been done, he had a verbal communication
with her Majesty on the subject, to which he received next day a
written answer as follows:--

    "Buckingham Palace,
    "May 10th, 1839.

    "The Queen having considered the proposal made to her yesterday
    by Sir Robert Peel to remove the Ladies of her Bedchamber, cannot
    consent to adopt a course which she conceives to be contrary to
    usage, and which is repugnant to her feelings."

To this communication Sir Robert Peel returned the following
reply:--"Sir Robert Peel presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and
has had the honour of receiving your Majesty's note this morning. Sir
Robert Peel trusts that your Majesty will permit him to state to your
Majesty his impression with respect to the circumstances which have
led to the termination of his attempts to form an Administration for
the conduct of your Majesty's service. In the interview with which you
honoured Sir Robert Peel yesterday morning, after he had submitted
to your Majesty the names of those he proposed to recommend to your
Majesty for the principal executive appointments, he mentioned to your
Majesty his earnest wish to be enabled, by your Majesty's sanction, so
to constitute your Majesty's Household that your Majesty's confidential
servants might have the advantage of a public demonstration of your
Majesty's full support and confidence, and at the same time, so far
as possible, consistent with such demonstration, each individual
appointment in the Household should be entirely acceptable to your
Majesty's personal feelings. On your Majesty's expressing a desire
that the Earl of Liverpool should hold an office in the Household,
Sir Robert Peel immediately requested your Majesty's permission at
once to confer on Lord Liverpool the office of Lord Steward, or any
other office which he might prefer. Sir Robert Peel then observed
that he should have every wish to apply a similar principle to the
chief appointments which are filled by the Ladies of your Majesty's
Household; upon which your Majesty was pleased to remark, that you
must retain the whole of these appointments, and that it was your
Majesty's pleasure that the whole should continue as at present,
without any change. The Duke of Wellington, in the interview to which
your Majesty subsequently admitted him, understood also that this was
your Majesty's determination, and concurred with Sir Robert Peel in
opinion that, considering the great difficulties of the present crisis,
and the expediency of making every effort, in the first instance, to
conduct the public business of the country with the aid of the present
Parliament, it was essential to the success of the mission with which
your Majesty had honoured Sir Robert Peel that he should have such
public proof of your Majesty's entire support and confidence, as would
be afforded by the permission to make some changes in your Majesty's
Household, which your Majesty resolved on maintaining entirely without
change. Having had the opportunity, through your Majesty's gracious
consideration, of reflecting upon this point, he humbly submits to
your Majesty that he is reluctantly compelled, by a sense of public
duty, and of the interests of your Majesty's service, to adhere to
the opinion which he ventured to express to your Majesty." Subsequent
explanations proved that the _gaucherie_ of Sir Robert Peel was chiefly
responsible for the crisis. He was right in principle, but he was
wrong in the abrupt manner in which he appeared to force the change
of the Ladies upon the Queen. The Duke, with his usual shrewdness,
had foreseen that the accession of a female Sovereign would place
the Conservatives at a disadvantage, because, said he, "Peel has no
manners, and I have no small talk."

On the following evening Lord Melbourne, having explained why he
resigned, said, "And now, my lords, I frankly declare that I resume
office unequivocally and solely for this reason, that I will not
abandon my Sovereign in a situation of difficulty and distress, and
especially when a demand is made upon her Majesty with which I think
she ought not to comply--a demand, in my opinion, inconsistent with
her personal honour, and which, if acquiesced in, would make her
reign liable to all the changes and variations of political parties,
and render her domestic life one constant scene of unhappiness and
discomfort." The Whigs, therefore, returned to office, but not to power.

As soon as the Ministry had been restored, the House reassembled for
the election of a new Speaker in the room of Mr. Abercromby, who had
declared his intention of resigning, having no longer sufficient
strength to perform the arduous duties imposed on him by his office.
When his intention was announced, he received, through Sir Robert Peel
and Lord John Russell, the highest testimony of the esteem in which
he was held by the two great parties, not only for his conduct in the
Chair, but also for his strenuous exertions to improve the mode of
conducting the private business of the House. This was in accordance
with precedent, but as a matter of fact Mr. Abercromby was a very weak
Speaker, and his ruling had been repeatedly questioned by the House. He
was chosen Speaker in 1835. On his resignation of that office he was
raised to the peerage as Lord Dunfermline. Mr. Handley nominated Mr.
Shaw Lefevre, member for North Hants, as a person eminently qualified
to succeed to the vacant chair. Mr. Williams Wynn, a member of great
experience and reputation in the House, proposed Mr. Goulburn, member
for the University of Cambridge. The motion was seconded by Mr. Wilson
Patten. It was a party contest, and tested the strength of the Ministry
and the Opposition. The House divided on the motion that Mr. Shaw
Lefevre do take the Chair, which was carried by a majority of eighteen,
the numbers being 317 and 299.

Since the year 1833 the sum of £20,000 was all that had been granted by
Parliament for popular education. Up to this time the National Society
and the British and Foreign School Society had, without distinction
of party, enjoyed an equitable proportion of the benefit of this
grant. The Government were now about to propose an increase, but they
determined at the same time to change the mode of its distribution,
and their plan gave rise to a great deal of discussion on the subject
during the Session. The intentions of the Government were first made
known by Lord John Russell on the 12th of February when he presented
certain papers, and gave an outline of his views. He proposed that the
President of the Council and other Privy Councillors, not exceeding
five, should form a Board, to consider in what manner the grants made
by Parliament should be distributed, and he thought that the first
object of such a Board should be the establishment of a good normal
school for the education of teachers. Lord John said that he brought
forward the plan not as a faultless scheme of education, but as that
which, on consideration, he thought to be the most practical in the
present state of the country. The new committee on the 3rd of June
passed several resolutions, one of which was that in their opinion the
most useful applications of any sums voted by Parliament would consist
in the employment of those moneys in the establishment of a normal
school, under the direction of the State, and not under the management
of a voluntary society. They admitted, however, that they experienced
so much difficulty in reconciling the conflicting views respecting the
provisions they were desirous of making--in order that the children
and teachers instructed in the school should be duly trained in the
principles of the Christian religion, while the rights of conscience
should be respected--that it was not in their power to mature a plan
for the accomplishment of their design without further consideration.
Meanwhile the committee recommended that no grant should thenceforth
be made for the establishment or support of normal schools, or any
other schools, unless the right of inspection were retained, in order
to secure a conformity to the regulations and discipline established
in the several schools, with such improvements as might from time to
time be suggested by the committee. The day after the committee had
adopted these resolutions Lord Ashley moved a call of the House for
the 14th of June, when Lord John Russell, in seconding the motion,
stated that Government did not intend to insist upon their proposal to
found a normal school. This was a weak concession to the Church party,
but it did not prevent Lord Stanley, the author of a similar measure
for Ireland, from attacking the Bill with the full violence of his
eloquence. The vote was to be increased to £30,000. The House, after a
debate of three nights, divided, when the grant was voted by a majority
of only two. On the 5th of July the subject of education was introduced
to the notice of the Lords by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who
defended the Church, and objected to the giving of Government grants in
a manner calculated to promote religious dissent. He was answered by
the Marquis of Lansdowne. The Bishop of Exeter, the Bishop of London,
and several other prelates addressed the House, and gave their views on
this great question. The Archbishop of Canterbury had brought forward a
series of resolutions embodying the Church views of the subject. These
Lord Brougham vigorously opposed. The House divided on the previous
question, when the first resolution, the only one put to the vote, was
carried by a majority of 111. This resolution condemned the Order in
Council, and in consequence of it the Lords went in a body to the Queen
to offer their remonstrance against the proposed change in the mode of
distributing the grant. The remaining resolutions were voted without a
division. Nevertheless the Ministry succeeded in carrying a modified
scheme, by which it was provided that the inspectors to be appointed by
the Committee of the Privy Council should be chosen with the approval
of the Bishops, and should present their reports to the bishop of their
diocese as well as to the Committee of the Privy Council. Thus the
Church practically monopolised the grant.

The year 1839 will be always memorable for the establishment of
the system of a uniform penny postage, one of those great reforms
distinguishing the age in which we live, which are fraught with vast
social changes, and are destined to fructify throughout all time
with social benefits to the human race. To one mind pre-eminently
the British Empire is indebted for the penny postage. We are now so
familiar with its advantages, and its reasonableness seems so obvious,
that it is not easy to comprehend the difficulties with which Sir
Rowland Hill had to contend in convincing the authorities and the
public of the wisdom and feasibility of his plan. Mr. Rowland Hill
had written a pamphlet on Post Office Reform in 1837. It took for its
starting-point the fact that whereas the postal revenue showed for
the past twenty years a positive though slight diminution, it ought
to have shown an increase of £507,700 a year, in order to have simply
kept pace with the growth of population, and an increase of nearly four
times that amount in order to have kept pace with the growth of the
analogous though far less exorbitant duties imposed on stage coaches.
The population in 1815 was 19,552,000; in 1835 it had increased to
25,605,000. The net revenue arising from the Post Office in 1815 was
£1,557,291; in 1835 it had decreased to £1,540,300. At this period the
rate of postage actually imposed (beyond the limits of the London
District Office) varied from fourpence to one and eightpence for a
single letter, which was interpreted to mean a single piece of paper,
not exceeding an ounce in weight. A second piece of paper or any other
enclosure, however small, constituted a double letter. A single sheet
of paper, if it at all exceeded an ounce in weight, was charged with
fourfold postage. The average charge on inland general post letters
was nearly ninepence for each letter. In London the letter-boxes were
only open from eight in the morning to seven p.m., and a letter written
after that hour on Friday did not reach Uxbridge earlier than Tuesday
morning.

These mischiefs it was proposed wholly to remove by enacting that "the
charge for primary distribution--that is to say, the postage on all
letters received in a post town, and delivered in the same or in any
other post town in the British Isles--shall be at the uniform rate of
one penny for each half-ounce; all letters and other papers, whether
single or multiple, forming one packet, and not weighing more than
half an ounce, being charged one penny, and heavier packets to any
convenient limit being charged an additional penny for each additional
half-ounce." And it was further proposed that stamped covers should
be sold to the public at such a price as to include the postage,
which would thus be collected in advance. By the public generally,
and preeminently by the trading public, the plan was received with
great favour. By the functionaries of the Post Office it was at once
denounced as ruinous, and ridiculed as fanciful. Lord Lichfield, then
Postmaster-General, said of it in the House of Lords, "Of all the wild
and visionary schemes I ever heard, it is the most extravagant." On
another occasion, he assured the House that if the anticipated increase
of letters should be realised, "the mails will have to carry twelve
times as much in weight, and therefore the charge for transmission,
instead of £100,000, as now, must be twelve times that amount. The
walls of the Post Office would burst; the whole area in which the
building stands would not be large enough to receive the clerks and the
letters." In the course of the following year (1838) petitions were
poured into the House of Commons. A Select Committee was appointed,
which held nearly seventy sittings, and examined nearly eighty-three
witnesses in addition to the officers of the department. Its report
weakly recommended the substitution of a twopenny for a penny rate, but
this was overruled by the Cabinet. During the Session of Parliament
that followed the presentation of this report, about 2,000 petitions
in favour of penny postage were presented to both Houses, and at
length the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought in a Bill to enable
the Treasury to carry it into effect. The measure was carried in the
House of Commons by a majority of 100, and became law on the 17th of
August, 1839. A new but only temporary office under the Treasury was
created, to enable Mr. Hill to superintend (although, as it proved,
with very inadequate arrangements) the working out of his plan. The
first step taken was to reduce, on the 5th of December, 1839, the
London district postage to one penny, and the general inland postage to
fourpence, the half ounce, except as respected places to which letters
were previously carried at lower rates, these rates being continued. On
the 10th of January, 1840, the uniform penny rate came into operation
throughout the United Kingdom; the scale of weight advancing from one
penny for each of the first two half-ounces, by gradations of twopence
for each additional ounce or fraction of an ounce, up to sixteen
ounces. The postage was to be prepaid, or charged at double rates, and
Parliamentary franking was abolished. Postage stamps were introduced
on the 6th of May following. The facilities of despatch were soon
afterwards increased, especially by the establishment of day mails.
But on the important points of simplification in the internal economy
of the Post Office, with the object of reducing its cost without
diminishing its working power, very little was done. For the time being
the loss incurred by the change was more than £1,000,000.

[Illustration: SIR ROWLAND HILL, 1847.]

Nevertheless, the results actually attained in the first two years
were briefly these: first, the chargeable letters delivered in
the United Kingdom, exclusive of that part of the Government's
correspondence which formerly passed free, had already increased
from the rate of about 75,000,000 a year to that of 208,000,000;
secondly, the London district post letters had increased from about
13,000,000 to 23,000,000, or nearly in the ratio of the reduction of
the rates; thirdly, the illicit conveyance of letters was substantially
suppressed; fourthly, the gross revenue, exclusive of repayments,
yielded about a million and a half per annum, which was sixty-three per
cent. on the amount of the gross revenue of 1839, the largest income
which the Post Office had ever afforded. These results, at so early a
stage, and in the face of so many obstructions, amply vindicated the
policy of the new system. But by its enemies that system was declared
to be a failure, until the striking evidence of year after year
silenced opposition by an exhaustive process.

The Parliamentary proceedings of 1839 were closed by an elaborate
review of the Session by Lord Lyndhurst, which he continued annually
for some time while the Liberals were in power. This display took
place on the 24th of August, when the noble and learned lord moved
for a return of all Bills that had arrived from the House of Commons
since the commencement of the Session, with the dates at which they
were brought up. He could point to the fact that Ministers had with
difficulty carried a colourless Jamaica Bill, and had once more failed
to pass the Irish Corporation Bill.

In fact the Ministry remained deplorably weak, despite the numerous
changes in the Cabinet. The Marquis of Normanby, who had been a
failure at the Home Office, changed places with Lord John Russell, who
went to the Colonial Office. Mr. Francis Baring was made Chancellor
of the Exchequer in the place of the most incompetent financier of
modern times, Mr. Spring-Rice, who was raised to the peerage by the
title of Baron Monteagle, and soon afterwards appointed Comptroller
of the Exchequer, with a salary of £2,000 a year; Sir John Newport
having retired from that post on a pension. The Earl of Clarendon
became Lord Privy Seal, and Mr. Macaulay Secretary at War, with a seat
in the Cabinet in the room of Viscount Howick, who had quitted the
Administration because he had disapproved of the political import of
the changes, taken altogether, and they were unalterably fixed without
seeking his concurrence. Mr. Charles Wood, the brother-in-law of Lord
Howick, also resigned shortly afterwards, and Sir Charles Grey was
refused promotion.

The proceedings of Parliament having ceased to occupy public attention,
the time had come for political demonstrations of various kinds in
the country, giving expression to the feelings that had been excited
by the state of public affairs and the conduct of the Government. The
first and most remarkable of these was a banquet, given at Dover, on
the 30th of August, to the Duke of Wellington as Lord Warden of the
Cinque Ports, at which nearly 2,000 persons sat down to dinner. The
toast of the day was proposed by Lord Brougham, who occupied a peculiar
position, as a Liberal ex-Chancellor opposing a Liberal Administration,
and wishing to see them supplanted by their Conservative opponents. He
was greeted with tumultuous cheering when he rose to propose the health
of the Duke of Wellington. He had, according to Greville, intruded
himself upon the company, and made a speech in which bombast alternated
with eloquence. The reply of the Duke of Wellington was a perfect
contrast to Brougham's oratorical flight, in its quietness and modesty.
But if the great chiefs of the Conservative party were moderate in
the expression of their feelings during the vacation, some of their
followers went to the opposite extreme of violence and indiscretion.
At a dinner of the Conservative Registration Society, on the 30th of
October, Mr. Bradshaw, the member for Canterbury, dared to speak of the
young Queen in the following terms:--"Brought up under the auspices of
the citizen King of the Belgians, the serf of France, and guided by
his influence, the Queen thinks if the monarchy lasts her time, it is
enough," and so on. In proportion to the violence of the manifestations
of disloyalty among the Tories, was the fervour of loyalty evinced by
Mr. O'Connell and his followers in Ireland. At a meeting at Bandon, on
the 5th of December, the famous agitator, in the midst of tremendous
cheering, the entire assembly rising in response to the concluding
appeal, said:--"We must be, we are, loyal to our young and lovely
Queen. God bless her! We must be, we are, attached to the Throne, and
to the lovely being by whom it is filled. She is going to be married.
God bless the Queen! I am a father and a grandfather; and in the face
of heaven I pray with as much honesty and fervency for Queen Victoria
as I do for any of my own progeny."

[Illustration: THE PRINCE CONSORT.

FROM THE PAINTING BY F. X. WINTERHALTER IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY.]

In the meanwhile her Majesty was pleased to communicate to the members
of the Privy Council assembled at Buckingham Palace on the 23rd of
November, her intention of contracting an alliance with a Prince of
the family of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The story of her affection for
her cousin is well known through Sir Theodore Martin's admirable "Life
of the Prince Consort." The declaration was made by her Majesty in the
following terms:--"I have caused you to be summoned at the present
time in order that I may acquaint you with my resolution in a matter
which deeply concerns the welfare of my people and the happiness of
my future life. It is my intention to ally myself in marriage with
the Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Deeply impressed with
the solemnity of the engagement which I am about to contract, I have
not come to this decision without mature consideration, nor without
feeling a strong assurance that, with the blessing of Almighty God,
it will at once secure my domestic felicity, and serve the interests
of my country. I have thought fit to make this resolution known to
you at the earliest period, in order that you may be fully apprised
of a matter so highly important to me and to my kingdom, and which, I
persuade myself, will be most acceptable to all my loving subjects."
Upon this announcement the Council humbly requested that her Majesty's
most gracious declaration might be made public, which her Majesty was
pleased to order accordingly.

The approaching marriage of the Queen was anticipated by the nation
with satisfaction. We have seen, from the height to which party spirit
ran, that it was extremely desirable that she should have a husband to
stand between her and such unmanly attacks as those of Mr. Bradshaw.
An occurrence, however, took place in the early part of the year very
painful in its nature, which added much to the unpopularity of the
Court. This was the cruel suspicion which was cast upon Lady Flora
Hastings by some of the ladies about the Queen, and is supposed to have
caused her early death. She was one of the ladies in attendance on the
Duchess of Kent; and soon after her arrival at Court it was generally
surmised, from the appearance of her person, that she had been
privately married, the consequence of which was that, in order to clear
her character, which was perfectly blameless, she was compelled to
submit to the humiliation of a medical examination. Shortly afterwards
she died of the disease which was suspected to be pregnancy, and the
public feeling was intensified by the publication of the acrimonious
correspondence which had taken place between her mother on the one side
and Lady Portman and Lord Melbourne on the other.

The Session of 1840 was opened by the Queen in person. The first two
paragraphs of the Royal Speech contained an announcement of the coming
marriage. The Speech contained nothing else very definite or very
interesting; and the debate on the Address was remarkable for nothing
more than its references to the royal marriage. The Duke of Wellington
warmly concurred in the expressions of congratulation. He had, he
said, been summoned to attend her Majesty in the Privy Council when
this announcement was first made. He had heard that the precedent of
the reign of George III. had been followed in all particulars except
one, and that was the declaration that the Prince was a Protestant. He
knew he was a Protestant, he was sure he was of a Protestant family;
but this was a Protestant State, and although there was no doubt about
the matter, the precedent of George III. should have been followed
throughout, and the fact that the Prince was a Protestant should be
officially declared. The Duke, therefore, moved the insertion of the
word "Protestant" before the word "Prince" in the first paragraph
of the Address. Lord Melbourne considered the amendment altogether
superfluous. The Act of Settlement required that the Prince should be
a Protestant, and it was not likely that Ministers would advise her
Majesty to break through the Act of Settlement. The precedent which
the Duke had endeavoured to establish was not a case in point, for
George III. did not declare to the Privy Council that the Princess
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a Protestant, but only that she
was descended from a long line of Protestant ancestors. All the world
knew that the Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg was a Protestant, and that
he was descended from the most emphatically Protestant house in Europe.
But the House decided to insert the phrase.

On the 20th of January a Bill was introduced to the House of Lords
for the naturalisation of the Prince. By this Act, which passed the
next day through the House of Commons, the Prince was declared already
exempt, by an Act passed in the sixth year of George IV., from the
obligations that had previously bound all persons to receive the
Lord's Supper within one month before exhibition of a Bill for their
naturalisation. And the Bill was permitted to be read the second time
without his having taken the oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance, as
required by an Act passed in the first year of George I. But on the
second reading in the House of Lords the Duke of Wellington objected
that it was not merely a Bill for naturalising the Prince, but that
it also contained a clause which would enable him, "during the term
of his natural life, to take precedence in rank after her Majesty in
Parliament, and elsewhere as her Majesty might think fit and proper,"
any law, statute, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding. The Duke
of Wellington stated that as the title of the Bill said nothing about
precedence, the House had not received due notice of its contents; he
therefore moved the adjournment of the debate. Lord Melbourne remarked
that the omission was purely accidental and, in his opinion, of no
importance; at the same time he admitted that this Bill did differ in
form from other similar Bills, as it gave the Queen power to bestow
on Prince Albert a higher rank than was assigned to Prince George of
Denmark, or to Prince Leopold. But the reason for the difference was
to be found in the relative situation of the parties. Lord Brougham,
however, pointed out a practical difficulty that might possibly arise.
According to the proposed arrangement, if the Queen should die before
there was any issue from the marriage, the King of Hanover would reign
in this country, and his son would be Prince of Wales. Prince Albert
would thus be placed in the anomalous position of a foreign naturalised
Prince, the husband of a deceased Queen, with a higher rank than the
Prince of Wales. Lord Londonderry decidedly objected to giving a
foreign Prince precedence over the Blood Royal. In consequence of this
difference of opinion the debate was adjourned till the following week,
when the Lord Chancellor stated that he would propose that power should
be given to the Crown to allow the Prince to take precedence next after
any Heir Apparent to the Throne. Subsequently, however, Lord Melbourne
expressed himself so anxious that it should pass with all possible
expedition, that he would leave out everything about precedence, and
make it a simple Naturalisation Bill, in which shape it immediately
passed.

The question of the Prince's income was not so easily disposed of. On
the 24th of January, Lord John Russell, having moved that the paragraph
relating to the subject should be read, quoted, as precedents for
the grant he was about to propose, the instances of Prince George of
Denmark, Prince Leopold, and Queen Adelaide. As far as he could judge
by precedent in these matters, £50,000 a year was the sum generally
allotted to princes in the situation of the Prince Consort to the Queen
of England. He therefore moved--"That her Majesty be enabled to grant
an annual sum not exceeding £50,000 out of the Consolidated Fund, as
a provision to Prince Albert, to commence on the day of his marriage
with her Majesty, and to continue during his life." The debate having
been adjourned for a few days, Mr. Hume moved, as an amendment, that
only £21,000 should be granted. Colonel Sibthorpe moved that £30,000 be
the sum allowed. Mr. Goulburn was in favour of that sum. The amendment
proposed by Mr. Hume was lost by a majority of 305 against 38. When
Colonel Sibthorpe's amendment became the subject of debate, Lord John
Russell, alluding to professions of respect made by Lord Elliot for
her Majesty, and of care for her comfort, said: "I cannot forget that
no Sovereign of this country has been insulted in such a manner as
her present Majesty has been." Lord Elliot and Sir James Graham rose
immediately to protest against this insinuation, as in all respects
most uncalled-for and unjustifiable. The House then divided on the
amendment, which was carried by a very large majority, the numbers
being--ayes, 262; noes, 158: majority for the sum of £30,000, 104. Such
a signal defeat of the Government, on a question in which the Sovereign
naturally felt a deep interest, was calculated to produce a profound
impression upon the country, and in ordinary circumstances would
have led to a change of Ministry; but it was regarded as the result
of an accidental combination between heterogeneous materials, and
therefore Lord Melbourne did not feel called upon to resign. However,
the decisions caused, says Sir Theodore Martin, considerable pain and
vexation to the Queen.

A remarkable conflict took place this year between the jurisdiction
of the House of Commons and that of the Court of Queen's Bench, which
excited great interest at the time, and has important bearings upon
the constitutional history of the country. The following is a brief
narrative of the facts out of which it arose:--In the year 1835 a
Bill was proposed in the House of Lords by the Duke of Richmond for
the purpose of appointing inspectors of prisons. The inspectors were
appointed, and, in the discharge of their duty, reported on the state
of Newgate. The House ordered the report to be printed and sold by the
Messrs. Hansard. In this report it was stated that the inspectors of
that gaol found amongst the books used by the prisoners one printed
by John Joseph Stockdale in 1827, which they said was "a book of the
most disgusting nature, and the plates are obscene and indecent in the
extreme." On the 7th of November, 1836, Stockdale brought an action
for libel against the Messrs. Hansard for the sale of this report,
which was alleged to be false. Sir John Campbell, who was counsel for
the defendants, argued that the report was a privileged publication,
being printed by the authority of the House of Commons, and on that
ground they were entitled to a verdict. But Lord Denman, in his charge
to the jury, said: "I entirely disagree from the law laid down by
the learned counsel for the defendants. My direction to you, subject
to a question hereafter, is, that the fact of the House of Commons
having directed Messrs. Hansard to publish all the Parliamentary
Reports is no justification for them, or for any bookseller who
publishes a Parliamentary Report containing a libel against any man."
In addition, however, to the plea of "Not Guilty," there was a plea
of justification, on the ground that the allegations were true, and
on this the jury found a verdict for the defendants. On the 16th of
February, 1837, the Messrs. Hansard communicated the facts to the House
of Commons. A Select Committee was consequently appointed to examine
precedents, and report upon the question of its privileges in regard
to the publication of its reports and other matters. They reported in
favour of the privilege which would protect any publication ordered
by the House of Commons, and resolutions based upon the report were
adopted.

Another action was brought by Stockdale; the printers were directed to
plead the privilege of the House. The Court gave judgment against the
plea, and damages were afterwards assessed, which the House of Commons
ordered the Messrs. Hansard to pay. On the 31st of July those gentlemen
again communicated to the House that similar legal proceedings were
threatened by Mr. Polac, on account of alleged defamatory matter in a
Parliamentary Report on the state of New Zealand. The House of Commons
passed another resolution, reaffirming its privilege, and directing
Hansard not to take any defence to the threatened action, which,
however, was not proceeded with. But Stockdale, on the 26th of August,
1839, commenced a third action for the publication of the report, which
continued to be sold. The printers then served him with formal notice
of the resolutions of the House and of their intention not to plead.
Stockdale, notwithstanding, on the 26th of October filed a declaration
in the said action, wherein the damages were laid at £50,000; and on
the 1st of November interlocutory judgment was signed for want of a
plea. On the 2nd of November notice was served that a writ of inquiry
of damages would be executed before the Sheriff of Middlesex on the
12th of the same month. The writ of inquiry was accordingly executed,
when the sheriff's jury assessed the damages at £600; the consequence
of which was that the sheriff took possession of the printing-office,
premises, and stock-in-trade of the printers of the House of Commons.
But he was placed in a dilemma with regard to the sale, which was
ultimately prevented by the amount of damages being paid into the
sheriff's office on the night previous. On the 16th of January
following, Lord John Russell presented a petition from the Messrs.
Hansard, which recited the facts of the case, and prayed for such
relief as, in the circumstances, the House might think fit. The course
which Lord John recommended was, that the persons who had violated the
privileges of the House should be summoned to their bar. He therefore
moved that Stockdale, with Burton Howard, his attorney, William
Evans, the sheriff, the under-sheriff, and the deputy-under-sheriff,
be summoned to the bar of the House. There was a long discussion on
the legality of the course to be pursued. The motion was carried
by a majority of 119. On the 17th of January, therefore, Stockdale
was called to the bar, and interrogated by the Attorney-General as
to the facts of the different actions. The House then resolved that
Stockdale should be committed to the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms.
It was also resolved that the sheriffs should be called to the bar.
They were accordingly brought in by the Serjeant-at-Arms, dressed in
their scarlet robes. On the 21st of January they petitioned the House,
expressing their sorrow for having incurred its displeasure, and stated
that they believed that they had only done their duty towards their
Sovereign and the Queen's Bench, whose sworn officers they were. They
prayed, therefore, that they might not be amerced or imprisoned. Lord
John Russell moved that the sheriffs, having been guilty of a breach
of the privileges of the House, should be committed to the custody of
the Serjeant-at-Arms, which was carried by a majority of 101. The same
course was adopted with regard to Mr. Howard, the attorney, who was
called in and reprimanded by the Speaker.

But the Queen's Bench was by no means disposed to surrender its own
privileges, even to the House of Commons. On the 24th of January
Sir William Gossett, Serjeant-at-Arms, appeared at the bar of the
House, and said that he had last evening been served with a writ of
Habeas Corpus, commanding him to bring up the bodies of the sheriffs,
William Evans, Esq., and John Wheelton, Esq., then in his custody. The
Attorney-General rose, and said he had no hesitation in advising the
House to direct the Serjeant-at-Arms to return answer to the Court of
Queen's Bench that he held these two individuals in custody by the
warrant of the Speaker. He then moved a resolution to that effect,
which was adopted, and the Court of Queen's Bench acquiesced.

On the 3rd of February Mr. Darby brought forward a motion that the
sheriffs should be discharged from the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms.
This gave rise to a long and animated debate. The Attorney-General
opposed the motion, contending that until they made their submission
the House could not dismiss them with due regard to its dignity. Sir
William Follett replied to the arguments of the Attorney-General, and
was answered by the Solicitor-General. The debate was adjourned, and
was resumed on the 7th. At its conclusion the House divided on the
question that the sheriffs be discharged, which was negatived by a
majority of 71. On the 12th Mr. Sheriff Wheelton was discharged on
account of ill-health, a motion for the release of the other sheriff
having been rejected.

The House, meanwhile, seemed to have been getting still more involved
in the meshes of these difficulties. Stockdale commenced a fourth and
fifth action against Hansard; an order was issued for the arrest of his
attorney for contempt, and he was ultimately lodged in Newgate. But he
afterwards brought actions against all the officers of the House that
had been concerned in his arrest and had searched his premises. On the
17th of February Lord John Russell informed the House that he had a
petition to present from Messrs. Hansard to the effect that a fifth
action had been commenced against them by Stockdale for the same course
as before. It was then moved that Stockdale, and the son of Howard,
his attorney, a lad of nineteen, and his clerk, by commencing this
action had been guilty of a contempt of the House. This was carried by
a majority of 71, and they, too, were imprisoned.

These vexatious proceedings, including a great number of debates and
divisions, led to the passing of an Act for more clearly defining the
privileges of the House of Commons, which had made itself unpopular by
its course of proceeding towards the sheriffs, who had only discharged
duties which they could not have evaded without exposing themselves to
the process of attachment. On the 5th of March, accordingly, Lord John
Russell moved for leave to bring in a Bill relative to the publication
of Parliamentary papers. He said, in the course of his speech,
that at all periods of our history, whatever might have been the
subject--whether it regarded the privileges of Parliament or the rights
of the Crown or any of the constituted authorities--whenever any great
public difficulty had arisen, the Parliament in its collective sense,
meaning the Crown, Lords, and Commons, had been called in to solve
those difficulties. With regard to the measure he was about to propose,
he would take care to state in the preamble of the Bill that the
privilege of the House was known only by interpretation of the House
itself. He proposed that publications authorised by either House of
Parliament should be protected, and should not be liable to prosecution
in any court of common law. Leave was given to introduce the Bill by a
majority of 149, in spite of the opposition of the Solicitor-General,
Sir Thomas Wilde; the House went into committee on the Bill on the
13th of March, and it passed the third reading on the 20th of the same
month. It was read a second time in the Lords on the 6th of April; and
the Royal Assent was given to it by commission on the 14th of the same
month.

At the commencement of the Session a notice of a motion of want of
confidence in the Ministry was given by Sir John Yarde Buller. He
assigned as reasons for bringing forward the motion the disturbed and
unsatisfactory state of the country, which he ascribed to the system
of popular agitation, "nurtured and fostered," as he alleged, by the
Ministers during the preceding two years. After a debate of four
consecutive nights the motion was rejected by 308 votes to 287. The
division was fairly satisfactory, and another source of gratification
to the Ministry was the passing of the Irish Municipal Bill, which
became law in spite of a characteristic protest from Bishop Phillpotts,
who regarded the measure "as a deliberate and wilful abandonment of
the cause of true religion which had provoked the justice of Almighty
God and given too much reason to apprehend the visitation of Divine
vengeance for this presumptuous act of national disobedience." In this
Session Sir Robert Peel at last terminated the scandals connected
with election committees by a plan which authorised the Speaker to
appoint a general committee of elections, with the duty of selecting
election committees to try each particular case. Sir Francis Baring's
Budget was a considerable improvement upon those of his indifferent
predecessor, Mr. Spring-Rice, whose careless finance had produced
no less than four successive deficits. He acknowledged a deficit
of £850,000, and asked for a vote of credit. He further imposed an
additional tax of 4d. a gallon on spirits, increased the customs and
excise by 5 per cent., and the assessed taxes by 10 per cent.

The Queen's marriage has been referred to in connection with the
proceedings in Parliament. The details of that interesting event,
and other incidents affecting her Majesty's happiness which occurred
during the year, will now be recorded. The royal party assembled in the
morning of the 10th of February at Buckingham Palace, whence it had
been arranged that the members of her Majesty's family and those of
Prince Albert's, accompanied by the officers of State, should proceed
to St. James's Palace. The entire route along which the royal _cortège_
was to pass was lined by the Horse Guards, while the trumpeters, in
their State uniforms, were stationed at intervals to announce the
approach of the royal bride and bridegroom. First, the Ladies and
Gentlemen of her Majesty's Household, in seven royal carriages, arrived
at the garden entrance of St. James's Palace; and then followed the
splendid State coach containing her Majesty, her Royal Highness the
Duchess of Kent, and the Mistress of the Robes. The closet behind the
Throne Room had been draped with silk and prepared for the reception
of the Queen. There her Majesty, attended by her maids of honour,
train-bearers, and bridesmaids, remained until the Lord Chamberlain
of her Household marshalled the procession to the Chapel Royal. Soon
after her Majesty had entered the closet, the clash of "presented
arms," the roll of drums and flourish of trumpets outside, told that
the bridegroom had arrived. At a quarter to one o'clock the ring was
placed upon her Majesty's finger; outside, the guns thundered forth
the intelligence; but their loud booming was nearly drowned by the
long-continued shouts of acclamation which arose from the thousands who
thronged the park. At the conclusion of the service the Queen Dowager
cordially embraced and kissed the bride, and the Prince acknowledged
Queen Adelaide's congratulations by kissing her hand. The bride and
her royal consort drove at once to Buckingham Palace, and the noble
assembly that had witnessed the ceremony retired. After a splendid
breakfast at Buckingham Palace the bride and bridegroom took their
departure for Windsor Castle. The sun shone out in cloudless lustre
just at the moment of their leaving the gateway; the vast concourse of
people assembled outside the palace hailed this as a happy omen, and as
the carriage containing the royal pair drove off, the air was rent with
the most enthusiastic cheering.

About four months passed happily away, when another event occurred
which was very near furnishing a startling illustration of the truth
that there is no certain tenure of human happiness. On the night of
Wednesday, the 10th of June, London was agitated by a report of an
attempt upon the life of the Queen. Next day an investigation took
place at the Home Office, from which the public and the reporters
of the daily press were excluded. The following are the facts:--At
a quarter past six on Wednesday evening, the Queen, accompanied by
Prince Albert, left Buckingham Palace, in a very low, open phaeton, to
take her customary drive in Hyde Park before dinner. The carriage had
proceeded a short distance up the road when a young man, who had been
standing with his back to the Green Park fence, advanced to within a
few yards of the carriage, and deliberately fired at the Queen. The
postilions paused for an instant. The Prince ordered them, in a loud
voice, to drive on. "I have got another!" exclaimed the assassin, who
discharged a second pistol, aimed at the carriage, which also proved
harmless. The Queen and the Prince went as far as Hyde Park Corner,
and then turned to the Duchess of Kent's mansion, in Belgrave Square.
Meanwhile, the assassin remained near the spot, leaning against the
park fence, with the weapons in his hand. Several persons laid hold
of him, and he was conveyed by two policemen to the Gardener's Lane
station-house. After staying a short time with the Duchess of Kent,
in Belgrave Square, the Queen and her husband proceeded to Hyde Park,
where an immense concourse of persons, of all ranks and both sexes,
had congregated. The reception of the royal pair was so enthusiastic
as almost to overpower the self-possession of the Queen. They soon
returned to Buckingham Palace, attended by a vast number of the
nobility and gentry, in carriages and on horseback. A multitude of
persons collected at the entrance to the palace, and vehemently cheered
the Queen, who, though pale and agitated, repeatedly bowed and smiled
in return.

The name of the prisoner was Edward Oxford. He was about eighteen
years of age, and of an unprepossessing countenance. He was a native
of Birmingham, which town he had left nine years before. He was last
employed at a public-house, "The Hog in the Pond," at the corner of
South Molton Street and Oxford Street. His trial for high treason was
begun in the Central Criminal Court on Thursday, July 9th, and ended
next day. The judges were Lord Denman, Baron Alderson, and Justice
Patteson. The jury returned the following special verdict:--"We find
the prisoner, Edward Oxford, guilty of discharging the contents of two
pistols, but whether or not they were loaded with ball has not been
satisfactorily proved to us, he being of unsound mind at the time." An
argument followed between counsel as to whether this verdict amounted
to an absolute acquittal, or an acquittal on the ground of insanity.
Lord Denman said that the jury were in a mistake. It was necessary that
they should form an opinion as to whether the pistols were loaded with
bullets or not; but it appeared they had not applied their minds to
that point, and therefore it would be necessary that they should again
retire, and say aye or no. Did the prisoner fire a pistol loaded with
ball at the Queen? After considerable discussion upon the point, the
jury again retired to consider their verdict. During their absence the
question was again argued, and it appeared to be the opinion of the
judges that the jury were bound to return a verdict of "Guilty" or "Not
Guilty" upon the evidence brought before them. After an absence of an
hour they returned into court, finding the prisoner "guilty, he being
at the same time insane." The sentence was that he should be imprisoned
during her Majesty's pleasure, according to the Act 40 George III.,
providing for cases where crimes were committed by insane persons.

Meanwhile the aspect of foreign affairs was hardly reassuring. Britain
was at war with China and Afghanistan, and within measurable distance
of war with France and the United States. Postponing for the present
our review of the first Afghan war and the differences with America,
which will be dealt with more properly under the history of Sir Robert
Peel's Ministry, we proceed to give a short sketch of the Chinese war
and the Syrian crisis. The exclusive right of the East India Company to
trade with China ceased on the 22nd of April, 1834, and from this time
dates the great dispute about the opium traffic. The first free-trade
ship sailed from England on the 25th of the same month. Lord Napier
was sent out to China to superintend British commerce, and arrived
at Macao on the 15th of July. He died soon after his arrival, and was
succeeded by Mr., afterwards Sir, John Davis. But the Chinese were not
disposed to recognise the authority with which he was vested. During
1835 and 1836 matters went on peaceably under the superintendence of
the second and third Commissioners, Mr. Davis and Sir T. Robinson, the
former of whom returned to England, and the latter was superseded by
Captain Elliot, R.N., who in vain renewed the attempt to establish an
official connection with the Chinese authorities. The opening of the
trade in 1834 gave a powerful stimulus to all kinds of smuggling, and
especially in opium, the importation of which into China was prohibited
by the Imperial Government, in consequence of its deleterious
qualities. During the following years, however, the supply of that
drug was increased enormously, and the smuggling trade was carried on
along the coasts of the northern provinces, in defiance of the laws
of the country. The Imperial Government was naturally indignant at
these encroachments, and became, moreover, seriously alarmed, perhaps
not so much for its demoralising effects, as for the continued drain
of specie which it occasioned. In March, 1839, Lin arrived at Canton,
as Imperial High Commissioner, to enforce the laws in this matter. He
immediately issued an edict requiring that every chest of opium on
the river should be delivered up, in order to be destroyed; and that
bonds should be given by traders that their ships should never again
bring any opium, on pain of forfeiture of the article and death to the
importer. Lin having taken strong measures to carry this edict into
effect by blockading the British merchants, Captain Elliot proceeded to
Canton, and issued a circular letter to his countrymen, requiring them
to surrender into his hands all the opium then actually on the coast
of China, and holding himself responsible for the consequences. On the
21st of May the whole of the opium, to the amount of 20,283 chests, was
given up to the Chinese Government, and immediately destroyed. But even
this great sacrifice did not propitiate Commissioner Lin. On the 26th
of November he issued another interdict, ordering the cessation of all
trade with British ships in a week; and in January, 1840, an Imperial
edict appeared directing that all trade with Britain should cease for
ever. Further numerous outrages were committed by the Chinese against
British sailors. In consequence of these proceedings an armament was
sent forth to teach the Chinese the principles of international law.
The first part of the armament reached the Canton river in June, 1840,
under the command of Captain Elliot. Having established a rigorous
blockade in the river, the British, on the 5th of July, took possession
of the large island of Chusan, in the Eastern Sea. It proved very
unhealthy, and one man out of every four died. Proceeding still farther
to the mouth of the Peiho, in the Yellow Sea, Captain Elliot attempted
to overawe the Chinese. But the sea was too shallow to enable him to
land his troops, and he was forced to put back to Chusan.

[Illustration: MARRIAGE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. (_After the Picture by Sir
George Hayter._)]

It was in these circumstances that Sir James Graham, on the 7th of
April, brought forward a series of resolutions on our relations with
China, and the Government escaped defeat by a narrow majority of ten.
A vote of censure would inevitably have been passed, had not the Duke
of Wellington expressed his cordial approval of the Ministerial policy.
His followers were furious. "I know it," said the Duke to Charles
Greville, "and I do not care one damn. I have no time to do what is not
right."

Meanwhile the war had continued, and with the commencement of 1841
fortune began to favour the British. The Chinese position at the mouth
of the Canton river was forced, and the Emperor was compelled to send
a Commissioner, Keshin by name, to treat with the "outer barbarians."
Keshin cunningly transferred the scene of negotiations to Canton, in
order to secure time to strengthen the forts and prepare for defence.
He accordingly employed the interval busily in erecting new batteries
at the Bogue, barricading the bars in the river by sinking boats laden
with stones, throwing up breastworks near Canton, and levying troops.
The British Commissioner, wearied and irritated by these proceedings,
gave directions to Commodore Bremer to proceed at once to compulsory
methods of bringing the Chinese to reason. On the 7th of January,
therefore, he opened fire on the Bogue forts, on two of which the
British flag very soon floated. Next morning, when everything was ready
to attack the principal fort, Annughoy, a flag of truce was sent by
the Chinese, and hostilities were suspended. Keshin offered to adjust
matters immediately, and on the 20th a circular appeared, signed by
Captain Elliot, and dated Macao, addressed to "Her Britannic Majesty's
subjects," stating that her Majesty's plenipotentiary had to announce
the conclusion of preliminary arrangements between the Imperial
Commissioner and himself, involving the following conditions:--1st. The
cession of the harbour and island of Hong Kong to the British Crown.
2nd. An indemnity to the British Government of 6,000,000 dollars,
to be paid in annual instalments in six years. 3rd. Direct official
intercourse between the two countries upon equal footing. It was quite
evident that her Majesty's plenipotentiary did not understand the sort
of people he had to deal with; otherwise, he would not have arrested
the operations of Commodore Bremer till he had all the principal forts
in his possession. In fact he was completely duped by Keshin.

The convention, which did not contain a word about the opium trade,
gave great dissatisfaction at home, and Lord John Russell declared in
the House of Commons, on the 6th of May, that it had been disapproved
of by the Government; that Captain Elliot had been recalled, and Sir
Henry Pottinger appointed plenipotentiary in his stead. The Chinese,
meanwhile, soon violated their engagements. On the 19th of February
an English boat was fired upon from North Wang-ton, in consequence of
which the squadron under Captain Sir H. Flemming Senhouse attacked
the forts on the 26th of February, and in a very short time the
British colours were flying on the whole chain of these celebrated
fortifications, and the British became masters of the islands without
the loss of a single man. Proceeding up the river towards the Whampoa
Reach they found it fortified with upwards of forty war junks, and the
_Cambridge_, an old East Indiaman. But they were all silenced in an
hour, when the marines and small-arm men were landed and stormed the
works, driving before them upwards of 3,000 Chinese troops, and killing
nearly 300. Next day Sir Gordon Bremer joined the advanced squadron,
and the boats were pushed forward within gunshot of Howgua's fort;
and thus, for the first time, were foreign ships seen from the walls
of Canton. On the 2nd of May the _Cruiser_ came up, having on board
Major-General Sir Hugh Gough, who took command of the land forces. On
approaching the fort it was found to be abandoned, as well as those
higher up the river, the Chinese having fired all their guns and fled.
The Prefect or Governor of Canton then made his appearance, accompanied
by the Hong merchants, announcing that Keshin having been recalled
and degraded, and the new Commissioner not having arrived, there was
no authority to treat for peace. Captain Elliot again hesitating,
requested the naval and military commanders to make no further movement
towards the city until it was seen what was the disposition of the
provincial authorities at Canton, and admitted the city to a ransom of
£1,250,000. But Sir G. Bremer observed in a despatch that he feared the
forbearance was misunderstood, and that a further punishment must be
inflicted before that arrogant and perfidious Government was brought to
reason. He was right; for on the 17th of March a flag of truce, with a
message sent by Captain Elliot to the Imperial Commissioner, was fired
upon by the Chinese. In consequence of this, a force under Captain
Herbert, who was in advance of the rest of the armament, carried in
succession all the forts up to Canton, taking, sinking, burning, and
otherwise destroying the flotilla of the enemy, and hoisted the Union
Jack the same day on the walls of the British factory.

At this juncture Sir Henry Pottinger succeeded Captain Elliot, with
orders to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion. His measures
were prompt; Amoy fell on the 26th of August, Chusan, which had been
abandoned, was recaptured in September, and the Chinese experienced
further reverses in 1842. At length the Chinese saw that resistance
was vain, and that they must come to terms, as the "barbarians" could
not be exterminated. Full powers had been given to three Commissioners
to negotiate a treaty of peace, which, after various conferences,
was concluded on the 26th of August, 1842. It embraced the following
stipulations:--The payment by the Chinese of an indemnity of £4,375,000
in addition to the ransom of £1,250,000 already surrendered; the
opening of the new ports of Canton, Amoy, Fou-chow-fou, Ning-po, and
Shang-hai to British merchants, with permission to consular officers to
reside there; the cession of the island of Hong Kong to the British in
perpetuity; correspondence to be conducted on terms of perfect equality
between the officers of both Governments; and the islands of Chusan
and Ku-lang-su to be held by the British until the money payments were
made, and arrangements for opening the ports were completed.

Far more serious than this smallest of little wars was the crisis that
had simultaneously overtaken the Levant. For years the Turkish Empire
had been on the brink of dissolution, partly through its own weakness,
partly through the ambition of Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt. In
1838 he had been prevented only by a vigorous remonstrance of Lord
Palmerston's from declaring himself independent and attacking the
Turkish army on the Euphrates. For months the two forces stood face to
face, and then the Turks by their own folly provoked the catastrophe.
Disregarding the advice of the French and British Governments, the
Sultan Mahmoud sent his troops across the river. On the 24th of June,
1839, they were cut to pieces by the Egyptians, on the 29th the Sultan
died, on the 30th the Turkish admiral Achmet Pasha sailed off to
Alexandria, and handed over his fleet to Mehemet Ali. It was evident
that prompt intervention of the Powers could alone preserve the Ottoman
Empire from disintegration. But, as soon as Lord Palmerston broached
the subject, the French Government refused to take part in a general
agreement for the maintenance of the Porte; in fact, its sympathies
were openly expressed on the side of the Pasha. Thereupon Lord
Palmerston resolved to proceed without Louis Philippe. His overtures to
the Russians were cordially received; Austria raised no objections. On
the 15th of July, 1840, the Quadrilateral Treaty was signed, by which
the British, Austrian, Prussian, and Russian representatives on the
one hand, and the Turkish ambassador on the other, bound themselves
to compel the Pasha to yield half of Syria to the Porte, and pledged
themselves to use force to give effect to their demands.

Thereupon a period of the utmost suspense ensued. The British Cabinet
was of very divided mind; there was a strong peace party, headed by
Lord Holland and Lord Clarendon, with which Lord John Russell, after
much hesitation, eventually threw in his lot. Again and again he
threatened resignation, and it needed all the diplomacy of the Prime
Minister and the strong remonstrances of the Queen to induce him to
remain at his post. Even more serious was the attitude of the French
Government. M. Thiers, who had become Prime Minister in March, was
furious at the humiliation to which his predecessors' shilly-shally
had exposed his country. He blustered about going to war, talked
about increasing the fleet and calling out the reserves, and tried to
persuade the British ambassador, Sir Henry Bulwer, that the king, his
master, was even more bloodthirsty than himself. All in vain; Lord
Palmerston had taken the measure of his opponents. He knew that, though
Thiers might mean fighting, Louis Philippe had no such intention; he
knew, too, that the Pasha, whom the world thought to be invincible,
was a mere man of straw. His opinion was justified by the easy success
of the joint British, Austrian, and Turkish squadron. Beyrout fell
early in September, Saida, the ancient Sidon, surrendered before the
end of the month, and on the 3rd of November Commodore Napier reduced
to ruins, after a bombardment of only three hours, Acre, the fortress
hitherto held to be impregnable, from which even Napoleon had turned
away in despair. The fall of Acre settled, for the time being, the
Eastern question. Already Louis Philippe had seen the necessity of
abandoning words which were not to be followed by deeds. He had refused
to countenance the bellicose speech from the throne with which M.
Thiers proposed to open the Chambers in October; that Minister had in
consequence resigned, and had been succeeded by Marshal Soult with
M. Guizot as his Foreign Minister. Still Lord Palmerston refused to
readmit France to the European concert until the Egyptian resistance
was at an end. However, his more pacific colleagues induced him to
allow the French Government to take part in the diplomatic discussion,
which led to the ultimate settlement of the crisis in the following
July. By that treaty the independence of the Porte was guaranteed by a
provision that the Bosphorus and Dardanelles should be closed to ships
of war of all Powers in time of peace, while the Pasha was punished
for his contumacy by being compelled to surrender the whole of Syria,
retaining by way of compensation the hereditary possession of Egypt.

At the opening of 1841 the country might be said to be free from all
excitement on the subject of politics. There was no great question at
issue, no struggle between rival parties seemed impending. Many of the
principal topics which in former years had agitated the public mind
had been settled or laid to rest. The Chartist riots seemed to have
abated the desire of the leading Reformers to extend the suffrage to
the working classes. Still the Government was lamentably weak, and
only existed on sufferance. Nor did the conduct of affairs in the
House of Commons tend to strengthen their position. The reintroduction
by Lord Stanley of his Bill to regulate the registration of voters
in Ireland led to much angry discussion with damaging results to the
Government, who had already suffered grievous defeats in attempting
to arrest the progress of the measure during the previous Session.
Two days later Lord Morpeth brought in a Government Bill for the same
object. The main features of the plan were to abolish certificates;
to make the register conclusive of the right to vote, except where
disqualification afterwards appeared; to establish an annual revision
of the registers, and to give a right of appeal equally to the claimant
and the objector. The main point of difference between this and Lord
Stanley's Bill consisted in the tribunal to which the appeal was to
be made. The Government proposed for this purpose the creation of a
new court, consisting of three barristers of a certain standing. An
additional feature of the Government Bill was a proposal to settle
the question of the basis of the franchise by fixing upon the Poor
Law valuation as the standard; and the Bill proposed to enact that
every occupier of a tenement under a holding of not less than fourteen
years, of the annual value of £5, should have the right of voting
previously enjoyed by persons who had a beneficial interest of £10.
The Conservatives complained of the unfairness of thus introducing
by surprise a fundamental alteration in the elective franchise of
Ireland, founded upon principles unknown both in England and Scotland.
It was represented as a new Reform Bill for Ireland, tacked on as a
postscript to a Bill for amending the registration. The £5 franchise,
it was argued, would in effect be little short of the introduction of
universal suffrage. The House divided on the respective merits of the
rival Bills, when the Government measure was carried by a majority
of five. The result was hailed with cheers from both sides of the
House, the Opposition regarding the victory as little better than a
defeat. Lord John Russell at first announced that he would proceed
immediately with the measure, but he afterwards moved its postponement
till the 23rd of April. During the interval Lord Morpeth announced
the conversion of the Ministry to the principle of an £8 rating. When
the question was introduced again, on the 26th of April, it gave rise
to a party debate. While the House was in committee on Lord Morpeth's
Bill, Lord Howick proposed an amendment to the effect that the tenant,
in order to entitle him to the franchise, should have a beneficial
interest in his holding of £5 a year over and above the rent. Lord
Morpeth proposed as a qualification for the franchise a lease of
fourteen years, and a low rating of £8. Lord Howick proposed that the
yearly tenant should be entitled to vote as well as the leaseholder if
he had an annual interest of £5 in it; but Lord Morpeth contended, and
showed from statistics, that this principle would disfranchise more
than three-fourths of the £10 tenant voters in several of the counties.
In short, it would have the effect of almost entirely disfranchising
the existing occupying constituency of Ireland. On a division, Lord
Howick's amendment was carried by 291 to 270. Finally the Bill was
reduced to such a jumble of contradictory amendments that it was
impossible to proceed with it. Thus ended the great struggle of the
Session. Much time had been wasted in party debates and fruitless
discussions, and the proposal to give the Irish people the benefit of
the Reform Act by putting its perishing constituencies on a proper
basis, simple as it may seem, utterly failed. Lord Stanley also
abandoned his measure, and there the matter ended. The whole of the
proceedings plainly indicated that the doom of Lord Melbourne's feeble
Cabinet was at hand.

[Illustration: ATTACK ON THE CHINESE JUNKS. (_See p._ 474.)]

The Budget did not retrieve the popularity of Ministers. Sir Francis
Baring proposed to make up for an estimated deficit of £2,421,000 by
an alteration of the timber duties producing £600,000 a year, and an
alteration of the sugar duties producing £700,000. Both these changes
were in the direction of free trade, and a still more significant
proposal was the repeal of the existing corn law, and the substitution
of a low fixed duty of 8s. a quarter on wheat. The House, however,
would not accept such a budget from a Government whose Premier had in
the previous year declared that "the responsible advisers of the Crown
would not propose any change in the Corn Laws." After a debate of eight
nights the Ministry were defeated on the sugar duties by 317 votes to
281. Still they did not resign, and the Opposition in consequence had
recourse to a direct vote of censure.

On the 31st of May, pursuant to notice, Sir Robert Peel brought forward
a motion of want of confidence in the Government, in the following
words:--"That her Majesty's Ministers do not sufficiently possess the
confidence of the House of Commons to enable them to carry through the
House measures which they deem of essential importance to the public
welfare; and that their continuance in office under such circumstances is
at variance with the spirit of the Constitution." The right hon. baronet
referred to a number of precedents for the course he adopted--namely, the
cases of Sir Robert Walpole, Lord North, Mr. Pitt, Lord Sidmouth, Lord
Liverpool, the Duke of Wellington, and himself, each of whom resigned,
failing the support of a majority of the House Commons; and he insisted
that Lord Melbourne was bound to follow their example. A debate of two
nights followed: it was interrupted by the Whitsun holidays, after which
it was resumed and lasted three nights more, during which all sorts of
topics were discussed, and all the shortcomings of Ministers were dwelt
upon, and urged against them with great earnestness. The burden of the
charges against them was, that they were causing the greatest public
mischief by leaving important questions in doubt, setting party against
party, and stirring society to its very foundations. At length the House
went to a division, when there appeared for Sir Robert Peel's motion,
312; against it, 311, giving a majority of 1 against the Government. At
the meeting of the House on the following Monday the most lively anxiety
was manifested as to the course Ministers would pursue. Lord John Russell
stated that, after the late division, he felt that in that House of
Commons the Government could expect no further majorities, and that they
were resolved to appeal to the country. The determination, it is now
known, had been opposed by the Premier, but he was overruled by the more
sanguine members of the Cabinet.

Parliament was dissolved on the 30th of June, and at the general
election the Ministerial party was smitten hip and thigh. The City of
London exhibited a most remarkable defection from the Whigs on this
occasion. It had returned four Liberals to the late Parliament, one of
whom was Lord John Russell himself. On this occasion they returned two
Conservatives and two Liberals; Mr. Masterman, a Conservative, being
at the head of the poll. Lord John Russell was also returned, having
beaten his Conservative opponent by a majority of only 7. Another
significant triumph of the Conservatives was won in the West Riding
of Yorkshire, one of the most Liberal constituencies in the kingdom.
There Lord Morpeth and Lord Milton--the candidates, of all others, most
likely to succeed--were beaten, after a tremendous contest, by the Hon.
S. Wortley and Mr. Denison. For Dublin, also, two Conservatives were
returned--Messrs. West and Grogan; Mr. O'Connell being defeated. In
England and Wales the Conservatives had a majority of 104. In Scotland
the Liberals had a majority of 9, and in Ireland of 19. The majority
in favour of the Conservatives in the United Kingdom was 76. The cries
that had most to do in producing this result were, on the one side,
"cheap bread," and on the other, "low wages."

On the 19th of August the new Parliament assembled. The Session was
opened by commission; the Royal Speech, which was read by the Lord
Chancellor, contained a paragraph referring to the duties affecting
the productions of foreign countries, and suggesting for consideration
the question whether the principle of protection was not carried to an
extent injurious alike to the income of the State and the interests
of the people; whether the Corn Laws did not aggravate the natural
fluctuations of supply; and whether they did not embarrass trade,
derange the currency, and by their operation diminish the comfort and
increase the privations of the great body of the community. Here was
a distinct enunciation of the principles of Free Trade in the Speech
from the Throne, for which, of course, the Ministers were responsible.
The Address in the House of Lords was moved by Earl Spencer, a decided
Free Trader, and seconded by the Marquis of Clanricarde. The debate
was relieved from nullity by the Duke of Wellington's testimony to the
conduct of Lord Melbourne towards the Queen. The Duke said--"He was
willing to admit that the noble viscount had rendered the greatest
possible service to her Majesty, in making her acquainted with the mode
and policy of the government of this country, initiating her into the
laws and spirit of the Constitution, independently of the performance
of his duty as the servant of her Majesty's Crown; teaching her, in
short, to preside over the destiny of this great country." The House
divided, when it was found that there was a majority of 72 against the
Government.

The first business in the House of Commons was the re-election of Mr.
Shaw Lefevre as Speaker. On the 24th of August the Address was moved
by Mr. Mark Philips, and seconded by Mr. John Dundas. Mr. Wortley
then moved an amendment similar to the one which had been carried in
the House of Lords, in which he went over all the charges against the
Government. His motion was seconded by Lord Bruce, and supported by Mr.
Disraeli. The debate lasted several nights. Sir Robert Peel delivered a
long and very able speech, in which he reviewed the whole policy of the
Government. He was answered by Lord John Russell, whose speech closed
the debate. The division gave to Sir Robert Peel a majority for which
no one seemed prepared. The numbers were--for the Ministerial Address,
269; for the amendment, 360; majority against the Government, 91. On
the 30th the resignation of Ministers was announced.




CHAPTER XV.

THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    Peel's Second Cabinet--Prorogation of Parliament--Growing
    Demand for Free Trade--Mr. Villiers--His First Motion for the
    Repeal of the Corn Laws--The Manchester Association--Bright
    and Cobden--Opposition of the Chartists--Growth of the
    Association--The Movement spreads to London--Renewal of Mr.
    Villiers' Motion--Formation of the Anti-Corn Law League--Its
    Pamphlets and Lectures--Ebenezer Elliott--The Pavilion at
    Manchester--Mr. Villiers' Third Motion--Want in Ireland--The
    Walsall Election--Depression of Trade--Peel determines on a
    Sliding Scale--His Corn Law--Its Cold Reception--Progress of
    the Measure--The Budget--The Income Tax--Reduction of Custom
    Duties--Peel's Speech on the New Tariff--Discussions on the
    Bill--Employment of Children in the Coal Mines--Evidence of the
    Commission--Lord Ashley's Bill--Further Attempts on the Life of
    the Queen--Sir Robert Peel's Bill on the subject--Differences with
    the United States--The Right of Search--The Canadian Boundary--The
    Macleod Affair--Lord Ashburton's Mission--The First Afghan War:
    Sketch of its Course--Russian Intrigue in the East--Auckland
    determines to restore Shah Sujah--Triumphant Advance of the
    Army of the Indus--Surrender of Dost Mohammed--Sale and the
    Ghilzais--The Rising in Cabul--Murder of Burnes--Treaty of 11th of
    December--Murder of Macnaghten--Treaty of January 1st--Annihilation
    of the Retreating Force--Irresolution of Auckland--His
    Recall--Disasters in the Khyber Pass--Pollock at Peshawur--Position
    of Affairs at Jelalabad--Resistance determined upon--Approach
    of Akbar Khan--The Earthquake--Pollock in the Khyber--Sale's
    Victory--Ellenborough's Proclamation--Votes of Thanks--Ellenborough
    orders Retirement--The Prisoners--They are saved--Reoccupation of
    Cabul--Ellenborough's Proclamation--The Gate of Somnauth.


Sir Robert Peel was sent for by the Queen. No difficulties were
now raised about the Ladies of the Court, since the difficulty had
been settled through the diplomacy of the Prince Consort and his
well-intentioned, though pedantic, adviser, Baron Stockmar. In due
time the following Administration was formed:--First Lord of the
Treasury, Sir Robert Peel; Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst; Chancellor
of the Exchequer, Right Hon. H. Goulburn; President of the Council,
Lord Wharncliffe; Privy Seal, Duke of Buckingham; Home Secretary, Sir
J. Graham; Foreign Secretary, Earl of Aberdeen; Colonial Secretary,
Lord Stanley; President of the Board of Control, Lord Ellenborough;
President of the Board of Trade, Earl of Ripon; Secretary at War, Sir
H. Hardinge; Treasurer of the Navy and Paymaster of the Forces, Sir E.
Knatchbull. The Duke of Wellington was in the Cabinet without office.
It was thus composed of thirteen members, but of these Wellington,
Lyndhurst, Aberdeen, Stanley, and Graham were the only people of
importance. Before the prorogation of Parliament on the 7th of October
the Poor Law was continued until the end of the following July, and the
financial deficit of £2,500,000 was provided for by the creation of
£5,000,000 of new stock, half of which was devoted to the funding of
Exchequer Bills.

On the reassembling of Parliament on the 3rd of February, 1842, Sir
Robert Peel was confronted by a rapidly increasing demand for freedom
of trade. Among the earliest of the Parliamentary champions of the
people's right to cheap food was Mr. Villiers, afterwards President of
the Poor Law Board. He became a pupil of Mr. M'Culloch, the author
of the "Commercial Dictionary," who was also one of the soundest and
most consistent advocates of commercial and fiscal reforms. The bold
attacks of Mr. Huskisson and Mr. Canning upon commercial monopolies
naturally excited his admiration, and as a supporter of those statesmen
he offered himself as a candidate for Hull at the general election
in 1826. The election was lost by a small majority, and Mr. Villiers
was afterwards called to the bar, became Secretary to the Master of
the Rolls, and subsequently one of the Examiners in Chancery. At the
general election in 1835 he presented himself as a candidate for
Wolverhampton, avowing the same Free Trade principles which he had
professed nine years before at Hull. It is said to have been at a
meeting at Sir William Molesworth's, in 1837, that Mr. Villiers was
strongly urged to take the opposition to the Corn Laws as his peculiar
field of Parliamentary duty; and in that year he pledged himself at
the hustings to move for their total repeal, an object at that time
generally regarded as too wild and hopeless to be undertaken seriously
by a practical statesman. On the 15th of March, 1838, Mr. Villiers rose
in Parliament to make the first of those motions on the Corn Laws with
which he afterwards became associated in the public mind. Scarcely
any excitement was caused by this discussion. It seems, indeed, to
have been regarded rather as an exercise in political speaking by some
who viewed the matter in a philosophic, rather than in a practical
light, and who had no real expectation of success. Only one of the
ministers was present during a debate which was destined, in its
annual reappearance, to become so formidable to the party of monopoly;
and this Minister, it was remarked by one speaker, appeared to be
taking "his evening siesta," doubtless "owing to weariness induced
by his close attention to official duties"--a remark which elicited
loud laughter. It must be confessed, however, that the slumber of the
Minister was no unfit representation of the want of faith in Corn Law
Repeal which existed out of doors. It was certain that nothing but
pressure from without could obtain even a modification of those laws
in the teeth of the all-powerful aristocracy and their representatives
in the Commons; but as yet the country took little part in the great
question of the final emancipation of British industry. For a repeal
of the Poor Laws there had been presented to the House not less
than 235 petitions, with 190,000 signatures. The agitation--chiefly
supported by the _Times_ newspaper and a few Socialistic reformers,
like Mr. Fielden, against the law which, harsh as it seemed, was at
bottom a really wise and humane measure for raising the people from
that condition of acquiescence in misery and degradation to which the
bad legislation of past years had so powerfully contributed to reduce
them--had assumed formidable dimensions, and stirred the country in
every part; but for a repeal of the law which in every way depressed
the energies of the people, only a few petitions, bearing at most about
24,000 signatures, had been presented.

[Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA. (_After a Portrait painted about the
time of her Accession._)]

[Illustration: DUNFORD, NEAR MIDHURST, WHERE COBDEN WAS BORN.]

While the landed interest were thus showing their determination to
maintain, at all hazards, the laws for preventing the importation of
foreign corn, a spirit of opposition had been growing up in the large
manufacturing towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, which, though only
partially shared in by the working classes, was already significant of
the approaching downfall of the system of monopoly. The first use made
by Manchester of its constitution as a political borough by the Reform
Act was to send to Parliament Mr. Poulett Thomson and Mr. Mark Philips,
two members long conspicuous in the House for the zeal and ability
with which they supported the principles of Free Trade. The Manchester
newspapers generally advocated the same views; and Manchester became
regarded as the centre of the Anti-Corn Law agitation. No organised
movement, however, had yet been attempted. A series of good harvests
from 1832 to 1835 rendered it extremely difficult to arouse public
attention to the injustice which the bread law invariably inflicted in
less favourable circumstances. Nevertheless, the effort was made. In
January, 1834, a meeting of merchants and manufacturers was held in
the Manchester Exchange Committee-room, to consider how the cause of
Corn Law Repeal was to be forwarded, at which some powerful speeches
were delivered by the members for the borough and other speakers of
influence. A committee was appointed, which timidly endeavoured to
avoid the appearance of a political agitation and finally ended by
doing nothing. But soon the desultory opposition to the bread tax of
the Manchester Chamber of Commerce--a body which had only presented
one petition on the subject in seven years--was no longer sufficient
to represent the feeling of that great centre of industry. Seven men
united themselves in the month of October, 1838, to advocate the
freedom of trade. The names of those seven members are now scarcely
remembered out of Manchester, with the exception of Mr. Archibald
Prentice, the historian of the League, whose newspaper, the _Manchester
Times_, had fought with considerable talent, and with inexhaustible
energy on the side of all the great reforms of this important period
in our history. In that newspaper for the 13th of October a list of
the Provisional Committee of a new Anti-Corn Law Association was for
the first time published. It comprised thirty-seven names, chiefly
of Manchester manufacturers, and ended with the modest note that
"Subscriptions, 5s. each, would be received by the members of that
committee." Such was the simple origin of that vast movement which, a
few years later, compelled the very chiefs of the landowners' party
in Parliament to become the instruments for carrying out measures
more sweeping than even the most ardent Free Traders had regarded as
possible. But men of influence were beginning to join the movement. The
list of the Provisional Committee contained at least one name which
afterwards became famous--that of Mr. John Bright. Three of them became
members of Parliament at a later date, and another, Mr. George Wilson,
was afterwards known as the permanent chairman of the League.

The name of the leader of the new movement, however, had not yet been
added to the list. Mr. Bright, whose residence was at Rochdale, had
not begun to give personal aid to the cause, and was scarcely known
out of his native town, where his efforts to improve the moral and
social condition of the working classes had, however, long made him
conspicuous among his fellow-townsmen. The name of Richard Cobden,
which appears in the additional list of the committee published a
short time afterwards, was one more familiar in Manchester ears. Mr.
Cobden was the son of a yeoman at Dunford, near Midhurst, in Sussex.
Beginning with small advantages, he had become a successful tradesman.
In the course of 1835 a pamphlet was published by him under the title,
"England, Ireland, and America." It was followed by a second pamphlet
entitled "Russia; by a Manchester Manufacturer." In these writings
he advocated peace and retrenchment, and reprobated a panic fear of
Russia. But he was soon to advocate more important reforms.

Meanwhile, the first municipal election under the Manchester Charter of
Incorporation had been held, at which Mr. Cobden, and a number of other
gentlemen professing Free Trade views, had been chosen aldermen, not
without formidable opposition. At a meeting held at Leeds, and attended
by seven or eight thousand persons, the Chartists, under Mr. Feargus
O'Connor, resisted the resolutions of the Free Traders, on the ground
that the movement was one only intended to give the manufacturers power
to lower the wages of their workmen--a mistaken doctrine, but one not
altogether without support in the writings of the Free Trade party,
some of whom, with the common propensity of zealous advocates for
adopting doubtful arguments as well as good ones in support of their
objects, had put forth the statement that the British manufacturer
required cheap food in order to get cheap labour, and thus to compete
the better with foreign producers. The opposition of the Chartists
created great confusion at almost every meeting held under the auspices
of the Manchester Association. Bread, however, continued to rise, and
the task of the Association in rousing the country became easier.

Subscriptions began to pour in for the Association, and the work went
on. The year 1839 opened with bright prospects for the Anti-Corn Law
crusade. Times were, indeed, changed since pseudo-Liberals had been
able to make the apathy of the country an excuse for withholding aid
from those who had, on principle, continued to demand justice in the
matter of the poor man's loaf. The movement was rapidly becoming
general. Mr. Villiers had prophesied in the last Session of Parliament
that the day was not far distant when the landed interest would be
compelled to treat this question with respect, and abandon the practice
of shouting down the advocates of Free Trade in the Legislature.
That day had now arrived, and sooner, probably, than the prophet
himself had expected it. There was scarcely a large town or thickly
populated district in Great Britain which had not moved, or which
was not about to petition Parliament against the bread-tax. In many
cases political differences were not allowed to hinder the common
fellowship of citizens having such an object as the overthrow of a
system that threatened to convert the mercantile community into a mass
of bankruptcy, and to involve all classes in deep distress.

From the manufacturing districts the movement was spreading to the
metropolis, where usually there had been but little attention paid to
this important subject. The various trades of London began to take
part in the preparation of petitions, and to hold meetings. At some of
these the working men carried resolutions against the petitions; and
they made similar, though unsuccessful, attempts in various towns. But
it was remarked that even while refusing to take preliminary measures
for procuring relief from the bread-tax, they declared its injustice;
in fact, the savage mood to which the prevalent distress was bringing
the labouring classes began to manifest itself in a determination
to postpone every question save that of their claim to a share of
political power. They were not friendly to the middle class; but their
ill-will could not be cited even as a proof of their indifference to
the continuance of the Corn Law system.

On the 12th of March, 1839, Mr. Villiers again moved for a committee
of the whole House to take into consideration the Act regulating the
importation of foreign corn, and the Manchester delegates were once
more in London to watch the progress of events. On this occasion the
House again decided, by 342 votes to 195, not to take the subject
into consideration. The defeat was of course expected; but the
members of the Association immediately assembled again, and issued an
address to the public, in which for the first time they recommended
the formation of a permanent union, to be called the Anti-Corn Law
League, and to be composed of all the towns and districts represented
in the delegation, and as many others as might be induced to form
Anti-Corn Law associations, and to join the League. Delegates from
the different local associations were to meet for business from time
to time at the principal towns represented; but in order to secure
unity of action, it was proposed that the central office of the
League should be established at Manchester, and that to its members
should be entrusted the duties of engaging lecturers, obtaining the
co-operation of the public press, establishing and conducting a stamped
periodical publication, and keeping up a constant correspondence with
the local associations. The delegates then parted, becoming so many
local missionaries for spreading the doctrines of the new crusade.
The Manchester Association had issued a large number of handbills and
placards. It now began to publish more largely and systematically a
series of pamphlets. Among these were "Facts for Farmers," in which
it was shown to demonstration that, whatever might be the interest
of the landowners, their tenants had no real share in the benefits
of their monopoly. The cheapness of the publications secured them an
extraordinary sale wherever political questions were discussed. Mr.
Villiers's speech, extending to thirty-two closely printed pages,
was sold at three halfpence; Mr. Poulett Thomson's speech, occupying
sixteen pages, at three farthings. When the appeals were made to
the electors of the kingdom during the height of the agitation, as
many as half a million each of the more popular tracts were issued
at a time. In accordance with the resolution passed by the League
at its formation in London, a fortnightly organ of the new movement
was started on the 16th of April. Its title was the _Anti-Corn Law
Circular_. A preliminary address announced that a copy of the paper
would be regularly forwarded to every newspaper, review, and magazine
in the empire. The first number contained a "Modern History of the
Corn Laws," by Richard Cobden, with various information on the progress
of the movement. Meanwhile the work of lecturing went on. Free Trade
missionaries were dispatched to all parts, and, to the annoyance of
the landlords, even preached their obnoxious doctrines to audiences in
smock frocks in the agricultural towns and villages, where the views
of the country party had hitherto held undisputed sway. Among the most
remarkable of these speakers was Colonel Perronet Thompson, who, by
his celebrated "Catechism of the Corn Laws," and his other writings,
had done perhaps more than any other man of his time to confute the
fallacies of the Protectionist party. The clear and terse style, the
shrewd reasoning power, the apt and homely illustration, and, above
all, the hearty sincerity and good temper of this remarkable man,
were equally acceptable among the most refined or the least educated
audiences.

In the same field was to be found the poet Ebenezer Elliott, the "Corn
Law Rhymer." By his addresses to his fellow-townsmen of Sheffield, his
remonstrances with the infatuated followers of O'Connor, who fancied
that their own cause was opposed to that of the Manchester League, and
by his powerful "Corn Law Rhymes," Elliott rendered services to the
movement of the highest value. A good specimen of Elliott's powers of
versification is afforded by the following song:--

    "Child, is thy father dead?"
      "Father is gone!
    Why did they tax his bread?
      God's will be done!
    Mother has sold her bed;
    Better to die than wed:
    Where shall she lay her head?
      Home we have none!
    "Father clammed[3] thrice a week,
      God's will be done!

    Long for work did he seek,
      Work he found none.
    Tears on his hollow cheek
    Told what no tongue could speak;
    Why did his master break?
      God's will be done!

    "Doctor said air was best--
      Food we had none;
    Father, with panting breast,
      Groaned to be gone.
    Now he is with the blest!
    Mother says death is best!
    We have no place of rest."
      "Yes, ye have one!"

The opening of the year 1840 saw no flagging in the efforts of the
Manchester men to bring forward the question, which the _Annual
Register_ had just regarded as finally set at rest. It had been
determined that a great meeting of delegates should be held in that
city. There was no hall large enough to hold half of the then members
even of the local association, and it was therefore resolved to
construct one. Mr. Cobden owned nearly all of the land then unbuilt on
in St. Peter's Field--the very site of the Peterloo massacre of 1819.
In eleven days one hundred men constructed on this spot a temporary
pavilion, which afterwards gave place to the permanent Free Trade Hall,
which long continued to be the favourite scene of great political
meetings. The _Manchester Times_ described the pavilion as comprising
an area of nearly 16,000 square feet. It contained seats for dining
3,800 persons, and 500 more were admitted after the dinner. Among the
most conspicuous speakers at the banquet were Daniel O'Connell, Mr.
Cobden, and Mr. Milner Gibson; but perhaps the most interesting feature
in the proceedings was the operatives' banquet, which took place on the
following day. Five thousand working men, overlooked by their wives,
sisters, and daughters in the galleries, sat down on that occasion.
It was evident from this that the people were emancipating themselves
from the advice of evil counsellors, and were beginning to see the
importance to their interests of the movement of the League.

Mr. Villiers renewed his motion on the 26th of May, 1840, after the
presentation of petitions in support of his views bearing a quarter of
a million of signatures. These signs of the growth of public opinion
had no effect upon the House. There was a fixed determination to
give neither Mr. Villiers nor the petitioners a fair hearing. He was
assailed with a volley of every kind of uncouth sounds. The Speaker's
calls to order were utterly disregarded, and it was not until, losing
patience, he commanded the bar to be cleared, and members to take their
seats, that the advocate of Free Trade could be heard by the reporters.
It was useless to carry on the discussion amid this deafening clamour.
Lord John Russell weakly demanded what the Government could do when a
majority of the House was against any alteration in the law, and said
he would vote for the motion, but not with a view to total repeal, as
his own opinion was in favour of a moderate fixed duty. The House again
divided, when 300 members voted for the landlords' monopoly, against
only 177 in favour of inquiry.

While these events were occurring in London, renewed signs of that
terrible Irish difficulty which, in the end, played so prominent a
part in hastening the conversion of the party who had opposed Free
Trade, began to be forced upon the attention of public men. On the
6th of June the _Limerick Reporter_ stated that at Listowel the state
of the poor was awful and deplorable, potatoes being sixteen pence a
stone, and there being no employment. One morning a boat, containing
560 barrels of oats, while waiting for the steamer at Garry Kennedy
harbour, on its way to Limerick, was boarded by a large body of the
populace, who possessed themselves of part of the grain. The police
were sent for, but did not arrive in time to save the property. The
_Dublin Pilot_ reported that the people of Limerick, prompted by the
cravings of hunger, had broken out in violent attacks on the flour
stores and provision shops throughout the city, sparing none in their
devastation. Flour was openly seized and distributed by the ringleaders
among the populace. The crowd was at length dispersed by the military,
and the mayor called a meeting of the inhabitants, to provide some
means of meeting the distress. In the meanwhile, ten tons of oatmeal
had been distributed among the most wretched, which was stated for
the present to have satisfied their cravings. These things, it was
remarked, took place while corn and flour, to the amount of four or
five millions sterling, might, in a few weeks, be had in exchange for
our manufactured goods.

When such facts as these, again and again urged upon the attention of
the legislators, failed to produce any practical result, it became
evident to the leaders of the League that they must do something more
than be the educators of the people in the principles of Free Trade.
One of the ablest of the London newspapers, which was friendly to their
cause, had warned them that nothing could be done in the House of
Commons until they could send members there expressly to support their
views. The fact was that the party which had an interest in opposing
the Registration Bill returned some forty or fifty members; while the
Corn Law Leaguers, as yet, returned not one. The Leaguers were now
aroused to the importance of this branch of their tactics. The first
fruit of this policy was seen in December, when the borough of Walsall
being declared vacant, led to a contest long after remembered in the
history of the movement. The Leaguers failed; but their failing was
not barren. Captain Lyttelton, a Whig, and Mr. Gladstone, brother of
the distinguished statesman were the two candidates on this occasion.
The League sent a deputation to test the candidates on the question
of Corn Law Repeal, intending to give all their influence to the Whig
candidate, if he pledged himself to advocate their objects. There
was then no hope for assistance from Tory statesmen; and the League
determined to bring forward a new candidate, in the person of Mr. J. B.
Smith, one of the most prominent of their own body, and then President
of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. Amid disturbances during which
the military were called in, Mr. Gladstone was returned, but by the
narrow majority only of 362, against 335 votes given for the League
candidate. This event created a strong impression; but it was but
the beginning of the efforts of the League in this field, which were
destined again and again to be crowned with a more successful issue. At
the general election of 1841, however, the League was powerless against
the Conservative majority, though Mr. Cobden was returned for Stockport.

[Illustration: THE MOB BOARDING THE GRAIN SHIP AT GARRY KENNEDY. (_See
p._ 484.)]

Meanwhile the country continued to suffer from a great wave of trade
depression. Gloom and discontent were throughout the land; and the
Home Secretary of the new Administration afterwards stated that there
was hardly a day during this period when he had not found it necessary
to have personal communication with the Horse Guards, as well as with
the heads of the police in the metropolis, and in the manufacturing
districts. There seemed, indeed, to be no limit to the distress of
the people. In Carlisle a committee of inquiry into the state of the
town reported that one-fourth of their population was living in a
state bordering on absolute starvation. In a population of 22,000
they found 5,561 individuals reduced to such a state of suffering
that immediate relief had become necessary to save them from actual
famine. Terrible accounts from other and far distant neighbourhoods
showed how widespread was the evil. The manufacturers of the West of
England appointed a committee to consider the distressed state of
that district. Taking the town of Bradford, in Wilts, as an example,
the committee reported that of the nineteen manufacturers carrying on
business there in 1820, nine had failed, five had declined business
from want of success, one had taken another trade, and two only
remained. Of 462 looms, 316 were entirely out of work, and only 11 in
full employment; and this distress, it must be remembered, could not
be traced to one great overwhelming cause, like that of the failure
of the cotton supplies of a later day. The blight that had spread
over the field of British industry was to most men a puzzle; but the
West of England committee, after reporting that the same condition of
things existed at Chalford, Stroud, Ulley, Wotton, Dursley, Frome,
Trowbridge, etc., did not hesitate to declare that the depression of
trade that was destroying capital, and pauperising the working classes
was attributable to the legislation on the principle of protection. A
public meeting was held at Burnley in the summer of 1842 to memorialise
the Queen on the prevailing distress. At a great public conference
of ministers of religion, held in Manchester in the previous autumn,
it had been resolved that the existing Corn Laws were "impolitic in
principle, unjust in operation, and cruel in effect;" that they were
"opposed to the benignity of the Creator, and at variance with the very
spirit of Christianity." This conference, which extended over an entire
week of meetings, held both morning and evening, was attended by nearly
700 ministers. Their proceedings filled an entire volume, and attracted
considerable attention throughout the kingdom. Similar conferences were
afterwards held in a great number of towns.

In the face of such facts it was clear that something must be done,
even by a Protectionist Ministry, to diminish the effect of the
growing belief that bad legislation was at the bottom of the country's
difficulties. In the spring men had looked eagerly for the Budget of
the new Ministry. It had been bitterly remarked that at the time when
Parliament was prorogued there were nearly 21,000 persons in Leeds
whose average earnings were only 11-3/4 d. per week--that in one
district in Manchester alone a gentleman had visited 258 families,
consisting of 1,029 individuals, whose average earnings were only 7½
d. per head a week; and that while millions were in this deplorable
condition, the duty on wheat stood at 24s. 8d. a quarter, and Sir
Robert Peel and his colleagues demanded four months' leisure at their
country abodes before they would permit the Legislature to take the
distress of the people into consideration. At length came the meeting
of Parliament, at which the Queen in person read the Speech prepared
by her Ministers. It acknowledged with deep regret "the continued
distress in the manufacturing districts," and that the sufferings and
privations which had resulted from it had been "borne with exemplary
patience and forbearance." Finally, her Majesty recommended to the
consideration of both Houses "the laws which affect the import of corn
and other articles." What was the intention of the Ministers was not
then known; but it was already understood that, unlike their rivals,
who had proposed a fixed duty, the new Government would attempt some
modification of the sliding scale. In the account of these transactions
which Sir Robert Peel left to be published by his executors after
his death, he says:--"One of the first acts of the Government over
which I presided (the Government of August, 1841) was to propose a
material change in the Corn Law of 1828. I brought the subject under
the consideration of my colleagues by means of written memoranda, in
preference to proposals made verbally. In the first of these memoranda
I recommended my colleagues to undertake the revision of the Corn
Laws of 1828, as an act of the Government. In the second, after I
had procured their assent to the principle of revision, I submitted
a proposal in respect to the extent to which such revision should be
carried, and to the details of the new law." Then were seen the first
symptoms of that estrangement from his party which reached its climax
in 1846. Glaring as was the necessity for change, and evident as it
was, even to the body of the landowners, that they must choose between
the mild reform of Peel and the more objectionable measure of his
antagonists, there were members of the Cabinet who would still have
held out for no concession. The Duke of Buckingham retired from the
Ministry, and the Duke of Richmond refused to allow his son to move the
Address.

The statement of the Ministerial measure on the Corn Laws was fixed
for the 9th of February. At five o'clock the Ministers moved that the
paragraph in the Queen's Speech relating to the Corn Laws be read by
the Clerk. This having been done, and the House having resolved itself
into a committee to consider the laws relating to corn, Sir Robert
Peel proceeded to explain the measure which he was about to introduce
for their modification. The reception of the Premier's statement was
not flattering. Listened to in watchful silence till he unfolded
the details of the new sliding scale, he was then hailed from the
Opposition benches with shouts of triumphant derision. The Whigs were
relieved at finding that at least his measure was not calculated to be
more popular out of doors than the fixed duty which they had proposed;
but from his own side Sir Robert received little support. His customary
cheerers were mute, and round him were black faces when he spoke of not
wishing corn prices to range higher than 54s. to 58s. Towards the close
of his speech there was a painful inattention, to which he could not
refrain from alluding. The dead silence which prevailed while he was
reading the proposed scale was followed, when he had concluded, by a
great deal of laughter along the line of the Opposition benches, and a
loud buzz of conversation on both sides of the House ensued, which did
not quite subside during the remainder of the speech. The details of
the measure were recapitulated by the Minister as follow:--

"When corn is at 59s., and under 60s., the duty at present is 27s. 8d.
When corn is between those prices, the duty I propose is 13s. When the
price of corn is at 50s. the existing duty is 36s. 8d., increasing as
the price falls; instead of which I propose, when corn is at 50s. that
the duty shall only be 20s., and that that duty shall in no case be
exceeded. At 56s. the existing duty is 30s. 8d.; the duty I propose at
that price is 16s. At 60s. the existing duty is 26s. 8d.; the duty I
propose at that price is 12s. At 63s. the existing duty is 23s. 8d.;
the duty I propose is 9s. At 64s. the existing duty is 22s. 8d.; the
duty I propose is 8s. At 70s. the existing duty is 10s. 8d.; the duty
I propose is 5s. Therefore it is impossible to deny, on comparing
the duty which I propose with that which exists at present, that it
will cause a very considerable decrease of the protection which the
present duty affords to the home grower, a decrease, however, which in
my opinion can be made consistently with justice to all the interests
concerned."

In the comments with which he concluded his speech there were some
signs of progress in the development of Free Trade ideas in the mind of
the perplexed and trammelled Minister, which are interesting to read
by the light of his later career. He still maintained, in deference
to the views of those who surrounded him, that it was the duty of the
Legislature to take precautions to ensure that the main source of our
supply of food should be derived from domestic agriculture; but he
admitted that any protection, beyond what would compensate for the
alleged special burdens upon agriculture, could only be vindicated
on the ground that it was for the interest of all classes of the
community. Mr. Cobden, who in the autumn of the previous year had been
returned for Stockport, said a few words after the speech. He declared
himself not surprised at the position, constituted as the Government
was; for he had not, he said, expected to gather grapes of thistles;
but he denounced the sliding scale as an insult to a suffering people.
Following him, Lord John Russell gave notice that he should move a
resolution to the effect that it was not advisable in any alteration
of the Corn Laws to adopt the principle of a graduated sliding scale;
and Mr. Villiers gave notice that, on going into committee, he should
take the sense of the House on the policy of imposing any duty whatever
on the foreign corn or food imported into the country. The debate on
Sir Robert Peel's proposition began on Monday, the 14th of February,
and reached the close of its first stage on Wednesday, when Lord John
Russell's motion was negatived by a majority of 123, in a House of 575.
Mr. Villiers's motion was debated for five nights more, and finally
negatived by a majority of 393 to 90. The Whigs now gave the people
to understand that the eight shilling duty of the year before was
abandoned, and that if they were again in power they would propose a
lower sum. In Parliament the position of the Minister was by no means
an enviable one. The Free Traders pressed him closely with questions
which must have made him feel still more strongly the embarrassing
part which he was compelled to play. In the House of Lords the Corn
Importation Bill was passed with slight opposition. Lord Brougham
proposed a resolution in favour of a perfectly free trade in corn,
which was negatived. A resolution, moved by Lord Melbourne, in favour
of a fixed duty, was also negatived by a majority of 117 to 49.

Before this, however, the financial statement for the year had been
made, and for awhile the Corn Law question was suspended for the
country to recover from its astonishment at finding in the Minister of
the Conservative party one of the boldest reformers of our tariff who
had ever occupied the Ministerial benches. But yesterday his position
had appeared one of the greatest difficulty, in which a cautious hold
upon the established sources of revenue, with some well-balanced
proposals for additional taxes, was all that could be expected. He
had not the good fortune of Mr. Goulburn or Lord Althorp in having a
surplus to dispose of. The Whig Government had bequeathed to their
successors a deficit, which had been increasing from year to year,
with a revenue falling off even in the face of new taxes. How was the
deficit to be met was the question which filled the mouths of public
men; a question which was answered by the famous financial statement of
Sir Robert Peel on the 11th of March. After showing that the deficiency
for the coming year would be little short of £2,500,000, and that
this deficiency might be expected to be considerably augmented by the
position of affairs in India and China, the Minister declared that he
would not consent to resort to the miserable expedient of continual
loans. He declared that he would not attempt to impose burdens upon
the labouring classes, and that if he did, recent experience had shown
that they would be defeated. In fact, the country had arrived at the
limits of taxation upon articles of consumption. After ridiculing
the various suggestions of people who were constantly sending him
projects for taxes on pianofortes, umbrellas, and other articles,
accompanied with claims of very large percentages upon the proceeds,
he acknowledged the principle laid down by financiers that increased
revenue may be obtained by taking off the taxes which pressed upon
industry, but declared that the first effect was always a diminution in
revenue, and that time was found necessary to restore the amount. In
these circumstances, he stated what the measure was which, under a deep
conviction of its necessity, he was prepared to propose, and which, he
was persuaded, would benefit the country, not only in her pecuniary
interests, but in her security and character. His scheme was this: he
proposed, for a period to be limited, an income tax of not more than
3 per cent., from which he would exempt all incomes under £150, and
in which he would include not only landed but funded property. Sir
Robert Peel calculated that the tax would yield £3,350,000 a year,
a sum which, with an addition to the spirit duties in Ireland, and
an export duty of 4s. on coals, would not only cover the existing
deficiency, but enable him to remit indirect taxes to the amount
of £1,200,000. The sliding scale had brought little credit to the
Minister, and the income tax was in its nature an unpopular measure;
but the proposal to reduce the custom duties on 750 out of the 1,200
articles in the tariff--to remove prohibitions altogether (in itself
a vast concession to Free Trade doctrines)--to reduce the duties on
raw materials of manufactures to five per cent. or less--to keep the
duties on articles partially manufactured under twelve per cent., and
on articles wholly manufactured under twenty per cent., was a scheme
which excited general admiration. The measure was, indeed, contested
by the Whig Opposition at every stage. The preliminary resolutions were
debated for eight nights. There were many of Sir Robert Peel's old
supporters who looked on the financial plan with distrust, as being
founded, in a great measure, avowedly on those principles of political
economy which they had been accustomed to sneer at; but, in truth, it
was not unfavourable to the interests of their party. We have already
seen that the new tax--at least, if a temporary one--was calculated to
impose a far greater burden upon the manufacturing and moneyed class
than upon the landowners; in fact, by exempting incomes under £150
a year, and assessing land only upon its net rental, the burden was
imposed almost entirely upon that middle class which was the especial
object of the dislike of Tories of the more advanced kind. At the same
time, by cheapening articles of general consumption, the Minister did
something towards securing popularity among the working classes, who,
as exemplified in the Chartist agitation, were not always disposed to
take part against the landowners. The Income Tax Bill passed, after
considerable opposition in the Commons. An amendment proposed by
Lord John Russell was rejected by a vote of 302 to 202, and another
amendment, proposing the reading of the Bill on that day six months,
having been thrown out on the 18th of April by a vote of 285 to 188,
the third reading was carried by a majority of 130 on the 30th of May.
No debate took place in the Lords until the third reading, when the
Bill passed by a majority of 71.

The amended copy of the proposed tariff was laid on the table of the
House of Commons on the 5th of May; and its details explained by the
Premier in a speech which served to bring out still more strongly
the anomalous position in which he was placed. His speech was a long
elaborate statement distinguished for its excellent temper, its
clearness, and, above all, by its singularity as delivered by the
Conservative leader. He went over all the sections of his subject,
showing how the removal of prohibitions would benefit everybody; how
the reduction of duties on raw materials would stimulate trade; how
the diminished duties on provisions would make living cheaper for all;
and how the lesser protection to manufactures would injure none. Such,
he said, were the grounds of the change which it was his intention
to carry through; adding, "I know that many gentlemen who are strong
advocates for Free Trade may consider that I have not gone far enough.
I believe that on the general principle of Free Trade there is now
no great difference of opinion, and that all agree in the general
rule that we should purchase in the cheapest market and sell in the
dearest." Loud cheers from the Opposition benches here interrupted
him. Turning in the direction of the cheerers, he said, "I know the
meaning of that cheer. I do not now wish to raise a discussion on the
Corn Laws or the sugar duties. I have stated the grounds, on more than
one occasion, why I consider these exceptions to the general rule, and
I will not go into the question now. I know that I may be met with
the complaints of gentlemen opposite of the limited extent to which I
have applied the general principle to which I have adverted to these
important articles. I thought, after the best consideration I could
give to the subject, that if I proposed a greater change in the Corn
Laws than that which I submitted to the consideration of the House, I
should only aggravate the distresses of the country, and only increase
the alarm which prevailed among important interests. I think that I
have proposed, and the Legislature has sanctioned, as great a change
in the Corn Laws as was prudent, considering the engagements existing
between landlord and tenant, and also the large amount of capital
which has been applied to the cultivation of the soil. Under these
circumstances, I think that we have made as great a change as was
consistent with the nature of the subject."

[Illustration: RICHARD COBDEN. (_From a Photograph by Messrs. W. and D.
Downey._)]

The Free Trade journals did not fail to observe that what they called
"this remarkable lecture on Free Trade, Protection, and smuggling,
delivered from the Tory Treasury bench," was wound up by the avowal
that the principles of Free Trade were now beyond a question, and that
the rule to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest was
the only valid theory of commerce. In the House some opposition was
offered to the reduction of duties on pigs, apples, butter, fish, and
other articles; but the Government proposals were affirmed by large
majorities, except in the case of apples, which were made to pay 6d.
in the bushel. The Opposition, however, raised the old question of the
sugar duties, which had been omitted from the list of changes; but the
Chancellor of the Exchequer declined to give way, and the Tariff Bill
passed the Commons on the 28th of June. It was fiercely debated in the
Upper House, but the Whigs did not carry any material amendments.

The vast development of the coal trade, which contributed so materially
to our national prosperity, occasioned the employment of a large
number of persons at high rates of wages. Upwards of 118,000 people
were working in coal mines. In the county of Durham there were more
persons thus employed under ground than in cultivating the surface.
It was a kind of work at which women and children could earn money,
and in some of the collieries their labour was made available to a
very large extent. It may be supposed that this practice entailed upon
the boys and girls so employed the most serious evils, physical and
moral. When this state of things began to attract public attention,
an extensive inquiry was instituted by the Children's Employment
Commission, which prepared three reports, presented to Parliament in
1842. The Commissioners collected a large mass of evidence at the
collieries which brought to light facts of the most astounding nature
as to the cruelty and demoralisation connected with the employment of
women and children in coal mines. It seemed almost incredible that such
practices could have existed in a civilised country, and showed the
extent to which the thirst for gain will carry men, under circumstances
where they can count upon impunity, and evade the censure of public
opinion. Lord Ashley took up the subject with his usual earnestness in
all questions affecting the welfare of the working classes, and in the
Session of 1842 he brought in a Bill founded upon the reports of the
Commission. The statement of facts with which he introduced the measure
excited the astonishment and indignation of the House, and greatly
shocked the moral sense of the country. The nature of the employment
in which the children were engaged was calculated to brutalise them in
every sense. They were obliged to crawl along the low passages with
barely room for their persons in that posture, each dragging a load
of coals in a cart by means of a chain which was fastened to a girdle
borne round the waist, the chain passing between the legs. This they
dragged through a passage often not as good as a common sewer, in an
atmosphere almost stifling. At this sort of work girls were employed as
well as boys, and they commonly worked quite naked down to the waist,
their only dress being a pair of loose trousers, and in this condition
they were obliged to serve adult colliers who worked without any
clothing at all. The grossest immorality was the natural consequence.
In Scotland a subcommission found one little girl, six years of age,
carrying an eight-stone weight, fourteen times a day, a journey equal
in distance to the height of St. Paul's Cathedral. The Commissioner
adds, "And it not unfrequently happens that the tugs break, and the
load falls upon those females who are following, who are, of course,
struck off the ladders. However incredible it may be, yet I have taken
the evidence of fathers who have ruptured themselves by straining to
lift coals on to their children's backs." The Bill of Lord Ashley was
passed almost unanimously by the Commons. In the Lords it was subjected
to considerable opposition, and some amendments were introduced. The
amendments were adopted by the Commons, and on the 10th of August,
1842, the Act was passed "to prohibit the employment of women and girls
in mines and collieries, to regulate the employment of boys, and to
make other provisions relating to persons working therein." The Act
prohibited the employment of any boys under ground in a colliery who
were under the age of ten years.

The example of Oxford, who made an attempt on the life of the Queen,
was followed by another crazy youth, named Francis, excited by a
similar morbid passion for notoriety. On the 29th of May, 1842, the
Queen and Prince Albert were returning to Buckingham Palace down
Constitution Hill in a barouche and four, when a man who had been
leaning against the wall of the palace garden went up to the carriage,
drew a pistol from his pocket, and fired at the Queen. Her Majesty was
untouched, and seemed unaware of the danger. The assassin was observed
by Prince Albert, and pointed out by him to one of the outriders, who
dismounted to pursue him; but he had been at once arrested by other
persons. The carriage, which was driving at a rapid pace, no sooner
arrived at the palace, than a messenger was sent to the Duchess of
Kent to announce the Queen's danger and her safety. The prisoner,
John Francis, the son of a machinist or stage carpenter at Covent
Garden Theatre, having been twice examined by the Privy Council, was
committed to Newgate for trial at the Central Criminal Court on a
charge of shooting at the Queen with a loaded pistol. He was only
twenty years of age. The trial of Francis took place on the 17th of
June, before Chief Justice Tindal, Baron Gurney, and Justice Patteson.
The principal witness was Colonel Arbuthnot, one of the equerries who
was riding close to the Queen when the shot was fired, and cried out
to a policeman, "Secure him!" which was done. Colonel Wylde, another
equerry, with several other witnesses, corroborated the testimony of
Colonel Arbuthnot; and it appeared that Francis had on the previous day
pointed a pistol at the Queen, though he did not fire. For the defence
it was alleged that the attempt was the result of distress, and that
the prisoner had no design to injure the Queen. The jury retired, and
in about half an hour returned into court with a verdict of "Guilty,"
finding that the pistol was loaded with some destructive substance,
besides the wadding and powder. Chief Justice Tindal immediately
pronounced sentence of death for high treason, that he should be
hanged, beheaded, and divided into four quarters. The sentence was
commuted to transportation for life.

Even this example was not sufficient to protect her Majesty from the
criminal attempts of miscreants of this class. Another was made on
the 3rd of July following, as the Queen was going from Buckingham
Palace to the Chapel Royal, accompanied by Prince Albert and the King
of the Belgians. In the Mall, about half way between the palace and
the stable-yard gate, a deformed youth was seen by a person named
Bassett to present a pistol at the Queen's carriage. Bassett seized
him and brought him to the police; but they refused to take him in
charge, treating the matter as a hoax. Bassett himself was subsequently
arrested, and examined by the Privy Council. When the facts of the
case were ascertained, the police hastened to repair the error of the
morning, and sent to all the police-stations a description of the real
offender. This led to the apprehension of a boy called Bean, who was
identified, examined, and committed to prison. His trial took place on
the 25th of August, at the Central Criminal Court. The Attorney-General
briefly related the facts of the case, and Lord Abinger, the presiding
judge, having summed up, the jury returned a verdict of "Guilty,"
convicting the prisoner of presenting a pistol, loaded with powder and
wadding, "in contempt of the Queen, and to the terror of divers liege
subjects." The sentence of the court was--"Imprisonment in Millbank
Penitentiary for eighteen calendar months."

The repetition of these infamous outrages excited great public
indignation, and led to a general demand that something effectual
should be done to put a stop to them by rendering the law more prompt
and effective, and the punishment more disgraceful. In compliance
with this demand, Sir Robert Peel brought in a Bill upon the subject,
which was unanimously accepted by both Houses, and rapidly passed into
law. Sir Robert Peel in his Bill proposed to extend the provisions of
the Act of the year 1800, passed after the attempt of Hatfield on the
life of George III., to cases where the object was not compassing the
life, but "compassing the wounding of the Sovereign." "I propose," he
said, "that, after the passing of this Act, if any person or persons
shall wilfully discharge or attempt to discharge, or point, aim, or
present at or near the person of the Queen any gun, pistol, or other
description of firearms whatsoever, although the same shall not contain
explosive or destructive substance or material, or shall discharge
or attempt to discharge any explosive or destructive substance or
material, or if any person shall strike, or attempt to strike the
person of the Queen, with any offensive weapons, or in any manner
whatever; or, if any persons shall throw or attempt to throw any
substance whatever at or on the person of the Queen, with intent in
any of the cases aforesaid to break the public peace, or to excite the
alarm of the Queen, etc., that the punishment in all such cases shall
be the same as that in cases of larceny--namely, transportation for
a term not exceeding seven years." But a more effective punishment
was added, namely, public whipping, concerning which Sir Robert Peel
remarked, "I think this punishment will make known to the miscreants
capable of harbouring such designs, that, instead of exciting misplaced
and stupid sympathy, their base and malignant motives in depriving her
Majesty of that relaxation which she must naturally need after the
cares and public anxieties of her station, will lead to a punishment
proportioned to their detestable acts."

Serious differences between Great Britain and the United States of
America occupied the attention of both Governments during the years
1841 and 1842, and were brought to a satisfactory termination by
the Ashburton Treaty, referred to in the Royal Speech at the opening
of Parliament in 1843. The questions at issue, which were keenly
debated on both sides, related to the right of search, the Canadian
boundary, and the McLeod affair. The Government of Great Britain
regarding the slave-trade as an enormous evil and a scandal to the
civilised world, entered into arrangements with other nations for
its suppression. For that purpose treaties were concluded, securing
to each of the contracting parties the mutual right of search under
certain limitations. The United States Government declined to be a
party to these treaties, and refused to have their vessels searched
or interfered with in time of peace upon the high seas under any
pretence whatever. Notwithstanding these treaties, however, and the
costly measures which Great Britain had recourse to for suppressing the
nefarious traffic in human beings, the slave trade was carried on even
by some of the nations that had agreed to the treaties; and in order to
do this more effectually, they adopted the flag of the United States.
For the purpose of preventing this abuse, Great Britain claimed the
right of search or of visitation to ascertain the national character
of the vessels navigating the African seas, and detaining their papers
to see if they were legally provided with documents entitling them to
the protection of any country, and especially of the country whose
flag they might have hoisted at the time. Lord Palmerston, as Foreign
Secretary, argued that while his Government did not claim the right to
search American merchantmen in times of peace, a merchantman could not
exempt itself from search by merely hoisting a piece of bunting with
the United States emblems and colours upon it. It should be shown by
the papers that the vessel was entitled to bear the flag--that she was
United States property, and navigated according to law. Mr. Stevenson,
the American Minister, protested strongly against this doctrine,
denying that there was any ground of public right or justice in the
claim put forth, since the right of search was, according to the law of
nations, a strictly belligerent right. If other nations sought to cover
their infamous traffic by the fraudulent use of the American flag, the
Government of the United States was not responsible; and in any case
it was for that Government to take such steps as might be required to
protect its flag from abuse.

The question of the Canadian boundary had been an open sore for more
than half a century. Nominally settled by the treaty of 1783, it had
remained in dispute, because that arrangement had been drawn up on
defective knowledge. Thus the river St. Croix was fixed as the frontier
on the Atlantic sea-board, but there were five or six rivers St. Croix,
and at another point a ridge of hills that was not in existence was
fixed upon as the dividing line. Numerous diplomatic efforts were made
to settle the difficulty; finally it was referred to the King of the
Netherlands, who made an award in 1831 which was rejected by the United
States. The question became of increasing importance as the population
grew thicker. Thus, in 1837, the State of Maine decided on including
some of the inhabitants of the disputed territory in its census, but
its officer, Mr. Greely, was promptly arrested by the authorities of
New Brunswick and thrust into prison. Here was a serious matter, and
a still greater source of irritation was the McLeod affair. McLeod
was a Canadian who had been a participator in the destruction of the
_Caroline_. Unfortunately his tongue got the better of his prudence
during a visit to New York in 1840, and he openly boasted his share in
the deed. He was arrested, put into prison, and charged with murder,
nor could Lord Palmerston's strenuous representations obtain his
release. At one time it seemed as if war was imminent between England
and the United States, but, with the acquittal of McLeod, one reason
for fighting disappeared.

Such being the state of our relations with America, Sir Robert Peel's
Government determined to send to Washington a special ambassador who
should be clothed with full powers to effect an amicable adjustment
of all the causes of dispute. The gentleman selected for this purpose
was Lord Ashburton. A more judicious selection could not possibly have
been made. Mr. Alexander Baring, who had been raised to the peerage in
1835, having been previously President of the Board of Trade and Master
of the Mint, was known throughout the world as one of our merchant
princes, and was the husband of an American lady, the daughter of Mr.
William Bingham, of Philadelphia, a senator of the United States. The
hopes which his mission excited were not disappointed. He sailed from
England in February, 1842, and after a tedious and stormy passage,
arrived at New York on the 1st of April. He immediately entered upon
negotiations with Mr. Webster. They continued till the month of August,
when a treaty was agreed upon and signed at Washington by the two
plenipotentiaries, the mutual exchange of ratifications to take place
in London within six months of that date. By that treaty the line of
the north-eastern boundary was settled, concession on the St. John
being purchased by the surrender of a strip of land to the States of
New York and Vermont. It was stipulated that Great Britain and America
should each maintain a sufficient squadron or naval force, carrying
not less than eighty guns, for the purpose of enforcing, separately
and respectively, the laws, rights, and obligations of each of the two
countries for the suppression of the slave trade, and should use their
joint influence for suppressing the slave markets. It also provided
for the mutual delivery to justice of all persons charged with murder,
or assault with intent to murder, or with piracy, robbery, forgery,
and arson committed within the jurisdiction of either country, should
they be found within the territories of the other; but the evidence of
criminality should be sufficient to warrant the committal for trial
of the fugitive according to the laws of the country in which he was
apprehended. This was a distinct withdrawal of Lord Palmerston's
pretensions with regard to the McLeod affair. The mission was thus
eminently successful, but Lord Palmerston was of another opinion, and
declaimed in the House of Commons against the "Ashburton surrender."
But the Commons were unprepared to condemn the work, and the debate
ended in a count-out. The House of Lords, on the motion of Brougham,
passed a vote of thanks to Lord Ashburton.

[Illustration: SEIZURE OF SIR WILLIAM MACNAGHTEN. (_See p._ 495.)]

The war in Afghanistan was alluded to in the Royal Speech, at the
opening of the Session of 1843, in terms of congratulation at the
complete success that had attended the recent military operations
in that country, owing to the high ability with which they had been
directed, as well as the constancy and valour of the European and
native forces, which had established, by decisive victories on the
scenes of former disasters, the superiority of her Majesty's arms,
and had effected the liberation of the British subjects that had been
held in captivity. This, therefore, is the proper time to relate
briefly the incidents of that war, some of which are full of romantic
interest. About the year 1837 the attention of the British Government
in India was attracted by the conduct of certain supposed agents
of Russia, in the countries to the west of the Indus. The Russian
ambassador, Simonitch, was urging the Shah to lay siege to Herat, "the
key to India," and the place was soon closely invested. It was saved
by the fortuitous presence in the town of a gallant young officer of
engineers, Eldred Pottinger, who rallied the inhabitants and beat off
the enemy. Meanwhile, another Russian agent, Vicovitch by name, had
been sent to Cabul. In order to counteract his designs, it was thought
desirable to establish an alliance with the rulers of Afghanistan.
With this view overtures were made to Dost Mahomed Khan through a
mission headed by Alexander Burnes. These having failed, chiefly from
the ill-advised interference with Burnes of the Governor-General, Lord
Auckland, the British Government sought to establish a friendly power
in Afghanistan by aiding the exiled prince, Shah Sujah, in another
attempt to regain his throne. The step, which was condemned by numerous
clear-sighted people in India, was probably forced upon Lord Auckland
by the Melbourne Ministry, to whom it was recommended by the military
authorities at home, among them the Duke of Wellington. The chief of
Cabul had an army of 14,000 men, including 6,000 cavalry, with 40
field-pieces. His brothers held Candahar and the surrounding country,
with a military force of 4,000 men and 50 guns. The British force
assembled to support the claims of his opponent amounted to 28,000 men,
aided by a contingent force of 6,000 Sikhs, furnished by the ruler of
the Panjab, and about 5,000 troops raised by the Shah's eldest son.
This combined force was called "the Army of the Indus." Under the chief
command of Sir John Keane, it advanced to the town of Quetta, and
thence to Candahar, which was occupied without opposition; and there,
on the 8th of May, 1839, Shah Sujah was solemnly enthroned. After
this the march was resumed towards Cabul. The fortress of Ghuznee,
believed by the Afghans to be impregnable, was blown up and taken by
storm. The invading army reached Cabul, and on the 7th of August the
restored sovereign made his public entry into his capital. Having
thus accomplished its mission, the Army of the Indus returned home,
leaving behind a detachment of 8,000 men. For two years Shah Sujah and
his allies remained in possession of Cabul and Candahar, Dost Mahomed
having surrendered after having won a partial success over the British
on the 2nd of November, 1840.

But the attempts to reduce the other chiefs to subjection were
unsuccessful. An unfortunate collision with the tribes of Ghilzais
formed a painful episode in the Afghan war. The Cabul Pass is a long
defile, through which the road runs from Cabul to Jelalabad, which
it was therefore necessary to keep open for the purpose of safe
intercourse between Cabul and British India. The Indian Government
thought that the most desirable mode of effecting this object was
to pay the Ghilzai chiefs a yearly sum from the Cabul treasury, in
order that our troops might not be molested. But retrenchment being
determined upon, the money was withheld; the chiefs, therefore, felt
that the British had been guilty of a deliberate breach of faith.
They were exasperated, assumed a hostile attitude, and cut off all
communication with British India. It therefore became necessary to
force the Pass, for which purpose Major-General Sir Robert Sale was
sent by General Elphinstone from Cabul, with a brigade, of light
infantry. On the 12th of October they entered the Pass, near the middle
of which the enemy were found posted behind precipitous ridges of the
mountains on each side, from which they opened a well-directed fire.
General Sale was hit with a ball above the ankle, and compelled to
retire and give the command to Colonel Dennie. The Pass was gallantly
cleared, but with severe fighting and heavy loss. After this was
accomplished, the force had still to fight its way through a difficult
country, occupied by an active enemy, for eighteen days. All the
commanding points of the hills were held by the Ghilzais, where they
were protected by breastworks; and though they had been from time to
time outflanked and routed, when the march was resumed and the cumbrous
train of baggage filed over the mountains the enemy again appeared from
beyond the most distant ridges, renewing the contest with increased
numbers and the most savage fury. Since leaving Cabul our troops had
been kept constantly on the alert by attacks night and day. Their
positions had been secured only by unremitting labour, throwing up
entrenchments, and very severe outpost duty. The enemy were eminently
skilful at the species of warfare to which their attempts had been
confined, and were armed with weapons that enabled them to annoy the
invaders from a distance at which they could be reached only by our
artillery. The brigade reached Jelalabad on the 12th of November.

The force left to keep possession of Cabul and guard the _protégé_ of
the Indian Government was so situated as to tempt the aggression of a
treacherous enemy. Sir William Macnaghten, the British Resident, and
his suite, resided in the Mission Compound, which was badly defended,
and commanded by a number of small forts, while the commissariat stores
were placed in an old fort, detached from the cantonment and in such
a state as to be wholly indefensible. Moreover, General Elphinstone,
the commander of the troops, was old and inefficient. A conspiracy had
been formed by the friends of Akbar Khan, son of the deposed sovereign,
Dost Mahomed, who forged a document, and had it circulated amongst the
principal men of Cabul, to the effect that it was the design of the
British envoy to send them all to London, and that the king had issued
an order to put the infidels all to death. The insurrection commenced
by an attack on the dwellings of Sir Alexander Burnes, who was about to
succeed Macnaghten, and Captain Johnson, who resided in the city. Sir
Alexander addressed the party from the gallery of his house, thinking
that it was a mere riot. The insurgents, however, broke in, killed him
with his brother, Lieutenant Burnes, and Lieutenant Broadfoot, and set
the house on fire. The Afghans then surrounded the cantonments, and
poured in a constant fire upon them from every position they could
occupy. They quickly seized the ill-defended commissariat stores, upon
which the existence of the British depended. The garrison bravely
defended itself with such precarious supplies as could be had from
the country; but at length these supplies were exhausted. Winter set
in, snow fell, and there was nothing before them but the prospect of
starvation. They therefore listened to overtures for negotiation, and
the British envoy was compelled to consent to these humiliating terms
on the 11th of December, 1841:--That the British should evacuate the
whole of Afghanistan, including Candahar, Ghuznee, and Jelalabad;
that they should be permitted to return unmolested to India, and have
supplies granted on their road thither; that means of transport should
be furnished to the troops; that Dost Mahomed Khan, his family, and
every Afghan then detained within our territories should be allowed
to return to their own country; that Shah Sujah and his family should
receive from the Afghan Government one lac of rupees per annum; that
all prisoners should be released; that a general amnesty should
be proclaimed; and that no British force should ever be sent into
Afghanistan without being invited by the Afghan Government. These terms
having been agreed to, the chiefs took with them Captain Trevor as a
hostage; but nothing was done to carry the agreement into effect, and
Macnaghten and Elphinstone remained irresolutely at Cabul. Some of
their staff attempted to bribe the Afghans, and Akbar Khan thereupon
determined to withhold supplies. It soon became evident that the
object was to starve out the garrison, and compel them to surrender
unconditionally. At length, on the 22nd of December, they sent two
persons into the cantonment, who made a proposal in the name of Akbar
Khan, that the Shah should continue king, that Akbar should become
his Prime Minister, and that one of the principal chiefs should be
delivered up to the British as a prisoner. This was a mere trap, into
which Sir William Macnaghten unfortunately fell with fatal credulity.
On the 23rd of December the envoy, attended by Captains Lawrence,
Trevor, and M'Kenzie, left the Mission Compound, to hold a conference
with Akbar Khan in the plain towards Serah Sung. Crowds of armed
Afghans hovering near soon excited suspicions of treachery. Captain
Lawrence begged that the armed men might be ordered off; but Akbar
Khan exclaimed, "No, they are all in the secret." At that instant Sir
William and the three officers were seized from behind and disarmed.
Sir W. Macnaghten was last seen on the ground struggling violently with
Akbar Khan, consternation and terror depicted on his countenance. "His
look of wondering horror, says Kaye, "will never be forgotten by those
who saw it, to their dying day." The other three officers were placed
on horses, each behind a Ghilzai chief, who galloped off with them to
a fort in the neighbourhood. Captain Trevor fell off his horse, and
was instantly murdered. The others were assailed with knives by the
infuriated Afghans, and barely escaped to the fort with their lives.
Meanwhile the head of the British Minister was cut off and paraded
through the streets, while the bleeding and mangled trunk was exposed
to the insults of the populace in the principal bazaar.

Notwithstanding all this treachery and barbarity, General Elphinstone,
feeling his situation desperate, was weak enough to trust the Afghan
chiefs, and to enter into a convention with them on the 1st of January,
in the hope of saving the garrison from destruction. The negotiations
were carried on by Major Pottinger, the defender of Herat, and it
was agreed that the former treaty should remain in force, with the
following additional terms:--That the British should leave behind all
their guns excepting six; that they should immediately give up all
their treasures; and that hostages should be exchanged for married
men with their wives and families. To this, however, the married men
refused to consent, and it was not insisted on.

In pursuance of this convention the garrison retired, and began their
fatal march on the 6th of January, 1842. The army consisted of 4,500
fighting men, with 12,000 camp-followers, besides women and children.
The snow lay deep upon the ground; they had scarcely commenced their
march when they were attacked by the Afghans, the guns were captured,
and they were obliged to fight their way, sword in hand, defending the
women and children as well as they could. During the whole way through
the snow the road was strewn with bodies and stained with blood. The
dead and dying were immediately stripped naked by the enemy, and their
corpses hacked to pieces with long knives. During all this time the
perfidious Akbar Khan sent messages, professing his regret at not being
able to restrain the Ghilzai tribe; and after they had got through the
Pass, he made a proposal, which was accepted, to take the ladies under
his protection. Accordingly, Lady Sale and Lady Macnaghten, with six
others, accompanied by their husbands, were left under his charge. The
British troops then halted for a day, bivouacking on the snow. The
cold was so intense that the Sepoys became benumbed and paralysed,
in which state the whole of them were next day attacked and cut to
pieces. The Europeans managed to hold together, but when they arrived
at Jugduluk, thirty-five miles distant from Cabul, only 300 out of
16,500 persons who left that city remained alive. At this place a halt
was ordered, and through the interference of Akbar Khan the miserable
remnant were permitted to occupy a ruined enclosure, where, worn out
by fatigue and utterly helpless, they lay down to rest in the snow.
General Elphinstone was detained a prisoner by Akbar Khan in a small
fort, whence he dispatched a note to Brigadier Anketell, advising him
to march that night, as there was treachery afoot. The wearied band,
aroused from their slumbers, accordingly moved on in the dark; but
their departure was noticed, they were attacked in the rear, they broke
into disorder, threatened to shoot their officers, separated in small
parties, and thus, scattered and confused, they were cut down almost
to a man. Of the officers, however, a considerable number escaped on
horseback; but they, too, were attacked wherever they appeared, until
only one gentleman, Dr. Brydon, survived to tell the dreadful story,
reaching Jelalabad on the 13th of January. It afterwards came out,
however, that several other officers were detained in captivity.

Lord Auckland was then Governor-General of India, but the period
of his tenure of office was drawing to a close. He hoped it would
end brightly, that the war for the restoration of an imbecile and
puppet king would have ended triumphantly, and that he would return
to his native land bearing something of the reflected glory of the
conquerors of Afghanistan. He had been cheered by the despatches of
the too sanguine envoy in the month of October, who spoke only of the
continued tranquillity of Cabul. November passed, however, without any
intelligence, and all was anxiety and painful suspense. Intelligence at
last came confirming the worst anticipations. Calcutta was astounded
at the news that Afghanistan, believed to be prosperous and grateful
for British intervention, was in arms against its deliverers. Suddenly
the tranquillity of that doomed country was found to be a delusion.
"Across the whole length and breadth of the land the history of that
gigantic lie was written in characters of blood." Confounded and
paralysed by the tidings of so great a failure, which he had not
energy to retrieve, he thought only of abandoning the vicious policy
of aggression that had ended so miserably, and given such a terrible
blow to the _prestige_ of British power in India, on which our dominion
in the East so much depended. He had owed his appointment to the
Whigs; and the Conservatives, who were now in office, had opposed
the policy of the Government regarding the Afghan war. But no one
seemed more sick of the policy of aggression than the Governor-General
himself. He became thoroughly convinced of the folly of placing a
detached force in a distant city which could be reached only through
dangerous defiles occupied by an ever-watchful enemy, depending for
supplies upon uncertain allies, and without any basis of operations.
The expedition had proved enormously expensive, and had drained the
Indian treasury of funds that should have been employed in developing
the resources of our Indian possessions. When all this had ended in
disastrous failure and national disgrace--when he recollected that the
directors of the Company, as well as the Government, had expressed
intense dissatisfaction at his policy, feeling conscious that their
complaints were just, and that their worst forebodings had been
realised, his spirit seems to have been completely broken; instead
of any attempt at retrieving the misfortunes of his Government, he
thought only of saving, if possible, what remained of the forces that
he had sent across the Indus. Writing to the Commander-in-Chief, Sir
Jaspar Nicolls, who was then on a tour through the Upper Provinces
of India, with reference to the sending forward of reinforcements,
he said he did not see how the sending forward of a brigade could
by any possibility have any influence on the events which it was
supposed were then passing at Cabul, which they could not reach
before April. In his opinion they were not to think of marching fresh
armies to the reconquest of that which they were likely to lose. He
feared that safety to the force at Cabul could only come from itself.
The Commander-in-Chief himself had been always of opinion that the
renewed efforts of the Government to support Shah Sujah on his throne,
and to establish a permanent influence in Afghanistan, was a great
mistake. However, owing to the energy of Mr. George Clarke, the
Governor-General's agent on the north-west frontier, and his assistant,
Captain, afterwards Sir, Henry Lawrence, forces were dispatched from
that quarter, under the command of General Pollock, who had commanded
the garrison of Agra, having been in the Indian service since 1803,
and having distinguished himself under General Lake. This appointment
gave the greatest satisfaction, as it was believed that he was selected
solely for his merit, and not through aristocratic influence. While
he was preparing to advance, Lord Auckland was recalled, and Lord
Ellenborough, the new Governor-General, arrived at Calcutta.

[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF DR. BRYDON AT JELALABAD. (_See p._ 496.)]

Meanwhile Brigadier Wild occupied a position of great difficulty at
Peshawur. He had four native infantry regiments, containing a large
number of young soldiers, whom the mutinous Sikhs had impressed
with a great horror of the Khyber Pass. The only cavalry he had was
a troop of irregular horse, and the only guns, four pieces of Sikh
artillery. Besides, the owners of the camels, which had been hired
at Ferozepore to proceed as far as Jelalabad, refused to advance
farther than Peshawur. It was in these circumstances that Sale and
M'Gregor earnestly urged the advance of the brigade for the relief
of that place. The fortress of Ali Musjid, regarded as the key to
the Khyber Pass, is situated about twenty-five miles from Peshawur:
and as it lay between the two positions of Sale and Wild, it was of
the utmost importance that it should be occupied. It was accordingly
resolved that one-half of Wild's brigade should be dispatched for this
service. On the 15th of January Colonel Moseley, with the 53rd and
64th Sepoy Regiments, started under cover of the night, and reached
their destination early in the morning. The fortress was about five
miles up the Pass. Soon after they had taken up their position they
discovered to their dismay that owing to some mistake, instead of
350 supply bullocks, which had been ordered, only fifty or sixty
had arrived. Here, then, were two regiments shut up in an isolated
fortress without provisions. Day after day passed and no succour came.
Wild made an effort to send forward supplies, but the attempt was a
disastrous failure. The Sikh auxiliaries mutinied to a man, and refused
to enter the Pass. There being no prospect of relief, Colonel Moseley
determined to evacuate the fortress. Captain Burt and Captain Thomas
offered to remain and keep possession of so important a position, if
only 150 men would volunteer for the service. But none were found
willing to undertake the perilous duty, and so Ali Musjid was abandoned
and suffered to fall into the hands of the Afreedis. The brigade had
some fighting on its way back. Some of its officers were killed, some
wounded and sick were abandoned, and some baggage was lost.

On the 5th of February General Pollock reached Peshawur, and found the
troops under Brigadier Wild for the most part sick and disorganised.
His first care was to restore the _morale_ of the troops. Even the
officers had yielded to an unworthy panic. Some of them openly declared
against another attempt to force the Khyber Pass, and one said he would
do his best to dissuade every sepoy of his corps from entering it
again. Owing to this state of things, Pollock was compelled to remain
inactive through the months of February and March, though the eyes of
all India were turned upon him, and the most urgent letters reached
him from Sale and M'Gregor to hasten to their relief. But the general
was resolved not to risk another failure, and his duty was to wait
patiently till the health, spirits, and discipline of the troops were
restored, and until fresh regiments arrived.

No wonder that pressing entreaties for succour came from Jelalabad.
The garrison had exerted themselves with the utmost diligence to
fortify the place, which they expected soon to be invested by hosts
of Afghans, flushed with victory and thirsting for blood and plunder.
The camp-followers were organised to assist in manning the walls, and
foraging parties were sent out with good effect, while there was yet
time to get in provisions. In the meanwhile Sale received a letter
from the Shah, demanding what were his intentions, as his people had
concluded a treaty with the Afghans, consenting to leave the country.
There was an army preparing for their expulsion, and there were many of
their countrymen and countrywomen hostages in the hands of a fanatical
and vindictive enemy, while there was little prospect of any immediate
relief from the Indian Government. There was even a feeling that they
had been abandoned by the Government at Calcutta, which did not wish to
maintain the supremacy of the British arms in Afghanistan. A council
of war was called on the 26th of January; a stormy debate ensued;
the majority were for coming to terms with the enemy and withdrawing
from the country, for which purpose the draft of a letter in reply
to the Shah was prepared. For two days its terms were debated, the
proposition to surrender being vehemently resisted by an officer named
Broadfoot, who declared it impossible that the Government should leave
them to their fate, and do nothing to restore the national reputation,
especially as a new Governor-General was coming out, doubtless with
new counsels, and the Duke of Wellington, now in power, would never
sanction so inglorious a policy. He was overruled, however, by the
majority, and the letter was sent to the Shah. An answer came demanding
that they should put their seals to the document. Another council was
held; Colonel Broadfoot renewed his remonstrances; he was joined by
Colonel Dennie, Captain Abbott, and Colonel Monteith. An answer was
sent which left the garrison free to act as circumstances might direct.
Next day tidings came from Peshawar, that large reinforcements were
moving up through the Punjab, and that all possible efforts were to be
made for their relief. There was no more talk of negotiation; every one
felt that it was his duty to hold out to the last.

The place had been fortified so well as to be able to defy any attack
that could be made upon it without artillery. Colonel Broadfoot had
insisted on bringing an ample supply of working tools, which were found
to be of the greatest advantage. In the official report of General
Sale, written by Havelock, there is a description of the works that
had been executed, and the immense labour that had been undertaken to
clear away everything that could serve as a cover for the enemy. They
demolished forts and old walls, filled up ravines, destroyed gardens,
and cut down groves; they raised the parapets six or seven feet high,
repaired and widened the ramparts, extended the bastions, re-trenched
three of the gates, covered the fortress with an outwork, and excavated
a ditch, ten feet deep and twelve wide, round the whole of the walls.
The enemy soon approached, under the command of Akbar Khan; the white
tents, which the British were obliged to abandon, appearing in the
distance. But the garrison were full of confidence, proudly rejoicing
in the work of their hands, and feeling that they were perfectly safe
behind the defences which they had raised with so much labour. In a
short time, however, they had an astounding illustration of the vanity
of all confidence in human strength, showing that, in a moment, it can
be turned into weakness.

On the 19th of February the men heard an awful and mysterious sound,
as if of thunder, beneath their feet. They instantly rushed to their
arms, and thus many lives were saved. A tremendous earthquake shook
down all the parapets built up with so much labour, injured several
of the bastions, cast to the ground all the guard-houses, made a
considerable breach in the rampart of a curtain in the Peshawur face,
and reduced the Cabul gate to a shapeless mass of ruins. In addition
to this sudden destruction of the fortifications--the labour of three
months--one-third of the town was demolished. The report states that,
within the space of one month, the city was thrown into alarm by the
repetition of full 100 shocks of this phenomenon of Nature. Still, the
garrison did not lose heart or hope. With indomitable energy, they
set to work immediately to repair the damage. The shocks had scarcely
ceased when the whole garrison was told off into working parties, and
before night the breaches were scalped, the rubbish below was cleared
away, and the ditches before them were dug out. From the following day
all the troops off duty were continually at work, and so well sustained
were their energy and perseverance, that by the end of the month the
parapets were entirely restored, or the curtain was filled in, where
restoration was impracticable, and every battery re-established. The
breaches were built up with the rampart doubled in thickness, and the
whole of the gates re-trenched. So marvellously rapid was the work of
restoration that Akbar Khan declared that the earthquake must have been
the effect of English witchcraft, as Jelalabad was the only place that
escaped.

At length General Pollock found himself in a position to advance for
the relief of the garrison, and marched his force to Jumrood. On the
4th of April he issued orders for the guidance of his officers. The
army started at twilight, without sound of bugle or beat of drum. The
heights on each side of the Khyber Pass were covered with the enemy,
but so completely were they taken by surprise that our flankers had
achieved a considerable ascent before the Khyberese were aware of
their approach. The enemy had thrown across the mouth of the Pass a
formidable barrier, composed of large stones, mud, and heavy branches
of trees. In the meantime the light infantry were stealing round
the hills, climbing up precipitous cliffs, and getting possession
of commanding peaks, from which they poured down a destructive fire
upon the Khyberese, who were confounded by the unexpected nature of
the attack. The confidence which arose from their intimate knowledge
of the nature of the ground now forsook them, and they were seen in
their white dresses flying in every direction across the hills. The
centre column, which had quietly awaited the result of the outflanking
movements by the brave and active light infantry, now moved on,
determined to enter the Pass, at the mouth of which a large number
of the enemy had been posted; but finding themselves outflanked,
these gradually retreated. The way was cleared, and the long train
of baggage, containing ammunition and provisions for the relief of
Jelalabad, entered the formidable defile. The heat being intense,
the troops suffered greatly from thirst; but the sepoys behaved
admirably, were in excellent spirits, and had a thorough contempt for
the enemy. It was now discovered that their mutinous spirit arose from
the conviction that they had been sacrificed by bad generalship. Ali
Musjid, from which the British garrison had made such a disastrous
and ignominious retreat, was soon triumphantly reoccupied. Leaving a
Sikh force to occupy the Pass, General Pollock pushed on to Jelalabad.
Writing to a friend, he said, "We found the fort strong, the garrison
healthy, and, except for wine and beer, better off than we are. They
were, of course, delighted to see us; we gave three cheers as we passed
the colours, and the band of each regiment played as it came up. It was
a sight worth seeing; all appeared happy. The band of the 13th had gone
out to play them in, and the relieving force marched the last few miles
to the tune, 'Oh, but you've been long a-coming!'"

But they were not then in the position of a beleaguered garrison.
Before relief came, they had won a victory that covered them with
glory. The troops had been in the highest pluck, and never seemed so
happy as when they could encounter any portion of the enemy. In this
state of feeling an idea began to take possession of the officers that
they were able to capture Mahomed Akbar's camp. A false report had come
to the Sirdar, that General Pollock had been beaten back with great
slaughter in the Khyber Pass; and in honour of this event his guns
fired a royal salute. A rumour also reached the garrison that there had
been a revolution at Cabul, and that the enemy was obliged to break up
his camp and hasten back to the capital. Whether either or both these
reports should prove true, the time seemed to have come for General
Sale to strike a blow. A council of war was held; the general would
have shrunk from the responsibility of an attack upon the camp; but
he was dissuaded by Havelock. Akbar Khan, at the head of 6,000 men,
was aware of their approach and ready to receive them. On issuing from
the gate, General Sale had ordered Colonel Dennie forward, to attack a
small fort, from which the enemy had often molested the garrison. The
colonel, at the head of the brave 13th, rushed to the fort; but having
entered the outer wall, they found themselves exposed to a murderous
fire from the defences of the inner keep. There Colonel Dennie received
a mortal wound, a ball passing through his sword-belt. Sale now gave
orders for a general attack on the enemy's camp, and in his despatch he
thus describes the result:--"The artillery advanced at a gallop, and
directed a heavy fire upon the Afghan centre, whilst two of the columns
of infantry penetrated the line near the same point, and the third
forced back its left from its support on the river, into the stream of
which some of his horse and foot were driven. The Afghans made repeated
attempts to check our advance by a smart fire of musketry, by throwing
forward heavy bodies of horse, which twice threatened the detachments
of foot under Captain Havelock, and by opening upon us three guns from
a battery screened by a garden wall, and said to have been served
under the personal superintendence of the Sirdar. But in a short time
they were dislodged from every point of their position, their cannon
taken, and their camp involved in a general conflagration. The battle
was over, and the enemy in full retreat, by about seven a.m. We have
made ourselves masters of two cavalry standards, re-captured four guns
lost by the Cabul and Gundamuk forces--the restoration of which to our
Government is matter of much honest exultation among the troops--seized
and destroyed a great quantity of material and ordnance stores, and
burnt the whole of the enemy's tents. In short, the defeat of Mahomed
Akbar, in open field, by the troops whom he had boasted of blockading,
has been complete and signal. The field of battle was strewed with the
bodies of men and horses, and the richness of the trappings of some
of the latter seemed to attest that persons of distinction were among
the fallen. The loss on our side was remarkably small--seven privates
killed, and three officers and fifty men wounded."

Great was the joy inspired by these successes. The new
Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, issued a proclamation, in which
he stated that he felt assured every subject of the British Government
would peruse with the deepest interest and satisfaction the report of
the entire defeat of the Afghan troops, under the command of Mahomed
Akbar Khan, by the garrison of Jelalabad. These feelings of joy and
satisfaction were shared by the Home Government. On the 20th of
February, 1843, the Duke of Wellington, in the House of Lords, moved
a vote of thanks to Sir George Pollock, Sir William Nott, Sir John
M'Caskill, Major-General England, and the other officers of the army,
both European and native, for the intrepidity, skill, and perseverance
displayed by them in the military operations in Afghanistan, and
for their indefatigable zeal and exertions throughout the late
campaign. Lord Auckland seconded the motion, which was carried without
opposition. Sir Robert Peel brought forward a similar motion in the
House of Commons on the same day, following the example of the Duke
in giving a succinct narrative of the events of the war, and warmly
eulogising, amidst the cheers of the House, the officers who had most
distinguished themselves. The resolution passed without opposition, Mr.
Hume having withdrawn an amendment which he had proposed.

[Illustration: RESCUE OF THE BRITISH PRISONERS FROM AKBAR KHAN. (_See
p._ 503.)]

It would be useless to encumber these pages with a detailed narrative
of the desultory conflicts that occurred at Candahar, where General
Nott commanded, amidst the greatest difficulties, until General England
came to his relief on the 10th of May; or at Khelat-i-Ghilzai, a
post entrusted to Captain Lawrence; or in the country about Ghuznee,
the garrison of which, commanded by Captain Palmer, was compelled to
surrender for want of water. He was an officer in General Nott's
division, and by his brother officers the fall of the place was
regarded as more disgraceful than the loss of Cabul. At length Generals
Pollock and Nott were enabled to overawe the Afghans. They were now
at the head of two forces in excellent health and spirits, eager to
advance on Cabul and avenge the national honour of Great Britain, which
had been so grievously insulted. But Lord Ellenborough had come to
the resolution that it was no longer necessary to imperil the armies
of Great Britain, and with the armies the Indian Empire, by occupying
Afghanistan. All that was now required to be done rested solely upon
military considerations, and especially upon regard to the safety
of the detached bodies of our troops at Jelalabad, at Ghuznee, at
Khelat-i-Ghilzai, and Candahar. He was, therefore, feverishly anxious
that the troops should retire at the earliest possible moment, and sent
orders to that effect to Pollock at Jelalabad and to Nott at Candahar.

There was one object, however, to be gained which was deeply
interesting to every true Briton in India as well as to the public at
home, without which no victories however glorious, and no infliction
of punishment however terrible, upon the enemy, would have been
considered satisfactory--namely, the deliverance of the captives that
were still held as hostages by Akbar Khan. On this subject the two
generals, Pollock and Nott, held a consultation. Nott declared that the
Government had thrown the prisoners overboard, and protested against
taking any measures for their recovery. But Pollock was determined that
the effort should be made, and took upon himself the responsibility
of telling Nott to ignore his orders. Ellenborough, half-persuaded,
sanctioned Pollock's remaining at Jelalabad until October, but
commanded Nott to retire either by Quetta or Cabul. Nott and Pollock,
however, disregarded these absurd orders, and the advance was
continued. The duty of rescuing the prisoners was undertaken by Sale,
whose own heroic wife was among them. He started in pursuit, taking
with him a brigade from the army at Jelalabad. The captives had been
hurried on towards the inhospitable regions of the Indian Caucasus, not
suffered to sleep at night, and were stared at as objects of curiosity
by the inhabitants of the villages through which they passed. They
reached their destination, Maimene, on the 3rd of September, and there,
in a short time, before Sale's brigade arrived, they had providentially
effected their own ransom. The commander of their escort was Saleh
Mahomed, a soldier of fortune, who had been at one time a soubahdar
in Captain Hopkins's regiment of infantry, and had deserted with his
men to Dost Mahomed. Between this man and Captain Johnson an intimacy
sprang up, which the latter turned to account by throwing out hints
that Saleh Mahomed would be amply rewarded, if, instead of carrying
off his prisoners, he would conduct them in safety to the British
camp. Days passed away without anything being done, till after their
arrival at Maimene, when, on the 11th of September, Saleh Mahomed sent
for Johnson, Pottinger, and Lawrence, and in a private room which had
been appropriated to Lady Sale, he produced a letter which he had just
received from Akbar Khan, directing him to convey the prisoners to a
more distant prison-house. This seemed to be a sentence of hopeless
captivity, but the officers' minds were soon relieved by another piece
of intelligence--namely, a message from General Pollock that if Saleh
Mahomed released the prisoners he should receive a present of 20,000
rupees, and a life pension of 1,000 rupees a month. Saleh said to
them, "I know nothing of General Pollock, but if you three gentlemen
will swear by your Saviour to make good to me what Synd Moortega Shah
states that he is authorised to offer, I will deliver you over to
your own people." The offer was gladly accepted; and an agreement was
drawn up, in pursuance of which Saleh Mahomed and his European allies
proclaimed their revolt to the people of Maimene and the surrounding
country. They deposed the governor of the place, and appointed a more
friendly chief in his stead. They supplied themselves with funds by
seizing upon the property of a party of merchants who were passing that
way. Major Pottinger assumed the functions of government, and issued
proclamations, and called upon the chiefs to come in and make their
salaam. But they might come for a different purpose, and hence they
began to fortify themselves, and prepare for a very vigorous defence.
While thus employed, a horseman was seen rapidly approaching from the
Cabul side of the valley, who proved to be the bearer of glad tidings.
The Jugduluk Pass had been forced; Akbar Khan had been defeated by
General Pollock at Tizeen, and had fled, no one knew whither. This was
delightful news indeed. The power of the oppressor was now broken, and
the captives were free. Early next morning they started for Cabul,
sleeping the first night upon stony beds under the clear moonlight;
they were awakened by the arrival of a friendly chief, who brought a
letter from Sir Richmond Shakespear, stating that he was on his way to
Maimene with a party of horse. On the 17th of September Shakespear,
with his cavalry, came up. Pushing on again, they were met by a large
body of British cavalry and infantry, under the command of Sir Robert
Sale. "In a little time the happy veteran had embraced his wife
and daughter; and the men of the 13th had offered their delighted
congratulations to the loved ones of their old commander. A royal
salute was fired. The prisoners were safe in Sale's camp. The good
Providence that had so long watched over the prisoners and the captives
now crowned its mercies by delivering them into the hands of their
friends. Dressed as they were in Afghan costume, their faces bronzed by
much exposure, and rugged with beards and moustachios of many months'
growth, it was not easy to recognise the liberated officers, who now
came forward to receive the congratulations of their friends."

The safety of the prisoners diffused universal joy throughout the
camps of the two generals; but there was one thing necessary, in
their opinion, in which the Government concurred, in order to give
the crowning proof of our complete triumph, and to restore the
unquestionable supremacy of our power, and compel the respect and
fidelity of the neighbouring provinces. This was the signal punishment
of Cabul for the atrocities that had been perpetrated there. The
hostile chiefs were now as eager to conciliate, as submissive in their
tone as they had been cruel and arrogant. Even Akbar Khan professed
the greatest friendship for the British, and repudiated the acts that
had been done in his name, at the same time restoring to his friends
Captain Bygrave, the last prisoner he had in his possession. The
Afghans had a maiden fortress in the town of Istalif, which is built
upon two ridges of the spur of Hindoo Koosh, which forms the western
boundary of the beautiful valley of Kohistan. There, in its fortified
streets and squares, as in a safe asylum, they had collected their
treasures and their women. The sagacious Havelock suggested that the
capture of this place, believed to be impregnable, would be a great
stroke of policy. General M'Caskill, therefore, made a rapid march
upon it, and after a desperate struggle, in which Havelock greatly
distinguished himself, the place was stormed in gallant style, the
Afghans in every direction giving way before our attacking columns.

The fate of Cabul was now to be decided. Some mark of just retribution
should be left upon it, and General Pollock determined to destroy
the great bazaar, where the mangled remains of our murdered envoy had
been exposed to the insults of the inhabitants. The buildings were
therefore blown up with gunpowder, the design being to allow the work
of destruction to extend no further. But it was impossible to restrain
the troops. "The cry went forth that Cabul was given up to plunder.
Both camps," wrote Major Rawlinson, "rushed into the city, and the
consequence has been the almost total destruction of most parts of the
town, except the Gholom Khana quarter and the Bala Hissar. Numbers of
people--about 4,000 or 5,000--had returned to Cabul, relying on our
promises of protection, rendered confident by the comparative immunity
they had enjoyed during the early part of our sojourn here, and by the
appearance ostentatiously put forth of an Afghan Government. They had
many of them re-opened their shops. These people have been now reduced
to utter ruin; their goods have been plundered, and the houses burnt
over their heads. The Hindoos in particular, whose numbers amount to
some 500 families, have lost everything they possessed, and they will
have to beg their way to India in the rear of our columns." Meanwhile
General Nott had retaken Ghuznee.

Having thus accomplished their mission, the two armies returned in
triumph to India. Lord Ellenborough was delighted, though he only
thwarted his generals. He was now at Simla, in the very house whence
his predecessor had issued his proclamation for the restoration of
Shah Sujah, which had been the cause of all our disasters. On the 1st
of October, the anniversary of the day when, two years before, he had
reversed the policy of Lord Auckland, he issued a proclamation from
the same room. It is a well-written State paper, ably reviewing the
situation of Indian affairs and clearly announcing the future policy
of our Indian Government. It is historically important, and deserves
to be permanently recorded in the history of England:--"The Government
of India directed its army to pass the Indus, in order to expel from
Afghanistan a chief believed to be hostile to British interests, and to
replace upon his throne a Sovereign represented to be friendly to those
interests and popular with his former subjects. The chief believed
to be hostile became a prisoner, and the Sovereign represented to be
popular was replaced upon his throne; but after events which brought
into question his fidelity to the Government by which he was restored,
he lost by the hands of an assassin the throne he had only held
amidst insurrections, and his death was preceded and followed by still
existing anarchy.[4] Disasters unparalleled in their extent, unless
by the errors in which they originated, and by the treachery by which
they were completed, have in one short campaign been avenged upon every
scene of past misfortune; and repeated victories in the field, and the
capture of the cities and citadels of Ghuznee and Cabul, have again
attached the opinion of invincibility to the British arms. The British
armies in possession of Afghanistan will now be withdrawn to the
Sutlej. The Governor-General will leave it to the Afghans themselves
to create a government, amidst the anarchy which is the consequence of
their crimes. To force the Sovereign upon a reluctant people would be
as inconsistent with the policy as it is with the principles of the
British Government, tending to place the arms and resources of that
people at the disposal of the first invader, and to impose the burden
of supporting a Sovereign without the prospect of benefit from his
alliance. The Governor-General will willingly recognise any Government
approved by the Afghans themselves, which shall appear desirous and
capable of maintaining friendly relations with neighbouring States.
Content with the limits Nature appears to have assigned to its
empire, the Government of India will devote all its efforts to the
establishment and maintenance of general peace, to the protection
of the sovereigns and chiefs, its allies, and to the prosperity and
happiness of its own faithful subjects."

Had Lord Ellenborough rested satisfied with this proclamation, all
would have been well; but he issued another proclamation which at
once shocked the religious feelings of the people of England by
its profanity, and covered him with ridicule by its absurdity. He
meant it to be a great stroke of policy; but it was simply a foolish
and gratuitous concession to an idolatrous priesthood, while it
exasperated the pride and fanaticism of the Mahometans. This was
the celebrated Somnath Proclamation. Its authenticity was at first
gravely doubted in India, but when, at length, it was placed beyond
doubt, there was an outburst of censure and ridicule such as never
before overwhelmed a Governor-General of India. "My brothers and my
friends," it ran, "Our victorious army bears the gates of the Temple
of Somnath in triumph from Afghanistan, and the despoiled tomb of
Sultan Mahomed looks upon the ruins of Ghuznee. The insult of 800
years is at last avenged. The gates of the Temple of Somnath, so long
the memorial of your humiliation, are become the proudest record of
your national glory, the proof of your superiority in arms over the
nations beyond the Indus. To you, princes and chiefs of Sirhind, of
Rajwarra, of Malwa, and of Guzerat, I shall commit this glorious
trophy of successful war. You will yourselves, with all honour,
transmit the gates of sandal wood through your respective territories
to the restored Temple of Somnath." One might have supposed that the
princes, chiefs, and people of India thus addressed by the supreme
representative of a Christian nation were all pure Hindoos; and that
the temple from which the gates had been carried away, 800 years
before, was still in their possession; whereas it was in ruins, and the
sacred ground on which it stood was trodden by Mahometans. Even if the
temple had been standing and occupied by the ancient idols, the Hindoo
priests would have regarded the gates as polluted by being so long in
the possession of unbelievers. Viewed as the reversal of a national
humiliation the act was equally absurd. It could be no gratification to
a subjugated race to have restored to them by a foreign Power a trophy
that had been carried away 800 years before. Worst of all, the gates
were discovered to be spurious copies of the originals. The Temple of
Somnath was never restored, and the gates were consigned to an armoury.

[Illustration: WHITEHALL GARDENS, LONDON.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Hungered.]

[Footnote 4: Shah Sujah had been murdered shortly after the
commencement of the British retreat.]




CHAPTER XVI.

THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    Opening of 1843--Assassination of Drummond--The _Quarterly_ on
    the League--Scene between Peel and Cobden--Mr. Villiers's Annual
    Motion--Peel's Free Trade Admissions--Progress of the League
    Agitation--Activity of its Press--Important Accessions--Invasion of
    the County Constituencies--The Free Traders in Parliament--Disraeli
    attacks Peel--Lord John Russell's Attitude--Debate on Mr.
    Villiers's Motion--Mr. Goulburn's Budget--The Sugar Duties--Defeat
    of the Government--Peel obtains a Reconsideration of the
    Vote--Disraeli's Sarcasms--The Anti-League League--Supposed Decline
    of Cobdenism--The Session of 1845--The Budget--Breach between Peel
    and his Party--The Potato Disease--The Cabinet Council--Memorandum
    of November 6--Dissent of Peel's Colleagues--Peel's Explanation
    of his Motives--Lord Stanley's Expostulation--Announcement in the
    _Times_--The Edinburgh Letter--Resignation of the Ministry--Russell
    Fails to Form a Government--Return of Peel--Parliament
    meets--Debates on the Queen's Speech--Peel's general Statement--Mr.
    Bright's Eulogium--The Corn Bill passes the Commons and the
    Lords--Defeat of Sir Robert Peel--Some scattered Facts of his
    Administration.


The year 1843 opened amid gloom and depression. The newspapers
published the fact that the revenue for the quarter ending on the
5th of January, as compared with the corresponding quarter of the
previous year, had decreased no less than £940,062, occasioned mainly
by diminished consumption of articles used by the industrial classes
of the community; and the _Times_ remarked, "It appears to us very
clear, whatever our Free Trade friends may say, that any alteration
which may be made in the Corn Laws ought not to be made irrespective
of financial considerations: we cannot at these times afford to throw
away revenue." In the same paper appeared a statement that flour was 30
per cent. dearer in London than in Paris. The Queen opened Parliament
on the 2nd of February, and the Speech delivered from the Throne
regretted the diminished receipts from some of the ordinary sources
of revenue, and feared that it must, in part, be attributed to the
reduced consumption of many articles caused by that depression of the
manufacturing industry of the country which had so long prevailed, and
which her Majesty had so deeply lamented. But it suggested no measure
of relief for the people.

A debate which took place shortly afterwards was characterised by a
memorable scene. In the month of January, 1843, Mr. Edward Drummond,
the private secretary of Sir Robert Peel, had been shot in the street
at Charing Cross, by an assassin, named M'Naughten. The unfortunate
gentleman died of the wound, and the wildest rumours agitated the town
as to the motive which had prompted the deed. Many asserted that it
was a political one. M'Naughten had been seen loitering in Whitehall
Gardens, and had followed his victim from Sir Robert Peel's residence
in that locality. It was at once rumoured that the Prime Minister was
the intended victim. M'Naughten had come from Glasgow, and it was said
that when the Queen was in Scotland Sir Robert Peel invariably rode in
the royal carriage, and Mr. Drummond in Sir Robert's own carriage. If
this were true, it was remarked, the assassin's confidence would have
been complete when he saw Mr. Drummond actually leave the house of Sir
Robert Peel. Although the assassin was afterwards proved to be insane,
the fact, coupled with the political excitement of the time, made a
painful impression upon the minds of public men.

In the eyes of the Conservatives the League was now the great cause
of the political ferment that had spread throughout the land. In the
_Quarterly Review_ for December a long and elaborate indictment had
been published against that body, and all who were in any way connected
with them, in which it was attempted to show that the means by which
the League sought to attain their objects were of the worst kind. The
writer of the article hinted that the League's system of levying money
for the avowed purpose of forcing Parliament to alter the law of the
land was criminally punishable. A Mr. Bailey had stated, at one of
the League meetings, that he had heard of a gentleman who, in private
company, had said that if one hundred persons cast lots, and the lot
should fall upon him, he would take the lot to deprive Sir Robert Peel
of life. The teller of this injudicious anecdote added, that "he felt
convinced that no such attempt ought to be made under any pretence
whatever; but he was persuaded of this, that when Sir Robert Peel went
to his grave there would be but few to shed one tear over it." The
speaker was a minister of the Gospel, and there could be no doubt that
he intended his anecdote only as an illustration of the frenzy to which
some persons had been wrought by the political circumstances of the
time; but this fact circulated by the great Tory organs, together with
all the most violent and excited passages which could be found in the
innumerable speeches delivered at League meetings, and in the pamphlets
and other publications of that body, tended to create a vague horror of
the Leaguers in the minds of that large class who read only writers on
that side which accords with their own views.

When the rumours of Mr. Drummond having been mistaken for Sir Robert
Peel were spread abroad, it was impossible for zealous Conservatives
to forget these things. If the assassin M'Naughten was mad, he was
certainly mad about politics; one of the first utterances of his
insane ravings when captured having been directed against the Tories
of Glasgow. One witness, indeed, swore that on his being asked if he
knew the gentleman shot at, M'Naughten replied, "It is Sir Robert
Peel, is it not?" The Minister's life was not considered safe, and
for some time two policemen in plain clothes followed him about in
the street wherever he went. On the 17th of February, the fifth night
of a debate in the Commons on the distress of the country, Mr. Cobden
rose to speak, and in the course of his address alluded to an attempt
made to identify the members of the Anti-Corn-Law League with a most
odious, a most horrible transaction which had lately occurred; but in
the conclusion of his speech, he said, "I tell the right honourable
gentleman [Sir Robert Peel] that I, for one, care nothing for Whigs or
Tories. I have said that I never will help to bring back the Whigs,
but I tell him that the whole responsibility of the lamentable and
dangerous state of the country rests with him." No outcry at these
words, even among the Ministerial party, evinced that the House
regarded them as overstepping the proper limits of debate. Loud cries
for Mr. Bankes, the Dorsetshire landowner, who had been attacked in
Mr. Cobden's speech, were the only party sounds uttered, but the Prime
Minister was immediately seen to rise. It has been stated that he was
"ill and harassed with public anxieties." He was certainly deeply
moved by the loss of his valued and confidential friend, Mr. Drummond.
His countenance, it is said, indicated extreme agitation, while by
gesticulating, and violently striking an empty box before him, he
succeeded in obtaining the ear of the House. It was then that his
audience perceived that the Minister regarded Mr. Cobden as pointing
him out for the hand of the assassin.

Sir Robert Peel began by saying, "Sir, the honourable gentleman has
stated here very emphatically, what he has more than once stated
at the conferences of the Anti-Corn-Law League, that he holds me
individually responsible for the distress and suffering of the country;
that he holds me personally responsible." This was pronounced with
great solemnity of manner, and at the word "individually" the Premier
was interrupted by a loud cheer from the Ministerial benches of a
very peculiar and emphatic kind. Sir Robert then continued, "Be the
consequences of those insinuations what they may, never will I be
influenced by menaces to adopt a course which I consider----" But the
rest of the sentence was lost in renewed shouts from the Ministerial
benches. Mr. Cobden immediately rose and said, "I did not say that I
held the right honourable gentleman personally responsible;" but he
was interrupted by shouts from the Ministerial benches of, "You did,
you did!" mingled with cries of "Order!" and "Chair!" The further
remark from Mr. Cobden, "I have said that I hold the right honourable
gentleman responsible by virtue of his office, as the whole context of
what I said was sufficient to explain," brought renewed shouts from
the same quarter of "No, no," accompanied by great confusion. When
Sir Robert, says a newspaper of the day, gave the signal for this new
light, then, and not till then, the sense so obtained burst forth with
a frantic yell, which would better have befitted a company of savages
who first saw and scented their victim, than a grave and dignified
assembly insulted by conduct deemed deserving of condemnation. Sir
Robert afterwards so far recovered from his excitement as to say, "I
will not overstate anything. Therefore I will not say I am certain
the honourable gentleman used the word 'personally';" but the debate
created a painful impression, which was increased by an article in
the _Times_ of the following day, deliberately attempting to connect
Mr. Cobden with the doctrine of assassination. The friends of the
Anti-Corn-Law movement, however, immediately held meetings throughout
the country, at which they expressed their indignation at the attempt
to fix a calumny upon the man whose arguments in favour of Free Trade
in food were unanswered and unanswerable.

Mr. Villiers's motion was again brought forward on the 9th of May.
The debate lasted for five nights, and ended in a division which,
though it showed a majority of 256 against inquiry, was encouraging as
evidencing an increase in the number of the Free Traders. The minority
numbered 125. The debate was chiefly remarkable for the violence of the
monopolist party. Sir Robert Peel said that the subject was exhausted,
and nothing new could be adduced. "The motion of Mr. Villiers was
fairly stated and proposed--there was no subterfuge involved in it.
But he thought that the principle must be applied generally and
universally to every article on which a duty was levied. They could
not stand on the single article of corn. By the adoption of the motion
they would sound the knell of Protection, and they must immediately
proceed to apply the principle to practice. This would at once upset
the commercial arrangements of the last year. The whole of our colonial
system must be swept away without favour and without consideration."
A contemporary writer describes the uproar which took place on this
occasion as exceeding anything that had been witnessed since the night
of the memorable division on the Corn Bill. The minority, it is said,
were aware that the remaining speeches, even if delivered, could not
be reported, and for that and other reasons were in their resolves
so resolute, that although outvoted in some divisions, the question
was just as often removed and seconded. At length Mr. Ross told Lord
Dungannon, that if he were contented to sit till eight o'clock, he
himself, and those who acted with him, would willingly sit till nine;
and it was at this stage that Sir Charles Napier slyly suggested that
they should divide themselves into three watches, after the fashion of
a ship's crew. This arrangement would afford ease to all, excepting the
Speaker, to whom he was sorry he could not afford the slightest relief.
Worn out at length by the violence of their exertions, and despairing
of victory, the majority yielded.

To the Anti-Corn-Law Leaguers there was at least the consolation of
finding that scarcely a speech was delivered by the Prime Minister
which did not contain some distinct recognition of the great principles
of political economy, showing how completely he had, in reality,
embraced those doctrines. On one occasion he remarked, "We have
reserved many articles from immediate reduction, in the hope that
ere long we may attain that which we consider just and beneficial
to all--namely, increased facilities for our exports in return. At
the same time, I am bound to say that it is for our interest to buy
cheap, whether other countries will buy cheap or no. We have a right to
exhaust all means to induce them to do justice; but if they persevere
in refusing, the penalty is on us if we do not buy in the cheapest
market." Several of the most conspicuous followers of Sir Robert Peel
also in their speeches recognised the abstract principles of Free
Trade in a way which was ominous for the continuance of the landlords'
monopoly. Among the most interesting instances of this was that of Mr.
Gladstone, the young statesman who was destined afterwards to play so
great a part in carrying forward the reforms of his chief.

The Minister still claimed the character of the landowner's friend;
and in the House of Commons, out of 658 members, 125 was the utmost
number that could be considered as Free Traders. But the progress of
the League agitation this year was immense. Five years had elapsed
since the Anti-Corn-Law Association in Manchester had put forth its
humble appeal for five-shilling subscriptions, and now in one single
year £50,000 had been given for the objects of the Association, and
it was resolved to raise a further fund of £100,000. Mr. Bright had
been returned for Durham in July, and already his touching appeals
for justice for the people had struck the ear of the House. Like his
fellow-labourers, Cobden, Colonel Thompson, George Wilson, W. J. Fox,
M.P., and others, he had been busy in all parts of England, addressing
audiences sometimes of 10,000 persons. The League speakers had also
visited Scotland, and had been everywhere received enthusiastically.
The great Free Trade Hall in Manchester was finished, and had been the
scene of numerous gatherings and Free Trade banquets, at which 7,000
or 8,000 persons had sometimes sat down together. The metropolis,
however, was still behind the great provincial cities in supporting
the movement; and the League, therefore, resolved on holding a series
of great meetings in Drury Lane Theatre, which was engaged for one
night a week during Lent. The first of these important meetings was
held on the 15th of March, and was attended by so large a number of
persons that the pit, boxes, and even the higher gallery were filled
immediately upon the opening of the doors. The succeeding meetings
were no less crowded and enthusiastic. Attempts were made to obstruct
these meetings, but without success. The use of Drury Lane Theatre had
soon to be relinquished, the Earl of Glengall and the committee of
shareholders having prohibited Mr. Macready, the lessee, from letting
it for political purposes. The League were, in like manner, refused
admittance to Exeter Hall; but they were soon enabled to obtain the use
of Covent Garden Theatre, where they quickly prepared for a series of
great meetings, which proved to be no less crowded and enthusiastic.

In the report prepared by the League it was stated that during a
very considerable portion of the year there were employed in the
printing, and making up of the electoral packets of tracts, upwards
of 300 persons, while more than 500 other persons were employed in
distributing them from house to house among the constituencies. To the
Parliamentary electors alone of England and Scotland there had been
distributed in this manner, of tracts and stamped publications, five
millions. Besides these, there had been a large general distribution
among the working classes and others, who are not electors, to the
number of 3,600,000. In addition, 426,000 tracts had been stitched
up with the monthly magazines and other periodicals, thus making
altogether the whole number of tracts and stamped publications issued
by the council during the year to amount to upwards of nine millions,
or in weight more than one hundred tons. The distribution had been made
in twenty-four counties containing about 237,000 electors, and in 187
boroughs containing 259,226 electors, making in boroughs and counties
together the whole number of electors supplied 496,226. The labours of
the lecturers employed during the year had been spread over fifty-nine
counties in England, Wales, and Scotland, and they had delivered about
650 lectures during the year. A large number of meetings had been held
during the year in the cities and boroughs, which had been attended by
deputations of members of the council, exclusive of the metropolis.
One hundred and forty towns had been thus visited, many of them twice
and three times; and the report further stated that such had been the
feeling existing in all parts of the kingdom that there was scarcely a
town which had not urged its claim to be visited by a deputation from
the council of the League.

The Covent Garden meeting became thenceforth an annual feature in the
political events of the metropolis, and the effects of this movement
in the chief city of the kingdom were seen in the election of Mr.
Pattison, the Free Trade candidate, for the City of London. Another
sign of the times was the accession to the ranks of the Anti-Corn-Law
League of Mr. Samuel Jones Loyd, the wealthy banker, a conspicuous
City man, and a great authority on financial matters. This gentleman
addressed a letter to the council of the League in October, 1844,
in which, after mentioning his reluctance to join a public body,
for whose acts he could not be responsible, he said, "The time is
now arrived when this must be overruled by other considerations of
overwhelming importance. The great question of Free Trade is now
fairly at issue, and the bold, manly, and effectual efforts which have
been made by the League in its support command at once my admiration
and my concurrence." Still more remarkable was the progress of the
League in its scheme of converting the agriculturists themselves to
their views. The truths which they had always maintained--that the
tenant farmer had no real interest in maintaining the Corn Laws, the
agricultural labourer, if possible, less, and that even the landed
proprietor, on a far-seeing view of his interest, would be on the
same side as themselves--were based upon arguments easily understood
by calm reasoners, and were even beginning to make way with these
classes themselves. Not a few great landowners and noblemen had openly
classed themselves among their supporters. Foremost among these was
Earl Fitzwilliam, who was one of the most effective speakers at
Anti-Corn-Law meetings by the side of Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright.
Among the noblemen openly supporting their cause were the Marquis
of Westminster, Lord Kinnaird, Earl Ducie, the Earl of Radnor, Lord
Morpeth, and Earl Spencer.

[Illustration: CAPT. THOMAS DRUMMOND, UNDER-SECRETARY FOR IRELAND.]

But the League did more than attempt to convert the country party. They
determined to create a country party of their own. They had already
taken up the registration of voters in the boroughs, from which they
proceeded, with that practical common sense which had distinguished
nearly all their movements, to inquire into the position of the country
constituencies, where hitherto the landowners had held undisputed sway.
The scheme which resulted from this incursion into the dominions of
the enemy was developed by Mr. Cobden at a meeting in the Free Trade
Hall, Manchester, on the 24th of October, 1844. The Chandos clause in
the Reform Act, giving the tenant-farmers votes for county members, had
so strengthened the landlords' influence in the county that opposition
at most of the county elections was hopeless. But Mr. Cobden showed
his hearers that the counties were really more vulnerable than the
small pocket boroughs. In many of these there was no increase from year
to year in the number of voters--no extension of houses. The whole
property belonged to a neighbouring noble, and as Mr. Cobden said, "You
could no more touch the votes which he held through the property than
you could touch the balance in his banker's hands." But the county
constituency might be increased indefinitely, for there it required
but a freehold property of the value of forty shillings a year to give
a man a vote. This sum had been adopted from an ancient regulation,
when money was of far greater value, and land of far less money worth
than it was then; but the forty-shilling qualification existed, and was
a powerful engine for the creation of voters. Up to that time it had
had but little effect. The laws of England, but more especially the
habits and prejudices of landowners, had always kept the land of the
county in so few hands as to present an extraordinary contrast with the
condition of things in all other nations of Europe. The danger of the
forty-shilling clause to aristocratic influence in the county was not
perceived, simply because forty-shilling freeholders were rare. But
there was no reason why they should be rare. The passion for possessing
freehold land was widely spread, and a few facilities offered for
purchasing it would soon create a large number of small holders. The
chief difficulty in the way of this had hitherto been the great cost
of transferring land. Owing to the complicated laws of real property,
the land, unlike other articles, could only be bought and sold after
a minute investigation into the owner's title, which necessitated an
historical account of the ownership extending back over many years. All
this, however, the League could easily obviate. They could buy land
in the lump, register its title once for all, and part it into small
pieces for small buyers. "This," remarked Mr. Cobden, "must be done,"
and it was done. The Conservative party sneered at the Manchester man's
proposition of serving land over a counter, like calico, by the yard;
but the movement soon began to tell upon elections, and to alarm the
great landed proprietors.

The year 1844 brought little progress to the Free Traders in
Parliament. The members of the House of Commons had been elected in
1841, in the teeth of the Free Trade cry raised by the Whigs, and
before the League had made its power felt in the elections. Unless the
Minister were compelled to dissolve Parliament, they were irremovable
for four years longer, and could safely wait. Parliament met on the
1st of February. The Queen's Speech congratulated the country on the
improved condition of the trade and manufactures of the country,
and the increased demand for labour, from which it was easily
prognosticated that no further concessions were intended that Session.
Sir Robert Peel declared that the Government "did not contemplate
and had never contemplated any change in the existing Corn Laws." At
recent public meetings influential members of the Tory party had openly
threatened the Minister with expulsion unless he maintained those laws
for their benefit--a fact which drew from Mr. Villiers the remark that
he regretted that the Prime Minister had not "the spirit to turn round
upon these people, and show them their utter helplessness without him,
their utter inability to administer, without him, the government upon
their own system." Indeed, it began now to be assumed by all persons
favourable to Free Trade that the Minister's opinions were really far
in advance of his own party, and that he needed only a favourable
opportunity to declare himself openly at variance with their views. The
great meetings at Covent Garden Theatre, immediately before the opening
of Parliament, kept the subject before the public.

On the 11th of March the Earl of Radnor presented a petition adopted
at a great meeting of inhabitants of the county of Somerset, which
led to a long debate, in the course of which the Duke of Wellington
earnestly recommended their lordships to leave the Corn Law as it
was, and to continue to maintain the system which it was the object
of that law to carry into effect; and the Duke of Richmond declared
that he was surprised that any doubt could exist that "the farmers
were, almost to a man, hostile to the delusions of Free Trade." On the
following evening Mr. Cobden brought forward a motion to inquire into
the effects of protective duties on the interests of the tenant-farmers
and labourers of the country, promising that he would not bring
forward a single witness who should not be a tenant-farmer or a landed
proprietor; but the debate concluded with a division which negatived
the motion by 244 votes to 153.

On the 17th of March, a few nights after Mr. Cobden's motion, Mr.
Miles brought forward a motion for relief to the agricultural interest
in the reduction or remission of taxation. He complained that there
had been an importation of wheat during the last thirty-two months
seven or eight times greater in amount than in the thirty-six months
immediately subsequent to the introduction of the Corn Law of 1828.
The abundance of meat in Leadenhall, Smithfield, and Newgate Markets,
through the importation of foreign cattle, was also made a subject of
reproach against the Ministry, and he told the House, as the spokesman
of the agricultural party, "that they had no confidence in the measures
which the Government proposed." They thought that anything would be
better than their present position. They saw that the tariff which was
passed three years ago was now going to be revised again, and that the
shield of protection which was thrown over some of the productions of
their industry was about to be removed still farther from them. In such
circumstances they could not refrain from asking themselves what there
was to prevent the Corn Laws from going next? Mr. Disraeli then, in a
strain of sarcasm which is stated to have elicited cheers and laughter
from the House, assailed the consistency of the Premier, and the tone
in which he rebuked the mutinous and rebellious members of his party.
He believed, he said, Protection to be in the same condition now as
Protestantism had been in 1828, and he, who honoured genius, would
rather see the abolition of all Protection proposed by Mr. Cobden
than by any right honourable gentleman or by any noble lord on either
side of the House. It might be necessary, before such an abolition
was accomplished, for the Premier to dissolve the Parliament for the
benefit of the party which he had betrayed, and to appeal to the
country, which universally mistrusted him. His solemn and deliberate
conviction was that a Conservative Government was an organised
hypocrisy.

Progress was again shown in a speech of Lord John Russell in the debate
on the condition of the people on the 26th of May. Still clinging to
his idea of a fixed duty, he said, "If I had a proposition to make, it
would not be the 8s. duty which was proposed in 1841." An exclamation
of "How much, then?" from Sir James Graham drew forth the further
remark--"No one, I suppose, would propose any duty that would be less
than 4s.; and 4s., 5s., or 6s., if I had a proposition to make, would
be the duty that I should propose." The awkward anomalies of Sir
Robert Peel's position were the frequent subject of the attacks of his
enemies at this time; but the country felt that there was a littleness
in the Whig leader's paltry and vacillating style of dealing with a
great question, beside which, at least, the position of the Minister
exhibited a favourable contrast.

Mr. Villiers's annual motion, brought forward on the 25th of June, was
scarcely more successful than that of Mr. Cobden. Lord John Russell
still harped upon his fixed idea of a fixed duty. In his view the
country suffered not from the Corn Law, but only from the form in which
it was administered. He said he was not prepared to say either that
the Corn Law should be at once abolished, or that the existing law
should be maintained. While such was the feeble policy of the leader
of that Whig party which had set up a claim to a sort of monopoly of
Free Trade principles, it was no wonder that the country began to look
for relief to the Minister who had introduced the tariff of 1842;
but Sir Robert Peel as yet moved too slowly to rouse the enthusiasm
in his favour of the Anti-Corn-Law League. "There were not," he
remarked, "ten reflecting men out of the Anti-Corn-Law League, who did
not believe that a sudden withdrawal of protection, whether it were
given to domestic or colonial produce, would cause great confusion
and embarrassment. In the artificial state of society in which we
lived we could not act on mere abstract philosophical maxims, which,
isolated, he could not contest; they must look to the circumstances
under which we have grown up, and the interests involved. Ireland,
dependent on England for a market for her agricultural produce, was
a case in point. He was not prepared to alter the Corn Law of 1842,
and did not contemplate it. Seeing that Lord John Russell had avowed
himself a consistent friend to Protection, and was opposed to total
repeal, he thought he was somewhat squeamish in flying from his
difficulty, and declining to vote against the motion. As to the Corn
Law, the Government did not intend to alter it, or diminish the amount
of protection afforded to agriculture." On the division the numbers
for the motion were 124, and against it, 330. On the whole, the cause
of Free Trade made but small progress in Parliament in this year,
though out of doors the agitation was carried on with ever-increasing
vigour. As regards Mr. Villiers's motion, the progress made was shown
principally in the decrease of the majority against it. In 1842, when
he first put the question of total repeal on issue before the House, he
had 92 votes, and 395 against him; in 1843 he had 125 votes, and 381
against him; in 1844, 124 votes, and 330 against him.

Mr. Goulburn's financial statement was made on the 8th of May, 1844.
It comprised some small reductions of taxation, and the foretaste of
an important modification of the sugar duties. As a money account it
was encouraging, and showed some progress in diminishing the disastrous
effects of Whig finance. The past financial year had witnessed a gross
surplus of revenue over expenditure of more than £4,000,000; or, after
paying the deficiency of the previous year, £2,400,000; and after
making other deductions there was, for the first time for many years,
an available surplus, amounting to £1,400,000. The anticipated good
effects of relieving industry from burdensome taxes had been more than
realised. The estimate of the revenue had actually been exceeded by
£2,700,000. The Budget, therefore, fully justified the policy of 1842;
but the Chancellor of the Exchequer ventured only on a small and timid
extension of the principles then laid down, with the reduction or
abolition of duty on flint-glass, currants, wool, and some other minor
matters. The abolition of the wool duty provoked new hostility to the
impolitic duty on cotton. The concession to Free Trade principles was
small; but the movement was kept up, and there was at least no sign of
reaction.

Although announced with the Budget, the proposed change in the sugar
duties formed a separate and more momentous question. At that time,
strictly foreign sugar was virtually prohibited by the excessive
differential duties--British plantation sugar paying a duty of 25s.
3d. per cwt., foreign, of 66s. 2d. When the Whig Administration had
proposed to diminish this enormous difference, the Tories had pleaded
the injustice to the West India landlords of taking away their slaves,
and then exposing them to competition with countries still possessing
slave labour. The question had thus become one of party. The Whigs were
pledged to consult the interests of the British consumer; the Tories
to protect the West Indies; and beating the Whigs on this very point,
the Tories had turned them out of office. The British consumer had,
however, happily some voice in the elections, and the problem was now
to conciliate him without a glaring breach of consistency. Accordingly,
the tax on our colonial sugar was to be left untouched, as was the tax
on foreign sugar, the growth of slave countries; but henceforth it was
proposed that the duty on foreign sugar, the produce of free labour,
should pay only 10s. more than colonial. Thus was the first great blow
struck at the protective sugar duties, and at that West Indian party
which had so long prevailed in Parliament over the interests of the
people. But the battle had yet to be fought.

The West India interest in the City held great meetings, and instructed
their Parliamentary representatives for the coming contest. The Free
Traders argued that the Government proposition was simply that the West
India proprietors should receive 10s. per cwt. more for the sugar they
sent here than the growers in any other part of the world could get.
This was equivalent to a tax of £2,000,000 upon the people of Britain,
because the West India landlords were alleged to be in distress, and
could not cultivate their estates. It was, indeed, the old question of
protection for the landed interest on the ground of peculiar burdens.
The white population of the West Indies amounted only to about a tenth
of the whole; and it was admitted that the free coloured people,
forming the bulk of the community, had no interest in the proposed
monopoly. Moreover, it had been shown by repeated experiment that these
differential duties always defeated their own objects. The slave-grown
sugar was simply exported first to the free country, and then to
Britain--the British people paying in the enhanced cost of the article
all the cost of this circuitous mode of supply.

The opposition, however, was powerful. When Mr. Goulburn brought
forward his resolution by which sugar certified to be the growth
of China, Manila, Java, or other countries where no slave labour
was employed, should be admitted at a duty of 34s., the colonial
duty being 24s., the danger of the position of the Ministers was
soon perceived. Lord John Russell proposed an amendment in favour
of admitting all foreign sugars at 34s., a proposal which, though
calculated to maintain the price of sugar at a higher point than the
Government proposition, was less distasteful to the Free Traders, as
abolishing the differential principle. This amendment was rejected by
a majority of only 69. On the 14th of June the Government Bill came
on for a third reading, and the contest then began in earnest. Mr.
Miles, the representative of the West India party, moved an amendment
proposing a reduction of the duty on colonial sugar to 20s., instead
of 24s., and the raising of the duties on foreign to 30s. and 34s. The
Free Trade party were not entrapped by this offer of a reduction of
4s. on colonial sugar. They saw that Mr. Miles's amendment would only
establish a differential duty of 14s. instead of 10s., the difference
going to the West India planters. They now, moreover, at least hoped
more from Sir Robert Peel than from any Minister likely to succeed him.
Mr. Cobden and the League party therefore supported the Government; but
so powerful was the combination against them that the division, which
took place on the 14th of June, left Ministers in a minority of 20.

[Illustration: FREE TRADE HALL, MANCHESTER. (_From a Photograph by
Frith and Co., Reigate._)]

The events that followed form part of the general history of that time.
The Government well knew that they were more popular in the country
than their opponents. In the few days that succeeded, during which men
were doubtful if they would resign, the Minister had had time to feel
the power of that popularity, and the value of the support of the Free
Trade party. To satisfy the selfish expectations of the more bigoted
of his own supporters must have seemed to him more and more helpless.
To break with them, and to look elsewhere for the support which their
vindictiveness would inevitably render necessary--to become less a
leader of a class, and more a statesman seeking the true foundations
of power in a steady regard to the welfare of the great bulk of the
community--were ideas naturally present to the Minister's mind. When he
met Parliament again to announce the determination of the Government
to ask the House to reconsider its decision, his tone was observed to
be more bitter than before. His allusions to the defections of his
own followers were significant; but they plainly indicated that his
course was taken. "We cannot conceal from ourselves," he said, "that in
respect to some of the measures we have proposed, and which have been
supported, they have not met with that cordial assent and agreement
from those for whose character and opinions we entertain the highest
and sincerest respect. But I am bound to say, speaking here of them
with perfect respect, that we cannot invite their co-operation and
support upon the present occasion by holding out expectations that we
shall take a middle or other course with regard to those measures which
we believe to be best for the interests of the country, and consistent
with justice." This modest but firm defiance of the ultra-Protectionist
party was not lost upon the Free Traders in the House; neither were the
Minister's further remarks--"We have thought it desirable to relax the
system of Protection, and admit into competition with articles of the
domestic produce of this country articles from foreign lands. We have
attempted to counsel the enforcement of principles which we believe to
be founded in truth, and with every regard for existing institutions,
and with every precaution to prevent embarrassment and undue alarm."

It was on this occasion that Mr. Disraeli, rising from the benches
filled with the ordinary supporters of the Government, delivered one
of those bitter and sarcastic diatribes which thenceforward proved so
effective in arousing the revengeful feelings of those of the party
who believed their interests to have been betrayed in deference to the
League. "I remember," he said, "in 1841 the right hon. baronet used
these words: he said, 'I have never joined in the anti-slavery cry, and
now I will not join in the cry of cheap sugar.' Two years have elapsed,
and the right hon. gentleman _has_ joined in the anti-slavery cry, and
_has_ adopted the cry of cheap sugar. But," he continued, appealing
to the rebellious supporters of the Government, whom the Minister had
just defied, "it seems that the right hon. baronet's horror of slavery
extends to every place except the benches behind him. There the gang is
still assembled, and there the thong of the whip still resounds. The
right hon. gentleman," he added, "came into power upon the strength of
our votes, but he would rely for the permanence of his Ministry upon
his political opponents. He may be right--he may even be to a certain
degree successful in pursuing the line of conduct which he has adopted,
menacing his friends, and cringing to his opponents; but I, for one,
am disposed to look upon it as a success neither tending to the honour
of the House nor to his own credit. I therefore must be excused if I
declare my determination to give my vote upon this occasion as I did
in the former instance; and as I do not follow the example of the hon.
and gallant member near me (Sir H. Douglas), it will not subject me to
the imputation of having voted on the former occasion without thought
or purpose." The appeal of the Ministers, however, was, fortunately for
the Free Trade movement, for a time successful. The Government were
reinstated by a vote of 255 to 233, in a House in which both parties
had evidently done their utmost.

The party which, under the guidance of Mr. Disraeli, Lord Stanley,
and Lord George Bentinck, was destined to present so formidable an
opposition to the Minister's policy, and to render his labours in the
interests of the people so full of pain and anxiety, as yet only marked
its existence by murmurs along the Conservative benches. As usual,
the somewhat revived prosperity of the country was the chief pretext
for resisting change. People with this view did not see the danger of
opposing reforms until a sudden storm compelled the Legislature to
face them with mischievous haste. It had again and again been shown
that the evils of the old system of restrictions lay chiefly in the
fact that they led to violent fluctuations in the circumstances of
the people. Nothing, therefore, could be more certain than that, even
had the prosperity been tenfold greater, one of those alternations of
depression which brought so much misery to the people would not be
long in making its appearance. The monopolist party, however, seldom
looked beyond the day or the hour. There had been rick-burning in the
country, and an agricultural labourer, named Joseph Lankester, had
declared that his object in committing this crime was to raise the
price of wheat, and so bring about those high wages which the political
farmers and landlords were always saying came from good prices in the
corn market. The Protectionist lords declared, nevertheless, that the
Anti-Corn-Law League, with their mischievous agitation, their models of
the big and the little loaf, their lectures and meetings, their music
and banners, their poisonous tracts and pamphlets, were at the bottom
of these disturbances. In the towns, however, political agitation
was comparatively silent. To some agriculturists it appeared a fair
compromise to maintain the protective laws in consideration of their
being content to put up with the low prices of the day. Any way, the
dreaded League seemed to them to be checked.

The landowners, headed by the Duke of Richmond, had established an
Anti-League League, for counteracting the Manchester men with their own
weapons--an association which the satirists of the day represented by
a slightly modified picture from the fable of the frog and the bull.
To those, however, who read only the tracts of the Anti-League League,
it doubtless appeared that the torrent was to some degree arrested.
It began to be asserted that the League was extinct, that the country
was sick of its incessant agitation, and that Mr. Cobden and Mr.
Bright were about to "back out." These, however, were not the views
of the League men. The lists of voters, the freehold land scheme, and
the gathering in of that £100,000 fund which was now fast approaching
completion, furnished them with abundant employment, and their campaign
was carried on with a success which gave sure promise of the final
capture of the stronghold of the enemy.

The Parliamentary Session for 1845 was opened by the Queen in person on
the 4th of February. At a meeting a few days earlier, Mr. Cobden had
warned his hearers that no change in the Corn Laws could be expected
from Sir Robert Peel so long as the Ministry could avail themselves of
the old excuse, the revived prosperity of manufactures and commerce.
"Ours," he had said, "is a very simple proposition. We say to the
right honourable baronet, 'Abolish the monopolies which go to enrich
that majority which placed you in power and keeps you there.' We know
he will not attempt it; but we are quite certain he will make great
professions of being a Free Trader, notwithstanding."

The Budget was brought forward on the 13th of February. It proposed
to continue the income tax, which experience had shown to afford a
means of supplying the place of taxes repealed, until such time as
the revenue should recover itself. The Minister then unfolded his
scheme, which formed no unworthy complement to his great Budget of
1842. It proposed a reduction in the sugar duties, which could not
be calculated at less than £1,300,000, and was expected to lower the
price to the consumer by about 1-1/4d. a pound. The Minister then
proceeded to refer to a list of articles, 430 in number, which yielded
but trifling amounts of revenue, and many of which were raw materials
used in the various manufactures of the country, including silk, hemp,
flax, and yarn or thread (except worsted yarn), all woods used in
cabinet-making, animal and vegetable oils, iron and zinc in the first
stages, ores and minerals (except copper ore, to which the last Act was
still to apply), dye stuffs of all kinds, and all drugs, with very few
exceptions; on the whole of these articles he proposed to repeal the
duties altogether, not even leaving a nominal rate for registration,
but retaining the power of examination. The timber duties generally he
proposed to continue as they were, with the one exception of staves,
which, as the raw material of the extensive manufacture of casks, he
proposed to include with the 430 articles, and to take off the duty
altogether. On these articles the loss amounted to £320,000. The next
and most important relief in the whole proposition was the article
of cotton wool, on which the Minister proposed also to reduce the
duty altogether, and on which he estimated the loss at £680,000; and
these constituted the whole of the proposed reductions of the import
duties--that is, sugar, cotton wool, and the numerous small articles in
the tariff. The next items of reduction proposed were the few remaining
duties on our exports, such as china-stone, and other trifling things,
but including the most important article of coals, on which the duty
had been placed by the Government, and at the result of which Sir
Robert Peel candidly avowed his disappointment. The duties he estimated
at £118,000. He then passed on to the excise duties, among which he had
selected two items of great importance for entire repeal--the auction
duty and the glass duties. By a repeal of the auction duty he estimated
a loss of £300,000; but as he proposed, at the same time, to increase
the auctioneer's licence uniformly from £5 to £15 (making one licence
answer for all purposes, whereas, at that time, several licences were
often necessary to the same party) he expected from 4,000 auctioneers
an increased income, so as to reduce this loss to £250,000. On the
important article of glass he gave up £642,000. These constituted the
whole of his proposals; and the surplus of £2,409,000 was thus proposed
to be disposed of:--Estimated loss on sugar, £1,300,000; duty on cotton
repealed, £680,000; ditto on 430 articles in tariff, £320,000; export
duty on coal, £118,000; auction duty, £250,000; glass, £642,000. Total,
£3,310,000.

The Budget excited extraordinary interest throughout the country;
but the proposed sugar duties were, in the eyes of the Free Traders,
objectionable, as maintaining the differential rates in favour of
the West Indian landlords. Though well received on the whole, it was
impossible not to see in the Budget traces of the anomalous position
of the Minister. One newspaper described his measures as combining
the most glaring inconsistencies that ever disfigured the policy of
any Minister, and arranged in parallel columns illustrations of its
assertion. Sir Robert Peel was charged with proposing at the same
time a tariff whose express object was declared to be to cheapen the
necessaries of life and corn, and provision laws whose sole object
was to make the chief necessaries of life dear; with professing great
concern to relieve trade and commerce, for the sake of which a property
tax was proposed, combined with a still greater concern to uphold the
rent of land, for the sake of which trade and commerce were loaded
with a bread tax; with devising taxes for the mere purpose of revenue;
with levying taxes for the mere purpose of protection; with repealing
the duty on slave-grown cotton, while imposing prohibitory duties
on slave-grown sugar; with encouraging Brazilian coffee and cotton,
while refusing Brazilian sugar; and with admitting cheap slave-grown
sugar to be refined in Britain, and sold to Continental nations, while
forbidding the selfsame cheap sugar to our own working people. Still,
there was progress. The Corn Law was untouched, but statesmen of all
parties had spoken despairingly of its continuance.

The gulf between the Minister and the landowners was widening. The
debates on the Budget, and on Mr. Cobden's motion for inquiry into
the alleged agricultural distress, had drawn out more bitter speeches
from Mr. Disraeli, and served still further to mark the distinction
between the Minister and a large section of his old followers. But one
of the most significant signs of the time was the increasing tendency
to recognise the talents and singleness of purpose of the Anti-Corn-Law
Leaguers. It became almost fashionable to compliment the ability
of Mr. Cobden. It was almost forgotten that the Minister had once
carried with him the whole House in making an excited charge against
that gentleman of marking him out for assassination. The bitterness
of the ultra-Protectionists was certainly unabated; but neither the
_Quarterly_ nor any other review now classed the Manchester men with
rick-burners and assassins, or called upon the Government to indict
them for sedition.

The debate on Mr. Villiers's annual motion, on June 10, produced
still further evidences of the decline of Protectionist principles.
On that occasion Sir James Graham, who was currently believed to
be better acquainted with the feelings of the Premier than any
other of the Ministers, said, "He would not deny that it was his
opinion, that by a gradual and cautious policy it was expedient to
bring our system of Corn Laws into a nearer approximation to those
wholesome principles which governed legislation with respect to other
industrial departments. But it was his conviction that suddenly and
at once to throw open the trade in corn would be inconsistent with
the well-being of the community, and would give such a shock to the
agricultural interest as would throw many other interests into a state
of convulsion. The object of every Government, without distinction of
party, for the last twenty years, had been to substitute protecting
duties for prohibitory duties, and to reduce gradually protecting
duties, where it had them to deal with. He approved of this as a
safe principle, and showed that it was the keystone of the policy
of Sir Robert Peel.... If they could show him that Free Trade with
open ports would produce a more abundant supply to the labourer, they
would make him [Sir James] a convert to the doctrine of Free Trade in
corn. He confessed that he placed no value on the fixed duty of four
shillings lately proposed; it would be of no avail as a protection,
whilst it would be liable to all the obloquy of a protecting duty;
and he therefore thought that if they got rid of the present Corn
Law, they had better assent to a total repeal." Sir Robert Peel spoke
more cautiously; but he began by striking away a favourite maxim of
his party, in observing that experience proved that the high price of
corn was not accompanied by a high rate of wages, and that wages did
not vary with the price of corn. He said that he "must proceed, in
pursuance of his own policy, to reconcile the gradual approach of our
legislation to sound principle on this subject, with the interests
which had grown up under a different state of things;" but he admitted
that it would be "impossible to maintain any law on the ground that it
was intended to keep up rents."

Such was the position of affairs when Parliament was prorogued on the
9th of August. The Peel Ministry appeared to be as firmly seated as any
combination then possible was likely to be, and the agriculturists'
monopoly seemed safe at least for another year; but the Government had
already received warnings of a coming storm. The weather had been for
some time wet and cold, but as yet a general failure of the wheat crop
was not anticipated. The trouble approached from a quarter in which no
one had looked for it. Early in the month of August Sir Robert Peel had
received an account of an extraordinary appearance in the potato crop
in the Isle of Wight. On the 11th of August Sir James Graham received
a letter from a great potato salesman, indicating that the same
mysterious signs were observable throughout the south-eastern counties,
and he hastened to communicate the facts to his colleague. These
isolated observations soon became confirmed from numerous quarters,
and the account was everywhere the same. First a brown spot was
observable on the skin of the potato; then the spot became black, the
leaves and flowers of whole fields grew shrivelled, black, and putrid;
and the crops, wherever the plague appeared, were almost entirely
destroyed. From Ireland the most alarming accounts were received, and
the newspapers were quickly filled with details of the progress of the
"potato disease." It began to be asked what would be done with the
unemployed multitudes in that country, whose stock of provisions for
the next ten months was gone?

[Illustration: CHARLES PELHAM VILLIERS.]

The Government at once sent Dr. Lindley and Dr. Playfair, two men of
science, to Ireland, in the hope that they might be able to suggest
remedies for staying the progress of the disease, or preserve that
portion of the crop which was still untainted; and the consular
agents in different parts of Europe and of America were directed to
make inquiries and endeavour to obtain a supply of sound potatoes for
seed; indeed, the seed question was even more important than that more
immediately pressing one, of how the people were to be fed. In addition
to this, early in October, they secretly gave orders for the purchase
abroad of £100,000 worth of Indian corn, to be conveyed to Irish ports
for distribution among the people. These measures, however, proved of
little avail, and meanwhile it grew evident that in a great portion
of the United Kingdom a famine was inevitable, which could not fail
to influence the price of provisions of all kinds elsewhere. During
this time it became known that the harvest, about which opinions had
fluctuated so much, would be everywhere deficient. The friends of Sir
Robert Peel in the Cabinet who shared his Free Trade tendencies knew
then how impossible it was that the already tottering system of the
Corn Laws could be any longer maintained. The Ministers had scarcely
reached the country seats in which they looked for repose after the
labours of the Session, ere the cry of "Open the ports!" was raised
throughout the kingdom; but except three, none of them took his view of
the gravity of the crisis. All knew that the ports once open, public
opinion would probably for ever prevent the reimposition of the duties,
and the majority of the Cabinet for a time still adhered to their
Protectionist principles.

The magnitude of the interests at stake, the difficulty of estimating
the real character and extent of the threatened evil, and the alarming
consequences that must ensue if the worst fears should be realised,
rendered immediate action necessary. A Cabinet Council was held on the
31st of October. From what passed on that occasion, says Sir Robert
Peel, in the account which he has left of these events, "it was easy
to foresee that there was little prospect of a common accord as to
the measures to be adopted." On the 5th of November he apprised her
Majesty of the probability of serious differences of opinion. At the
adjourned meeting of the Cabinet, on the 6th of November, he submitted
certain proposals for the consideration of his colleagues, which he has
recorded in the following outline of these events:--

    CABINET MEMORANDUM, NOVEMBER 6.

"To issue forthwith an Order in Council remitting the duty on grain in
bond to one shilling, and opening the ports for the admission of all
species of grain at a smaller rate of duty until a day named in the
order.

"To call Parliament together on the 27th instant, to ask for indemnity
and a sanction of the order by law.

"To propose to Parliament no other measure than that during the sitting
before Christmas. To declare an intention of submitting to Parliament
immediately after the recess a modification of the existing law, but
to decline entering into any details in Parliament with regard to such
modification.

"Such modification to include the admission, at a nominal duty, of
Indian corn and of British colonial corn."

The Cabinet, by a very considerable majority, declined giving its
assent to the proposals which the Minister thus made to them. They
were supported by only three members of the Cabinet--the Earl of
Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, and Mr. Sidney Herbert. The other members
of the Cabinet, some on the ground of objection to the principle of the
measures recommended, others upon the ground that there was not yet
sufficient evidence of the necessity for them, withheld their sanction.

"On account of the gravity of the question," says Sir Robert Peel,
"and the smallness of the minority assenting to my views, I might
perhaps have been justified in at once relinquishing office; but after
mature reflection, considering that the rejection of my proposals was
not a peremptory one by all of those who for the present declined to
adopt them, that additional information might materially abate the
objections of many, and that the dissolution of a Government on account
of differences on such a matter as that under consideration must cause
great excitement in the public mind, I determined to retain office
until there should be the opportunity of reconsideration of the whole
subject. That opportunity would necessarily recur at the latter end
of this current month (November), when it was agreed that the Cabinet
should again assemble. In determining to retain office for the present,
I determined also not to recede from the position which I had taken,
and ultimately to resign office if I should find on the reassembling
of the Cabinet that the opinions I had expressed did not meet with
general concurrence. I determined also, in order to guard against the
mischievous consequences of failure in such an undertaking, not to
attempt the adjustment of the question at issue unless there should be
a moral assurance of ultimate success. It was most painful to me to
differ from colleagues with whom I had hitherto acted in uninterrupted
harmony, for whom I had sincere personal regard, and cordial esteem and
respect founded on an intimate knowledge of their motives and conduct
in the discharge of their respective duties."

On the 2nd of November the following letter was addressed to the
Minister by Lord Stanley, containing an exposition of the grounds on
which he dissented from the proposals submitted to the Cabinet:--

    [_Secret._]                "Colonial Office, November 2, 1845.

    "MY DEAR PEEL,--I find it difficult to express to you the regret
    with which I see how widely I differ in opinion with Graham and
    yourself as to the necessity for proposing to Parliament a repeal
    of the Corn Laws. Since the Cabinet on Saturday I have reflected
    much and anxiously upon it; but I cannot bring my mind to any
    other conclusion than that at which I had then arrived. I have
    thought it best to put down in writing the view of the case which
    presents itself to me; and when you have read it, I will thank
    you to send it on to Graham, with whom I have had no conversation
    upon it. I foresee that this question, if you persevere in your
    present opinion, must break up the Government one way or the other;
    but I shall greatly regret indeed if it should be broken up, not
    in consequence of our feeling that we had proposed measures which
    it properly belonged to others to carry, but in consequence of
    differences of opinion among ourselves."

The purport of these Cabinet Councils was generally understood by
the country; but as yet only the most sanguine anticipated the
proposal of Sir Robert Peel, when the _Times_ newspaper on the 4th
of December announced, apparently from secret information, that it
was the intention of the Government to repeal the Corn Laws, and to
call Parliament together in January for that purpose. The assertion
was received with incredulity, not only by the Opposition, but by the
Ministerial journals. One organ of the Tory party placarded its office
with a bill, headed "Atrocious fabrication of the _Times_!" But the
latter journal, on the following day, declared that it "adhered to
its original announcement." Day by day the controversy raged in the
newspapers; but the news was too probable not to gain credence. The
result was a conviction throughout the country that the _Times_ had
really obtained information of the Government's intentions; but as a
matter of fact its information was incorrect, as the Cabinet, far from
intending to repeal the Corn Laws, had made up its mind to retire.

Meanwhile Lord Ashley, a staunch upholder of the Corn Laws, in a
letter to his constituents of Dorsetshire declared his opinion "that
the destiny of the Corn Laws was fixed," and that it would be wise
to consider "how best to break the force of an inevitable blow." Mr.
Bickham and Captain Estcott, also strong defenders of the landlords'
monopoly, published their conviction that the Corn Laws were no longer
tenable; and on the 22nd of November Lord John Russell, who was at
Edinburgh, addressed a letter to the electors of the City of London,
which was duly circulated throughout the kingdom, and which contained
the following remarkable passages:--

"I confess that, on the general subject, my views have, in the course
of twenty years, undergone a great alteration. I used to be of opinion
that corn was an exception to the general rules of political economy;
but observation and experience have convinced me that we ought to
abstain from all interference with the supply of food. Neither a
Government nor a Legislature can ever regulate the corn markets with
the beneficial effects which the entire freedom of sale and purchase
are sure of themselves to produce.

"I have for several years endeavoured to obtain a compromise on this
subject. The result of resistance to qualified concession must be
the same in the present instance as in those I have mentioned. It is
no longer worth while to contend for a fixed duty. In 1841 the Free
Trade party would have agreed to a duty of 8s. a quarter on wheat,
and after a lapse of years this duty might have been further reduced,
and ultimately abolished. But the imposition of any duty, at present,
without a provision for its extinction within a short period, would
but prolong a contest already sufficiently fruitful of animosity and
discontent. The struggle to make bread scarce and dear, when it is
clear that part, at least, of the additional price goes to increase
rent, is a struggle deeply injurious to an aristocracy which (this
quarrel once removed) is strong in property, strong in the construction
of our Legislature, strong in opinion, strong in ancient associations
and the memory of immortal services."

The Cabinet met again on the 25th, when Sir Robert Peel informed his
colleagues that, in the position of affairs, he could not abstain
from advising the immediate suspension, by Order in Council, of the
restrictive law of importation, or the early assembling of Parliament
for the purpose of proposing a permanent change. Lord Aberdeen, Mr.
Sidney Herbert, and Sir James Graham supported him. The Duke of
Wellington gave a reluctant adhesion. It then became known that Lord
Stanley had withdrawn from the Ministry, and it was believed that the
Duke of Buccleuch intended to follow his example. The majority of the
Cabinet had decided in favour of a permanent reduction in the sliding
scale; but the position of the Minister was now too uncertain for him
to attempt to carry through his measures. A resignation was the only
step which could show the true strength of parties, and determine who
would and who would not follow the Minister in that course which, if he
was to return to power, he had finally resolved to take. On the 5th of
December he announced his determination to her Majesty, and the public
learned that the Peel Administration was at an end.

Lord John Russell was immediately summoned from Scotland, and on the
11th arrived at Osborne, where he received her Majesty's commands to
form a Government. On the ground that his party were in a minority in
the House of Commons, Lord John Russell at first declined the honour
presented to him; but on a paper being placed in his hands by the
Queen, in which Sir Robert Peel promised, in his private capacity,
to aid and give every support to the new Ministry in settling the
question of the Corn Laws, he undertook the task. There was no amicable
feeling between the new and the retiring Minister. Lord John Russell's
letter, published a few days before, had excited as much attention
for its bitter sarcasm against Sir Robert Peel as for the important
change in the Whig policy which it announced. Lord John Russell held
communication with the late Government, but through Sir James Graham.
It was of importance to him to know more clearly the nature of that
support which Sir Robert Peel's memorandum seemed to promise; and
he was, therefore, anxious to know what the latter would consider a
satisfactory settlement. This proposal, however, to the late Minister
to become responsible for the measures of his successors was declined.
Sir James Graham communicated to Lord John Russell the information as
to the state of the country on which they acted; but Sir Robert Peel,
through his colleague, declined to state the details of the measures
which had lately been contemplated. Lord John Russell then gave,
in writing, an outline of the measures which the new Cabinet would
propose, and invited the opinion of the late Minister. Sir Robert Peel,
however, still declined to take part in the plans of his opponents;
and in a letter to the Queen, on the 17th of December, he stated the
constitutional grounds on which he considered it improper that any one,
not an adviser of the Crown, should take a part in the preparation
of Ministerial measures. Lord John Russell thereupon immediately
proceeded with his negotiations with his own party. It soon, however,
appeared that the task he had proposed to himself was beyond his power.
Earl Grey, who had agreed to take the Secretaryship of the Colonies
in the new Ministry, suddenly declared that he would not join any
Administration in which Lord Palmerston should hold the office of
Secretary for Foreign Affairs. This unexpected accident was regarded by
Lord John Russell as decisive. On the 20th of December he communicated
the facts to the Queen, and begged to be relieved from the task he had
undertaken.

On the day before her Majesty had desired to see Sir Robert Peel,
to bid him farewell; but before he had set out for Windsor he had
learnt the circumstances of the failure of the Whig leader to form
a Cabinet; and as the result of his interview with the Queen he
returned to London to resume the reins of Government. His position
was greatly strengthened. Of his late Cabinet, Lord Stanley alone
insisted on retiring, his place at the Board of Trade being filled by
Mr. Gladstone. The baffled Whigs and the discontented monopolist party
threatened a formidable combination; but, as regarded the Ministry
itself, the change of policy was effected with far less sacrifice than
might have been expected, considering all the circumstances of the case.

Parliament reassembled, according to the Minister's plan, at the
unusually early date of the 22nd of January, 1846. The Queen's Speech,
read by her Majesty in person, thus alluded to the topic most prominent
in the public mind:--

"I have to lament that, in consequence of the failure of the potato
crop in several parts of the United Kingdom, there will be a deficient
supply of an article of food which forms the chief subsistence of great
numbers of my people.

"The disease by which the plant has been affected has prevailed to the
greatest extent in Ireland.

"I have adopted all such precautions as it was in my power to adopt
for the purpose of alleviating the sufferings which may be caused by
this calamity; and I shall confidently rely on your co-operation in
devising such other means for effecting the same benevolent purpose as
may require the sanction of the Legislature."

On the subject of the Free Trade measures generally, the Speech
continued:--

"I have had great satisfaction in giving my assent to the measures
which you have presented to me from time to time, calculated to extend
commerce, and to stimulate domestic skill and industry, by the repeal
of prohibitory and the relaxation of protective duties.

"The prosperous state of the revenue, the increased demand for labour,
and the general improvement which has taken place in the internal
condition of the country are strong testimonies in favour of the course
you have pursued.

"I recommend you to take into your early consideration whether the
principles on which you have acted may not with advantage be yet more
extensively applied; and whether it may not be in your power, after a
careful review of the existing duties upon many articles, the produce
or manufacture of other countries, to make such further reductions and
remissions as may tend to ensure the continuance of the great benefits
to which I have adverted, and, by enlarging our commercial intercourse,
to strengthen the bonds of amity with foreign Powers."

[Illustration: MAYNOOTH COLLEGE. (_From a Photograph by Lawrence,
Dublin._)]

In the House of Lords the comments on the Ministerial measures were
characterised by much bitterness, both against the Government and the
League; and the Duke of Richmond asked why Mr. Cobden was not created
a peer, and placed on the Treasury Bench in the House of Lords? In
the Commons the excitement among the Protectionist party was no less
manifest; but the crowded House waited impatiently for the Minister's
explanations. Lord Francis Egerton moved the Address, giving the
key-note of the Ministerial plans by declaring that his own opinions on
the Corn Laws had undergone a complete alteration, and imploring the
House to come to "a full, satisfactory, and final settlement of the
question." Mr. Beckett Denison, who seconded the motion, declared that
experience had "driven" him to the same conclusion.

Sir Robert Peel then rose. He said that the immediate cause which had
led to the dissolution of the Government was "that great and mysterious
calamity which caused a lamentable failure in an article of food on
which great numbers of the people in this part of the United Kingdom
and still larger numbers in the sister kingdom depended mainly for
their subsistence." But he added, "I will not assign to that cause
too much weight. I will not withhold the homage which is due to the
progress of reason, and to truth, by denying that my opinions on the
subject of Protection have undergone a change." This announcement was
received in profound silence from the Ministerial benches, but with
triumphant cheering from the Opposition. Protection, he said, was not
a labourer's question. High prices did not produce high wages, nor
_vice versâ_. In the last three years, with low prices and abundance
of food, wages were comparatively high, and labour was in demand. In
the three years preceding, with high prices and scarcity, wages were
low and employment was scarce. Experience thus proved that wages were
ruled by abundance of capital and demand for labour, and did not vary
with the price of provisions. Again, increased freedom of trade was
favourable to the prosperity of our commerce. In three scarce and dear
years, namely, from 1839 to 1841, our foreign exports fell off from
£53,000,000 in value to £47,000,000. But in three years of reduction
of duties and low prices, namely, from 1842 to 1844, the value of our
exports rose from £47,000,000 to £58,000,000. Even deducting the amount
of the China trade, a similar result was shown. Nor was the reduction
in the customs duties unfavourable to the revenue. In 1842 there was
an estimated loss of £1,500,000; in 1843 a smaller one of £273,000;
but in 1845 there was a reduction at an estimated loss to the revenue
of no less than £2,500,000. The total amount of the various reductions
effected in three years exceeded £4,000,000; and many of the duties
were totally abolished; the loss, therefore, not being compensated by
any increased consumption. Had £4,000,000 been lost to the revenue? He
believed that on the 5th of April next the revenue would be found to
be more buoyant than ever. Sir Robert Peel referred to other proofs
of prosperity resulting from reduced import duties, and then adverted
to his own position, and declared that "he would not hold office on a
servile tenure."

The evening of the 27th of January was fixed for the Minister's general
statement upon the commercial policy of the Government. Sir Robert
proposed the reduction of the duty on Russian tallow from 3s. 2d. to
1s. 6d.; the abolition of duty on the coarser fabrics of linen, cotton,
and woollen, and the reduction on the finer from 20 to 10 per cent.;
on French brandy and Geneva, a reduction from 22s. 10d. to 15s.; on
foreign free-grown Muscovada sugar, a reduction from 9s. 4d. to 5s.
10d.; and on clayed 11s. 10d. to 8s.; the admission of Indian corn
and buckwheat duty free; on butter, the duty to be reduced from 20s.
to 10s.; and on cheese, from 10s. to 5s.; the duty on live animals,
and fresh and salted meats, pork, and vegetables to be abolished. As
to corn, in lieu of the then sliding scale, he proposed that when the
average price of wheat was 48s., the duty should fall by 1s. with every
1s. of rise in price, till on reaching 53s. the duty should be a fixed
one of 4s.; that this mitigated scale should last for three years,
and, by a positive enactment, then disappear on the 1st of February,
1849, leaving for the future only a nominal rate of duty; and that
all British colonial wheat and flour should be forthwith admitted at a
nominal rate.

The debate was fixed for the 9th of February, on which day it was
moved that the House should resolve itself into a committee on the
propositions of the Government. Mr. P. Miles moved, as an amendment,
that the House should go into committee on that day twelvemonth. The
debate occupied twelve nights, in the course of which every species
of vituperation was hurled at the Minister by the monopolist party.
Mr. Beresford Hope denounced him as an apostate. Major Fitzmaurice
thought the farmers might as well die by the manly system of Mr.
Cobden as by the mincemeal interference of the right hon. baronet.
Another member compared the Minister to a counsel who, after taking a
fee for advocating one side, took the other when the case came into
court. Mr. Disraeli attacked with great vehemence and bitterness the
Ministerial proposals, and pointed to the "sad spectacle" of the
Minister surrounded by a majority who, while they gave him their votes,
protested in their speeches against his policy. Lord George Bentinck,
who, in the many years he had hitherto been in Parliament, had never
before taken part in any debate of importance, surprised the House on
the last night of the debate by delivering a long and elaborate speech
against the measure, in which he charged the Minister with "swindling"
and deception--a speech which at once marked him out for one of the
leaders of the new Opposition.

On the fifth night of the debate Sir Robert Peel rose to speak in
defence of his policy against these attacks of his enemies. It was
already ten o'clock, and the House listened to him for three hours. He
spoke with remarkable warmth and energy, and overpowered his opponents
with the unanswerable truths of political economy, and with humorous
demonstrations of the fallacies in which the Protectionist speakers
had indulged. In concluding he said, "This night is to decide between
the policy of continued relaxation of restriction, or the return to
restraint and prohibition. This night you will select the motto which
is to indicate the commercial policy of England. Shall it be 'Advance!'
or 'Recede'?" The division took place on the 27th (or rather on the
28th) of February, at twenty minutes to three in the morning, when the
numbers for the motion were--337; against it, 240; leaving a majority
for going into committee of 97.

This great debate was interrupted by a motion brought on by Mr.
O'Connell, on the impending famine in Ireland, which is chiefly
memorable for a speech of Mr. Bright, in which, alluding to Sir Robert
Peel's last address to the House, he said, "I watched the right
honourable baronet go home last night, and I confess I envied him the
ennobling feelings which must have filled his breast after delivering
that speech--a speech, I venture to say, more powerful and more to be
admired than any speech ever heard in this House within the memory of
any man in it." A further eloquent allusion to the Minister's newly
acquired freedom from the enthralment of the bigoted among his party
had a powerful effect upon the House, and it was observed by those who
sat near Sir Robert Peel that the tears started to his eyes at this
unexpected generosity from his old opponent.

On the 1st of March Mr. Villiers, adhering to his principle, brought
forward the last of those annual motions for immediate repeal which
had contributed so powerfully to undermine the Corn Laws. After a
spirited debate of two evenings, in the course of which Mr. Cobden
warned the monopolist party that a protracted resistance would compel
the Anti-Corn-Law League to maintain its agitation and concentrate its
energies, the House rejected the motion by a majority of 267 to 78.

On the 27th of March, after a powerful address from Sir Robert Peel,
the Corn Importation Bill was read a second time--the House, on
division, showing a majority for the second reading of 302 to 214.
Three nights' debate took place on the third reading, in the course of
which the Protectionists contended with undiminished obstinacy for the
maintenance of the landlords' monopoly. The third reading was finally
carried at four o'clock in the morning of Saturday, May 16th, the
numbers being 327 for the Bill; against it, 229; leaving a majority for
the Government of 98.

In the House of Lords the second reading was carried on the 28th of
May by a majority of 47, and the Bill was finally passed on the 25th
of June. The attitude of the House was due entirely to the Duke of
Wellington, and his conduct constitutes his best claim to the title
of statesman. But the downfall of the Peel Ministry was inevitable.
In a letter to the Duke, of the 18th of February, Lord Stanley had
said that, whatever might be the result of the Corn Bill, the days of
the existing Government were numbered, and that the confidence of his
party in Sir Robert Peel had been so shaken, "that, in spite of his
pre-eminent abilities and great services, he could never reunite it
under his guidance." The Protectionist party found its opportunity in
the Irish Coercion Bill, which, introduced by Earl St. Germans into
the House of Lords, had slowly passed through its various stages, and
appeared in the Commons in March. At first the Bill was obstructed
in order to delay the Corn Bill, but when that measure became law,
Whigs and Protectionists--who had voted for the second reading of the
Protection of Life Bill--resolved to use it as an instrument for the
overthrow of Peel. They combined, therefore, with the Radicals and
Irish members, and, on the very night on which Free Trade was passed by
the Lords, the Minister was finally defeated in the Commons. He might
have dissolved, but his preference was for retirement. The concluding
words of his speech will long be remembered. He said: "With reference
to honourable gentlemen opposite, I must say, as I say with reference
to ourselves, neither of us is the party which is justly entitled to
the credit of those measures. There has been a combination of parties,
and that combination, and the influence of Government, have led to
their ultimate success; but the name which ought to be, and will be,
associated with the success of those measures, is the name of the man
who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has,
with untiring energy, by appeals to reason, enforced their necessity
with an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected
and unadorned--the name which ought to be associated with the success
of those measures is the name of Richard Cobden. Sir, I now close
the address which it has been my duty to make to the House, thanking
them sincerely for the favour with which they have listened to me in
performing the last act of my official career. Within a few hours,
probably, that favour which I have held for the period of five years
will be surrendered into the hands of another--without repining--I
can say without complaint--with a more lively recollection of the
support and confidence I have received than of the opposition which,
during a recent period, I have met with. I shall leave office with a
name severely censured, I fear, by many who, on public grounds, deeply
regret the severance of party ties--deeply regret that severance,
not from interest or personal motives, but from the firm conviction
that fidelity to party engagements--the existence and maintenance of
a great party--constitutes a powerful instrument of government. I
shall surrender power severely censured also by others who, from no
interested motives, adhere to the principle of Protection, considering
the maintenance of it to be essential to the welfare and interests
of the country. I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist
who, from less honourable motives, clamours for Protection because it
conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that I shall
leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good-will in
the abodes of those whose lot it is to labour, and to earn their
daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their
exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because
it is no longer leavened by the sense of injustice."

Before passing to the momentous history of the Irish famine we must
notice some isolated facts connected with the Peel Administration,
which our connected view of the triumph of Free Trade has prevented our
mentioning under their proper dates. Among the many measures of the
time which were fiercely discussed, the most complicated were the Bank
Charter Act of 1844, and the Act dealing with the Irish and Scottish
Banks of 1845, whereby the Premier placed the whole banking system of
the kingdom upon an entirely new basis, in particular by the separation
of the issue and banking business of the Bank of England, and by the
determination of the issues by the amount of bullion in reserve. Under
the Act the Bank was at liberty to issue £14,000,000 of notes on the
security of Exchequer Bills and the debt due to it from the Government,
but all issues above this amount were to be based on bullion. Still
hotter were the passions roused by the Maynooth Bill, by which £30,000
were devoted to the improvement of the college founded at Maynooth for
the education of Roman Catholic priests. The language used during the
debates by the Protestant party has few parallels in the history of the
British Parliament, and Sir Robert Peel's difficulties were increased
by the resignation of Mr. Gladstone, who found his present support of
the Bill incompatible with the opinions expressed in his famous essay
on Church and State. Lord Aberdeen's foreign policy was completely the
reverse of the bold, if hazardous, line adopted by Lord Palmerston. We
have seen how the Ashburton mission composed the critical questions at
issue with the United States, and in similar fashion a dispute about
the Oregon boundary, which had been pending for thirty years, was
terminated on sound principles of give-and-take by fixing the line at
the 49th parallel, while Vancouver Island was reserved for Britain, and
the commerce of the Columbia was made free. With France our relations
were of the most pacific character; so close, indeed, was the _entente
cordiale_ that it was a commonplace of Tory oratory that M. Guizot was
Foreign Minister of England. This was certainly not the case; on the
contrary, when the Society Islands, over which Pomare was queen, were
forcibly annexed by a roving French admiral, Lord Aberdeen behaved
with very proper spirit, and obtained an indemnity for the missionary
Pritchard, who had been forcibly placed under arrest. In other respects
the friendship of Great Britain with France continued unimpaired, and
there was an interchange of visits between the Queen and King Louis
Philippe. It was a sign of a harmony of views between the two nations.
Unfortunately, owing to a variety of causes, it was not to be of long
continuance.

[Illustration: RECEPTION OF LOUIS PHILIPPE AT WINDSOR CASTLE, OCT. 8th,
1844.

FROM THE PAINTING BY F. X. WINTERHALTER, IN THE ROYAL COLLECTION.]

[Illustration: THE GREAT SEAL OF VICTORIA.]




CHAPTER XVII.

THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    The Repeal Agitation--Debate in the Dublin Corporation--The
    Monster Meetings--O'Connell's Speech at Tara--The Arms
    Bill--Dismissal of the Repeal Magistrates--Speeches of the Duke
    of Wellington--The Arms Bill becomes Law--Proclamation of the
    Clontarf Meeting--O'Connell's Counter-Proclamation--Arrest and
    Trial of O'Connell--The Sentence--It is reversed by the House
    of Lords--Rejoicings on O'Connell's Liberation--The Excitement
    at Cork--Decline of O'Connell--His Breach with the Young
    Ireland Party--Irish Debates in Parliament--Approach of the
    Irish Famine--The Devon Commission--Its Report--Arrival of the
    Potato Disease--The Famine--The Relief Committee of the Society
    of Friends--The Famine in Ulster--A Description of Cork and
    Skibbereen--Demoralisation of the Population--Policy of the Whig
    Cabinet--Lord George Bentinck's Railway Plan--Failure of the new
    Poor Law and of the Public Works--The Temporary Relief Act--Father
    Mathew--Private Benevolence--Munificence of the United States.


The Repeal Agitation in Ireland, which had been thoroughly organised
in 1842 by "Repeal Missionaries" who had visited every parish in the
country, reached its culminating point in 1843. Early in February
that year Mr. O'Connell, who had filled the civic chair the previous
year, and was then an alderman of the Dublin Corporation, gave notice
that, on the 21st of that month, he would move a resolution, affirming
the right of Ireland to a resident Parliament, and the necessity of
repealing the Union. Alderman Butt expressed his determination of
opposing the motion. Mr. Butt was one of the ablest members of the
Irish bar, and a leader of the Conservative party. The debate was
therefore anticipated with the greatest interest, as it promised to be
a very exciting political duel. The old Assembly House, since abandoned
for the more commodious City Hall, was densely crowded by the principal
citizens, while the street was thronged by the populace during the
debate. Mr. O'Connell marshalled his arguments under many heads:
Ireland's capacity for independence--her right to have a Parliament
of her own--the establishment of that right in 1782--the prosperity
that followed--the incompetence of the Irish Parliament to destroy the
Constitution--the corrupt means by which the Union was carried--its
disastrous results, and the national benefits that would follow its
repeal. The speech, which lasted four hours, was mainly argumentative
and statistical. It was accepted by his followers as an elaborate and
masterly statement of the case. Mr. Butt replied with equal ability and
more fervid eloquence. The debate was adjourned. Next day other members
took part in it. It was again adjourned, and as the contest proceeded
the public excitement rose to fever heat. At two o'clock on the third
day Mr. O'Connell rose to reply. "No report," says Mr. O'Neil Daunt,
"could possibly do justice to that magnificent reply. The consciousness
of a great moral triumph seemed to animate his voice, his glance, and
his gestures. Never had I heard him so eloquent, never had I witnessed
so noble a display of his transcendent powers." The division showed
that 41 were in favour of a domestic legislature and 15 were opposed to
it.

It has been remarked that the "monster meetings" could never have been
conducted in the orderly manner for which they were distinguished, but
for the Temperance reform which had been effected by Father Mathew, a
benevolent, tolerant, and single-minded friar from Cork, who was known
as the Apostle of Temperance, and who had induced vast numbers from all
parts of the country to take the pledge, which the majority religiously
kept for some years. The monster meetings, of which forty-five were
held during the year, were vast assemblages whose numbers it was
difficult to calculate, but they varied from 20,000 to 100,000 each.
The people, generally well-dressed, came crowding to the appointed
place from every direction, some on horseback, some on jaunting
cars and carts, generally preceded by bands with immense banners,
and sometimes marching in military order. O'Connell, the "uncrowned
monarch," as his followers called him, arrived from Dublin, sitting
on the dickey of a coach, usually drawn by four horses. He was always
accompanied by his devoted friend, Tom Steel, the "head pacificator,"
one of the most ardent of hero-worshippers, who looked up to his chief
as a sort of demi-god. The first of the monster meetings was held at
Trim, in the county Meath, on the 19th of March, and was said to have
been attended by about 30,000 persons. A dinner took place in the
evening, at which Mr. O'Connell delivered an exciting speech. Referring
to the bright eyes and hardy look of the multitudes that surrounded
him that day, he asked, would they be everlasting slaves? They would
answer "No," and he would join in the response, and say, "I shall be
either in my grave or be a free man. Idle sentiments will not do. It
will not do to say you like to be free. The man who thinks and does not
act upon his thoughts is a scoundrel who does not deserve to be free."
The monster meeting held at Mullingar on the 14th of May (Sunday) was
attended by Dr. Cantwell and Dr. Higgins, two Roman Catholic bishops,
and a great number of priests. This was one of the largest of the
meetings, and was remarkable for the declaration made by Dr. Higgins,
to the effect that "every Roman Catholic bishop in Ireland, without
exception, was a Repealer. He defied all the Ministers of England to
put down the agitation. If they prevented them from assembling in the
open fields, they would retire to their chapels, and suspend all other
instruction, in order to devote all their time to teaching the people
to be Repealers. They were even ready to go to the scaffold for the
cause of their country, and bequeath its wrongs to their successors."
This outburst excited tumultuous applause, the whole assembly rising
and cheering for a considerable time.

During the summer, meetings of a similar character were held at Cork,
Longford, Drogheda, Kilkenny, Mallow, Dundalk, Baltinglass, Tara, and
other places. At Tara, in the county Meath, on the 15th of August, an
immense multitude was assembled--250,000, at the lowest estimate, but
represented by the Repeal journals as four times that number. The place
was selected because of its association with the old nationality of the
country, where its ancient kings were elected and crowned. O'Connell's
speech on this occasion was defiant in tone, and in the highest degree
inflammatory. Referring to a speech of the Duke of Wellington, he
said, "The Duke of Wellington is now talking of attacking us, and I
am glad of it. The Queen's army is the bravest army in the world, but
I feel it to be a fact that Ireland, roused as she is at the present
moment, would, if they made war upon us, furnish women enough to beat
the whole of the Queen's forces." The Lord Chancellor Sugden having
recently deprived of the commission of the peace all magistrates who
were members of the Repeal Association, Mr. O'Connell announced that
the dismissed magistrates would be appointed by the Repeal Association
as arbitrators to settle all disputes among the people, who were not
again to go to the petty sessions. He pronounced the Union to be null,
to be obeyed as an injustice supported by law, until they had the royal
authority to set the matter right and substitute their own Parliament.
In his speech after dinner to a more select audience, he said that the
statesman was a driveller who did not recollect the might that slumbers
in a peasant's arm, and who expected that 700,000 such men would endure
oppression for ever. An outbreak would surely come, though not in his
time, and then the Government and gentry would weep, in tears of blood,
their want of consideration and kindness to the country whose people
could reward them amply by the devotion of their hearts and the vigour
of their arms. What were the gentry afraid of? It could not be of the
people, for they were under the strictest discipline. No army was ever
more submissive to its general than the people of Ireland were to the
wishes of a single individual.

While the agitation was going forward in this manner in Ireland, the
state of that country was the subject of repeated and animated debates
in Parliament. One of the remedies proposed by the Government was an
Arms Bill, which was opposed with great vehemence by the Irish Liberal
members. Mr. Shaw, the Recorder of Dublin, in his speech on the second
reading, described the condition of Ireland from the Conservative point
of view; he considered that the country was in an alarming state, the
lower classes extensively agitated, and the higher unusually dejected
and depressed. Even the great benefit of the temperance movement
had brought with it the evil of an organisation now turned to the
most dangerous purposes. The real object of the Repeal agitation
was to array the people and the priesthood against the property of
the country. There was no class more alarmed at the progress of the
movement than the respectable portion of the Roman Catholics, who
dreaded lest they should be swept away by the tide. If the law did not
put down the agitation, the agitation would put down the Constitution.
Mr. C. Buller's remedy was "to _Canadianise_" Ireland, which meant to
make Mr. O'Connell Attorney-General, and substitute the titulars for
the clergy of the Establishment. Mr. Roebuck thought "there was no
great difference between the late and the present Government. Neither
of them had put down the giant evil of Ireland, her rampant Church. He
would take away her revenue, and give it, if to any Church at all, to
the Church of the Roman Catholics. The grand evil and sore of Ireland
was the domination of the Church of the minority."

In the House of Lords several discussions took place on the
dismissal of the Repeal magistrates. Lord Clanricarde, on the 14th
of July, moved resolutions declaring that act of the Lord Chancellor
"unconstitutional, unjust, and inexpedient." The Duke of Wellington
met the motion by a direct negative. "These meetings," he said,
"consisting of 10,000, 20,000, or 100,000 men--no matter the number
of thousands--having been continued, I wish to know with what object
they were continued? With a view to address Parliament to repeal
the Union? No, my lords; they were continued in order to obtain the
desired repeal of the Union by the terror of the people, and, if not by
terror, by force and violence; and the persons calling these meetings
were magistrates, the very men who must have been employed by the
Government to resist such terror and violence, and to arrest those
who were guilty of such breaches of the peace. That is the ground on
which the Lord Chancellor of Ireland said to the magistrates, 'You must
be dismissed if you attend, or invite attendance at such meetings.'"
The Duke "regretted to learn there was poverty in Ireland; but," he
asked, "was that poverty relieved by a march of twenty-five and thirty
miles a day in spring and summer to hear seditious speeches? Was
poverty relieved by subscribing to the Repeal rent?" The resolutions
were negatived by a majority of 91 to 29. In a subsequent debate,
arising out of a petition presented by Lord Roden from 5,000 Ulster
Protestants, complaining that they had been prevented from celebrating
the Orange anniversary, while the most flagrant breaches of the law
were passed over in the case of those who wanted to overthrow the
Constitution, which the Orangemen were sworn to defend, the Duke of
Wellington, on that occasion, said that "nothing had been neglected
by the Government that was necessary to preserve the peace of the
country, and to meet all misfortunes and consequences which might
result from the violence of the passions of those men who unfortunately
guided the multitude in Ireland. He did not dispute the extent of
the conspiracy or the dangers resulting from it; he did not deny the
assistance received from foreigners of nearly all nations--disturbed
and disturbing spirits, who were anxious to have an opportunity of
injuring and deteriorating the great prosperity of this country--but he
felt confident that the measures adopted by the Government would enable
it to resist all, and preserve the peace."

[Illustration: O'CONNELL AT THE MEETING AT TRIM. (_See p._ 526.)]

Mr. Smith O'Brien, early in July, gave occasion for another great
debate on the state of Ireland, by moving that the House resolve itself
into a committee for the purpose of taking into consideration the
causes of the discontent prevailing there, with a view to the redress
of grievances, and the establishment of a system of just and impartial
government in that part of the United Kingdom. The honourable gentleman
reviewed the history of the country since the Union, discussed the
questions of the National Debt and taxation, the Church Establishment,
the position of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, Government appointments,
Coercive Acts, and land tenure. Lord Eliot, then Chief Secretary of
Ireland, answered his arguments at length. A great number of speakers
followed, continuing the debate for five nights. At length the House
divided, when the numbers were--against the motion for a committee,
243; for it, 164. The whole of these vexed questions again came up on
the 9th of August, when the Irish Arms Bill was set down for the third
reading. On this occasion Sir Robert Peel made some remarks, expressing
the feeling of his Government with regard to Ireland, declaring that
he viewed the state of things there with deep anxiety and pain. He had
hoped that there was a gradual abatement of animosity on account of
religious differences; that he saw the gradual influence of those laws
which removed the political disabilities of Catholics and established
civil equality. He thought he saw, in some respects, a great moral and
social improvement; that there was a hope of increasing tranquillity,
which would cause the redundant and superfluous capital of England,
then seeking vent in foreign and precarious speculations, to flow into
Ireland. But the agitation had, in his opinion, blasted all those hopes.

[Illustration: SIR JAMES GRAHAM.]

The third reading of the Arms Bill passed by a majority of 66, and
soon received the Royal Assent. In the Queen's Speech at the close
of the Session there was a very pointed reference made to the state
of Ireland. Her Majesty said that she had observed with the deepest
concern the persevering efforts made to stir up discontent and
disaffection among her subjects in Ireland, and to excite them to
demand the repeal of the Union; and from her deep conviction that the
Union was not less essential to the attainment of good government in
Ireland than to the strength and stability of the empire, it was her
firm determination, with the support of Parliament, and under the
blessing of Divine Providence, to maintain inviolate that great bond
of connection between the two countries. She thus concluded, "I feel
assured that those of my faithful subjects who have influence and
authority in Ireland will discourage to the utmost of their power a
system of pernicious agitation which disturbs the industry and retards
the improvement of that country, and excites feelings of mutual
distrust and animosity between different classes of my people."

This royal denunciation of the Repeal movement greatly exasperated
O'Connell. He had recently submitted a plan to the Repeal Association,
recommended by a committee of which he was chairman, for the
restoration of the Irish Parliament. In the document containing this
plan it was declared that the people of Ireland finally insisted
upon the restoration of the Irish House of Commons, consisting of
300 representatives, and claimed, in "the presence of the Creator,"
the right of the Irish people to such restoration, stating that they
submitted to the Union as being binding in law, but solemnly denied
that it was founded on right, or on constitutional principle, or that
it was obligatory on conscience. The franchise was to be household
suffrage, and the voting by ballot. It was also provided that the
monarch or regent _de jure_ in England should be the monarch or regent
_de facto_ in Ireland. This revolutionary scheme was to be carried
into effect, "according to recognised law and strict constitutional
principle." The arbitration courts which O'Connell had threatened to
set up, in consequence of the superseding of magistrates connected with
the Repeal Association, had actually been established; and the Roman
Catholic peasantry, forsaking the regular tribunals, had recourse to
them for the settlement of their disputes.

The Repeal organisation had therefore become exceedingly formidable,
and had been rendered still more so by what O'Connell called "the
mighty moral miracle of 5,000,000 men pledged against intoxicating
liquors." If he had to go to battle, he said, he should have the strong
and steady teetotallers with him. The teetotal bands "would play before
them, and animate them in the time of peril; their wives and daughters,
thanking God for their sobriety, would be praying for their safety; and
he told them there was not an army in the world he could not beat with
his teetotallers. Yes, teetotalism was the first sure ground on which
rested their hope of sweeping away Saxon domination and giving Ireland
to the Irish." O'Connell had been in the habit of wearing a crown-like
cap, richly ornamented, which had been presented to him at the monster
meeting at the Rath of Mullaghmast, in the county Kildare. This symbol
of sovereignty had its effect upon the masses, who began to cherish the
idea that they might have ere long a king of their own. It was probably
with a view to encourage this idea, and to raise their enthusiasm to
the highest pitch, that he resolved to hold the last of the series
of monster meetings at Clontarf, near Dublin, the scene of King
Brian Boru's victory over the Danes. This meeting was to be held on
Sunday, the 8th of October, and was to be the most imposing of all the
demonstrations. But the Government was at last roused to action, and
on the previous day a proclamation was issued by the Lord-Lieutenant
in Council, prohibiting the assembly. The proclamation declared that
whereas advertisements and placards had been printed and extensively
circulated, calling on those who proposed to attend the meeting to come
on horseback, to meet and form in procession, and to march in military
order and array; and whereas the object of the meeting was to excite
discontent and disaffection, hatred and contempt of the Government of
the country, and to accomplish alterations in the laws and Constitution
of the realm, by intimidation and the demonstration of physical force,
tending also to serve the ends of factious and seditious persons, and
violate the peace, the meeting was strictly prohibited. It was stated
that those attending it should be prosecuted, and that effectual
measures should be taken for its dispersion.

This was no idle threat; the guards at Dublin castle and at the
several barracks were doubled; Alborough House, commanding the road
to Clontarf, was garrisoned; the streets on the north side of the
city were patrolled by parties of soldiers during the night. Three
war steamers were placed in the Liffey, with their guns run out,
commanding the ground where the meeting was to be held; while the guns
at the Pigeon House fort at the mouth of the river, right opposite
Clontarf, were so placed as to sweep the road to it. The village
was occupied by the 5th Dragoon Guards, the 60th Rifles, the 11th
Hussars, the 54th Regiment of Infantry, and a brigade of Royal Horse
Artillery; the infantry being commanded by Colonel Fane, the cavalry
by Lord Cardigan, and the artillery by Colonel Higgins. The men and
horses were provisioned for twenty-four hours, and each soldier was
furnished with sixty rounds of ball cartridge. A crisis had now come;
a collision between the troops and O'Connell's army of teetotallers
was imminent, and even he could have no doubt of the issue. He seemed
to stand appalled on the edge of the precipice to which he had brought
his deluded followers, and shrinking from the consequences, he made
all possible haste to save them. As soon as the proclamation was
issued, he called a special meeting of the Repeal Association, and
announced that in consequence of the measures taken by the Government,
which he denounced as "the most base and imbecile step ever taken,"
there would be no meeting at Clontarf the next day. He submitted a
counter-proclamation, which was adopted and posted up that evening
throughout the city beside the Government proclamation. It was also
sent by special messengers to the neighbouring towns and villages. The
preventive measures taken on both sides were completely successful. No
mounted Repealers came in from the country, and though vast multitudes
went out from Dublin to view the military demonstrations, their meeting
with the Queen's forces was quite amicable. They were allowed to see
the spectacle, but they were compelled to move on along the high road,
which they did very good-humouredly.

The Government now resolved to follow up the vigorous step they had
so tardily taken, by the prosecution of O'Connell and several leading
members of the Association. They were arrested in Dublin on the 14th of
October, charged with conspiracy, sedition, and unlawful assembly. The
other gentlemen included in the prosecution were Mr. John O'Connell,
Mr. Thomas Steele, Mr. Ray, Secretary to the Repeal Association, Dr.
Gray, proprietor of the _Freeman's Journal_, Mr. Charles Gavan Duffy,
editor of the _Nation_, Mr. Barrett, of the _Pilot_, and the Rev.
Messrs. Tyrrell and Tierney, Roman Catholic priests. Mr. O'Connell,
with his two sons and several friends, immediately on his arrest, went
to the house of Mr. Justice Burton, and entered into recognisances,
himself in £1,000, with two sureties of £500 each. The tone of
Mr. O'Connell was now suddenly changed. From being inflammatory,
warlike, and defiant, it became intensely pacific, and he used his
utmost efforts to calm the minds of the people, to lay the storm he
had raised, and to soothe the feelings he had irritated by angry
denunciations of the "Saxon." That obnoxious word was now laid aside,
being, at his request, struck out of the Repeal vocabulary, because it
gave offence. Real conciliation was now the order of the day.

The State prosecutions commenced in January, 1844, in the Court
of Queen's Bench, before the Lord Chief Justice Penefather, and
Justices Burton, Crampton, and Perrin. Besides the Attorney and
Solicitor-General, there were ten counsel employed for the Crown, and
there was an equal number on the side of the traversers, including Mr.
Sheil, Mr. Hatchel, Mr. Moore, Mr. Whiteside, Mr. Monaghan, afterwards
Chief Justice, Mr. O'Hagan, and Mr. Macdonogh. This monster trial
was remarkable in many respects. It excited great public interest,
which pervaded all classes, from the highest to the lowest. It lasted
from the 16th of January to the 12th of February; the speech of the
Attorney-General occupied two days; the jury list was found to be
defective, a number of names having been secretly abstracted; newspaper
articles were admitted as evidence against men who never saw them;
the Lord Chief Justice betrayed his partiality in charging the jury,
by speaking of the traversers as "the other side." The principal
witnesses were shorthand writers from London, avowedly employed by
the Government to report the proceedings of the monster meetings. Mr.
Jackson, reporter for the _Morning Herald_, also placed his notes at
the service of the Government. Mr. O'Connell defended himself in a
long argument for Repeal, and an attack on the Government. The most
brilliant orations delivered on the occasion were those of Sheil and
Whiteside. Mr. Fitzgibbon, one of the counsel for the traversers, made
a remark offensive to the Attorney-General, Mr. T. C. B. Smith, who
immediately handed him a challenge, in the presence of his wife, while
the judges had retired for refreshment. The matter was brought before
the court, and, after mutual explanations, was allowed to drop.

All the traversers were found guilty. The Attorney-General did not
press for judgment against the Rev. Matthew Tierney. Upon the rest
Mr. Justice Burton, who was deeply affected, pronounced judgment
on the 30th of May, in the following terms:--"With respect to the
principal traverser, the Court is of opinion that he must be sentenced
to be imprisoned for the space of twelve calendar months; and that
he is further to be fined in the sum of £2,000, and bound in his own
recognisances in the sum of £5,000, and two sureties in £2,500, to
keep the peace for seven years. With respect to the other traversers,
we have come to the conclusion that to each shall be allotted similar
sentences, namely, that they be imprisoned for the space of nine
calendar months, each of them to pay £50 fine, and to enter into their
own recognisances of £1,000 each, and two sureties of £500, to keep the
peace for seven years."

The prisoners were at once sent to Richmond Bridewell, on the South
Circular Road, where the Governor did all in his power to make them
comfortable. Good apartments were assigned to them. They dined together
every day, and they were permitted to receive, without restriction,
the visits of their friends and admirers. The Government was the less
disposed to interfere with these indulgences, as their object was
not so much punishment as prevention, and besides, the traversers
had appealed against the sentence. A majority of the twelve English
judges affirmed the judgment of the Court of Queen's Bench, while
condemning the counts on which the Irish court relied. An appeal was
then made to the House of Lords. The decision was left to the five
law lords--Lyndhurst, Brougham, Cottenham, Denman, and Campbell. The
first two were for a confirmation of the judgment, the last three for
reversal. Lord Denman, in pronouncing judgment, said, referring to
the tampering with the panel, "If such practices as had taken place
in the present instance in Ireland should continue, the trial by jury
would become a mockery, a delusion, and a snare," a sentence which was
hackneyed by repetition for years afterwards. The news of the reversal
reached Dublin on the afternoon of the 5th of September. Great crowds
had assembled on the pier at Kingstown, and tremendous cheers broke
forth from the multitude when the Holyhead packet approached, and they
saw held up a white flag, with the inscription, "Judgment reversed
by the House of Lords. O'Connell is free!" The news was everywhere
received by the Roman Catholics with wild excitement.

Orders soon came from the Government for the liberation of the
prisoners. After some consultation with their friends, it was resolved
that there should be a public procession from the prison in the
morning. Mr. O'Connell, however, left that evening, and proceeded on
foot to his house in Merrion Square. Before he had reached the square,
the tidings spread abroad that he was out, and crowds rapidly assembled
from all directions. The people leaped and danced about him, while
their acclamations rent the air. When he placed his foot upon the step
to ascend to his own door, the exulting shouts of some 10,000 or 15,000
people were almost deafening. Appearing on the balcony of his house,
where he had often stood before, to address his followers, they could
scarcely be got to keep silence while he spoke. The procession next day
was, in point of magnitude, quite in keeping with the other "monster"
proceedings. Twelve o'clock was the time appointed to start from the
prison, and at that hour the first part of the procession arrived. Its
length may be inferred from the fact that it was not until two o'clock
that the triumphal car reached the prison gate. During those two hours
thousands upon thousands defiled before it in one unbroken line of
men, perfect order being kept, without the aid of a single policeman,
and the marching mass being broken into sections only by the bands of
music, preceding the flags or carriages of the different trades, which
numbered about thirty. The bands were all dressed in fancy uniforms,
bearing bright colours--blue, pink, and green--with banners of the
most gorgeous description. There was such a demand for carriages
and vehicles of all sorts, that Dublin alone could not meet it, and
carriages were obtained from Bray, and various other places around the
metropolis. The procession was composed of Repeal wardens, members of
the Repeal Association, the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and town council,
personal friends and political admirers of O'Connell.

The news of his liberation was carried that night by the mail coaches
over all parts of the country, and produced extraordinary excitement
throughout the south and west, particularly in Cork, which Mr.
O'Connell then represented. There the whole population seems to have
turned out, some of the streets being so packed that it was impossible
to get along. Processions were soon formed, with bands of music, and
green boughs. Even the little children were furnished with the emblems
of victory. Along the country roads, too, as well as in the towns
and villages, every little cabin had its green boughs stuck up, and
its group of inhabitants shouting for "the Liberator." At night, in
the towns, every house was illuminated, while bonfires blazed on the
mountains, and the horizon seemed on fire in every direction. On the
following Sunday the liberation of the prisoners was celebrated in the
Metropolitan Church, Dublin. Archbishop Murray sat with his mitre on,
and in his grandest robes, on an elevated throne, with crimson canopy.
On the opposite side, beneath the pulpit, were chairs of state, on
which sat O'Connell and the rest of the "Repeal martyrs." A _Te Deum_
was sung for the deliverance of the liberator of his country; a sermon
was preached by O'Connell's devoted friend and chaplain, the Rev. Dr.
Miley, who ascribed the liberation, not to the law lords, but to the
Virgin Mary.

[Illustration: O'CONNELL RETURNING HOME FROM PRISON. (_See p._ 532.)]

Notwithstanding these rejoicings, however, there is no doubt that the
imprisonment completely broke the spirit of O'Connell. During 1843 he
had been urged forward by the impetuosity and warlike spirit of the
Young Ireland party, and the excitement of the monster meetings seems
to have filled his mind with the notion that he could really wield the
physical power of the country in an actual contest with the Queen's
forces. His prison reflections dissipated all such illusions. The
enforced inactivity, at his time of life, of one accustomed to so much
labour and to such constant speaking, no doubt affected his health.
Probably the softening of the brain, of which he died, commenced
about this time. At all events he was thenceforward an altered man,
excessively cautious and timid, with a morbid horror of war and
blood, and a rooted dislike of the Young Ireland leaders, which the
Old Ireland party did all they could to strengthen. Mr. Smith O'Brien
had been the Conservative member for the county of Limerick, and had
been opposed to the Repeal agitation; but the moment O'Connell was
arrested, he joined the Association, taking the vacant position of
leader, and adopting the policy of the Young Ireland party, which
avowedly tended to war and revolution. Boasting of a lineal descent
from the conqueror of the Danes at Clontarf, and hailed by some of his
admirers as one who had a right to wear his crown, the new convert
to Repeal seemed determined to go all lengths for the liberation of
his country from the Saxon yoke. O'Connell at first seemed to rejoice
in the accession of strength to the cause, but signs of jealousy and
dislike were soon manifested. In private there was a marked coolness
between the two leaders, and when, at the meetings of the Association,
any of the Young Ireland orators gave utterance to martial sentiments,
they were promptly called to order by O'Connell; but they revenged
themselves by frequently outvoting him in committee, which was a
grievous mortification to one so long accustomed to almost absolute
rule among his followers. He attended Parliament during the Session of
1845-46, diligently performing his duties as a representative, sitting
in committees, and taking part in the debates of the House. During
his absence the Young Ireland party gained a complete ascendency in
the Repeal Association. Mr. Smith O'Brien, who refused to sit on any
committee in the House of Commons not connected with Irish business,
and was imprisoned in the cellar for his contumacy, made himself an
idol with the revolutionary party at home by his refractory spirit and
the perversity of his conduct. The other leaders of that party who
exerted the greatest influence were Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy,
D'Arcy M'Gee, and Thomas Meagher--all men of superior ability, whose
organ, the _Nation_, exerted great influence throughout the country.
Ultimately, a series of "peace resolutions," which were proposed in
the Repeal Association, pledging its members to abjure the sword as an
instrument for redressing the grievances of Ireland, caused an open
rupture between the two parties. The Young Irelanders seceded in a
body from Conciliation Hall, and established an organisation of their
own--"The Irish Confederation." From this time the Repeal rent rapidly
fell off, and when O'Connell again returned to Dublin he found that the
spell of his enchantment, once so potent, was broken; and the famine
came soon after, to consummate his affliction and break his heart.
Before the sad close of his public career had arrived, and pending the
issue of the State trial, O'Connell had a proof of the magnanimity
of the English people, of those Saxons whose national character he
had so often assailed and maligned. When he appeared at one of the
Anti-Corn-Law meetings in Covent Garden Theatre, his reception by
the assembled multitude is described as one of the most magnificent
displays of popular enthusiasm ever witnessed. They remembered only
that his jury was packed, that his judges were prejudiced, and that
he had been for thirty years the able and consistent opponent of the
Corn Laws. He declared himself that he was not prepared for such a
demonstration, even by the experience of the monster meetings. This
great triumph on English ground seemed to infuse new life into the
veteran agitator, for his speech on that occasion was one of the finest
and most effective he ever delivered.

In the meantime the Irish State trial, and the affairs of Ireland
generally, were the subject of frequent discussions in both Houses of
Parliament. On the 13th of February the Marquis of Normanby moved a
resolution condemnatory of the policy of the Government, contrasting it
with his own Administration, with the treatment of Canada, and with the
liberal policy by which, he said, Austria had conquered disaffection
in Lombardy. He was answered by Lord Roden and others, and on a
division his motion was rejected by a majority of 175 to 78. On the
same day the state of Ireland was introduced by Lord John Russell, in
a speech which occupied three hours. The debate that followed lasted
for nine days. The principal speakers who took part in it were Mr.
Wyse, Sir James Graham, Mr. Young, Sir George Grey, Lord Eliot, Mr.
Shaw, the Recorder of Dublin, Lord Howick, Lord Stanley, Mr. Macaulay,
Sir William Follett, Sir Thomas Wilde, Sir F. Pollock, the English
Attorney-General, Mr. Roebuck, Mr. O'Connell, Mr. Sheil, and Sir Robert
Peel. The discussion turned mainly upon the question whether or not
O'Connell had had a fair trial, and upon this the lawyers and the House
pronounced opinions in harmony with the interests of their respective
parties. But nearly every topic that could be mentioned was brought
up in the course of the monster debate. Sir Robert Peel concluded a
long and able speech in defence of his Government with the following
beautiful peroration:--"I have a firm conviction that if there were
calm and tranquillity in Ireland, there is no part of the British
empire that would make such rapid progress in improvement. There are
facilities for improvement and opportunities for it which will make the
advance of Ireland more rapid than the advance of any other country.
I will conclude, then, by expressing my sincere and earnest hope that
this agitation, and all the evil consequences of it, may be permitted
to subside; and hereafter, in whatever capacity I may be, I should
consider that the happiest day of my life when I could see the beloved
Sovereign of these realms fulfilling the fondest wishes of her heart,
possessing a feeling of affection towards all her people, but mingling
that affection with sympathy and tenderness towards Ireland. I should
hail the dawning of that auspicious day, when she could alight like
some benignant spirit on the shores of Ireland, and lay the foundations
of a temple of peace; when she could, in accents which proceeded from
the heart--spoken to the heart rather than to the ear--call upon her
Irish subjects of all classes and of all denominations, Protestants
and Roman Catholics, Saxon and Celt, to forget the difference of creed
and of race, and to hallow that temple of peace which she should then
found, with sacrifices still holier than those by which the temples
of old were hallowed--by the sacrifice of those evil passions that
dishonour our common faith, and prevent the union of heart and hand in
defence of our common country."

We now arrive at the "Irish Crisis," the famine of 1846 and 1847--one
of the greatest calamities that ever afflicted the human race. In order
to understand fully the events connected with this visitation, it is
necessary to notice the social condition of the country which rendered
its effects so destructive. Ireland had long been in a chronic state
of misery, which has been ascribed by the most competent judges to
the peculiar state of the land tenure in that country. It had often
been predicted by writers on the state of Ireland, that, owing to this
rottenness at the foundation of the social fabric, it would come down
with a crash some day. The facts reported by the Census Commissioners
of 1841 showed that this consummation could not be far off. Out of a
population of 8,000,000, there were 3,700,000 above the age of five
years who could neither read nor write; while nearly three millions
and a half lived in mud cabins, badly thatched with straw, having
each but one room, and often without either a window or a chimney.
These figures indicate a mass of ignorance and poverty which could
not be contemplated without alarm, and the subject was, therefore,
constantly pressed upon the attention of Parliament. As usual in cases
of difficulty, the Government, feeling that something should be done,
and not knowing what to do, appointed, in 1845, a commission to inquire
into the relations between landlord and tenant, and the condition of
the working classes. At the head of this commission was the Earl of
Devon, a benevolent nobleman, whose sympathies were on the side of the
people. Captain Kennedy, the secretary to the Commissioners, published
a digest of the report of the evidence, which presented the facts
in a readable form, and was the means of diffusing a large amount
of authentic information on the state of Ireland. The Commissioners
travelled through the country, held courts of inquiry, and examined
witnesses of all classes. As the result of their extensive intercourse
with the farming classes and their own observations, they were enabled
to state that in almost every part of Ireland unequivocal symptoms
of improvement, in spite of many embarrassing and counteracting
circumstances, continually presented themselves to the view, and that
there existed a very general and increasing spirit and desire for
the promotion of such improvement, from which the most beneficial
results might fairly be expected. Indeed, speaking of the country
generally, they add: "With some exceptions, which are unfortunately
too notorious, we believe that at no former period did so active a
spirit of improvement prevail; nor could well-directed measures for the
attainment of that object have been proposed with a better prospect of
success than at the present moment."

But this improvement produced no sensible effect upon the mass of
labouring people. However brightly the sun of prosperity might gild
the eminences of society, the darkness of misery and despair settled
upon the masses below. The Commissioners proceed:--"A reference to
the evidence of most of the witnesses will show that the agricultural
labourer of Ireland continues to suffer the greatest privations and
hardships; that he continues to depend upon casual and precarious
employment for subsistence; that he is still badly housed, badly fed,
badly clothed, and badly paid for his labour. Our personal experience
and observation during our inquiry have afforded us a melancholy
confirmation of these statements; and we cannot forbear expressing our
strong sense of the patient endurance which the labouring classes have
generally exhibited under sufferings greater, we believe, than the
people of any other country in Europe have to sustain."

It was found that the potato was almost the only food of the Irish
millions, and that it formed their chief means of obtaining the
other necessaries of life. A large portion of this crop was grown
under the conacre system, to which the poorest of the peasantry were
obliged to have recourse, notwithstanding the minute subdivision of
land. In 1841 there were 691,000 farms in Ireland exceeding one acre
in extent. Nearly one-half of these were under five acres each. The
number of proprietors in fee was estimated at 8,000--a smaller number
in proportion to the extent of territory than in any other country of
Western Europe except Spain. In Connaught, several proprietors had
100,000 acres each, the proportion of small farms being greater there
than in the rest of Ireland. The total number of farms in the province
was 155,842, and of these 100,254 consisted of from one to five acres.
If all the proprietors had resided among their tenantry, and been in
a position to encourage their industry and care for their welfare,
matters would not have been so bad; but most of the large landowners
were absentees. It frequently happened that the large estates were held
in strict limitation, and they were nearly all heavily encumbered. The
owners preferred living in England or on the Continent, having let
their lands on long leases or in perpetuity to "middlemen," who sublet
them for as high rents as they could get. Their tenants again sublet,
so that it frequently happened that two, three, or four landlords
intervened between the proprietors and the occupying tenant, each
deriving an interest from the land. The head landlord therefore, though
ever so well-disposed, had no power whatever to help the occupying
tenants generally, and of those who had the power, very few felt
disposed. There were extensive districts without a single resident
proprietor, and when the absentees were appealed to by the local relief
committees during the famine to assist the perishing people, they
seldom took the trouble of answering the application.

The minute subdivision of land which placed the population in a state
of such complete dependence upon the potato was first encouraged by
the landlords, in order to multiply the number of voters, and increase
their Parliamentary interest; but subsequently, as the population
increased, it became in a great measure the work of the people
themselves. The possession of land afforded the only certain means of
subsistence, and a farm was therefore divided among the sons of the
family, each one, as he was married--which happened early--receiving
some share, and each daughter also often getting a slice as her
marriage-portion. In vain were clauses against subletting inserted in
leases; in vain was the erection of new houses prohibited; in vain
did the landlord threaten the tenant. The latter relied upon the
sympathy of his class to prevent ejectment, and on his own ingenuity
to defeat the other impediments to his favourite mode of providing
for his family. This process was at length carried to an extreme that
became perfectly ludicrous. Instead of each sub-tenant or assignee
of a portion of the farm receiving his holding in one compact lot,
he obtained a part of each particular quality of land, so that his
tenement consisted of a number of scattered patches, each too small
to be separately fenced, and exposed to the constant depredations of
his neighbours' cattle, thus affording a fruitful source of quarrels,
and utterly preventing the possibility of any improved system of
husbandry. These small patches, however, were not numerous enough to
afford "potato gardens" for the still increasing population, and hence
arose the conacre system, by which those who occupied no land were
enabled to grow potatoes for themselves. Tempted by the high rent,
which varied from £8 to £14 an acre without manure, the farmers gave
to the cottiers in their neighbourhood the use of their land merely
for the potato crop, generally a quarter of an Irish acre to each. On
this the cottier put all the manure he could make by his pig, or the
children could scrape off the road during the year, and "planted" his
crop of potatoes, which he relied upon as almost the sole support of
his family. On it he also fed the pig, which paid the rent, or procured
clothes and other necessaries if he had been permitted to pay the rent
with his own labour. The labourer thus became a commercial speculator
in potatoes. He mortgaged his labour for part of the ensuing year
for the rent of his field. If his speculation proved successful, he
was able to replace his capital, to fatten his pig, and to support
himself and his family, while he cleared off his debt to the farmer.
If it failed, his former savings were gone, his heap of manure had
been expended to no purpose, and he had lost the means of rendering
his pig fit for the market. But his debt to the farmer still remained,
and the scanty wages which he could earn at some periods of the year
were reduced, not only by the increased number of persons looking for
work, but also by the diminished ability of the farmers to employ them.
Speculation in potatoes, whether on a large or small scale, had always
been hazardous in the southern and westerly portions of Ireland. There
had been famines from the failure of that crop at various times, and
a remarkably severe one in 1822, when Parliament voted £300,000 for
public works and other relief purposes, and subscriptions were raised
to the amount of £310,000, of which £44,000 was collected in Ireland.
In 1831 violent storms and continual rain brought on another failure of
the potato crop in the west of Ireland, particularly along the coast of
Galway, Mayo, and Donegal. On this occasion the English public, with
ready sympathy, again came forward, and subscriptions were raised,
amounting to about £75,000. On several other occasions subsequently,
the Government found it necessary to advance money for the relief of
Irish misery, invariably occasioned by the failure of the potatoes, and
followed by distress and disease. The public and the Legislature had
therefore repeated warnings of the danger of having millions of people
dependent for existence upon so precarious a crop.

[Illustration: FATHER MATHEW AND THE FAMINE-STRICKEN POOR. (_See p._
537.)]

In the year 1845 marked symptoms appeared of the approaching total
failure of the national food. The early crop had been saved, but
throughout the whole country the late crop was lost. As, however, the
grain crop was abundant, the loss was not so severely felt. But the
Government were so alarmed that they appointed a commission, consisting
of Professors Kane, Lindley, and Playfair, eminent chemists, to inquire
into the cause of the failure; but all their skill was unavailing to
discover the nature of the mysterious agency by which the destruction
was effected. The farmers and peasantry were not deterred from putting
in an abundant crop of potatoes next year. In the beginning of the
season the crops seemed in excellent condition, and there was every
prospect of a plentiful harvest; but suddenly the blight came, as if
the crop had been everywhere smitten with lightning, or a withering
blast had swept over the whole country. "On the 27th of July," said
Father Mathew, "I passed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant
bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on
the 3rd of August, I beheld one wide waste of putrefying vegetation.
In many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their
decaying gardens, wringing their hands and bewailing bitterly the
destruction that had left them foodless." First a brown spot appeared
on the leaf; the spots gradually increased in number and size until the
foliage withered, the stem became brittle, and snapped off immediately
when touched. In less than a week the whole process of destruction was
accomplished. The fields assumed a blackened appearance; the roots were
like pigeons' eggs, which gradually rotted away, and were wholly unfit
for food. In one week the chief support of the masses was utterly lost.

For a few weeks the cottiers and small farmers managed to eke out a
subsistence by the sale of their pigs, and any little effects they
had. But pigs, fowls, furniture, and clothing soon went, one after
another, to satisfy the cravings of hunger. The better class of farmers
lived upon their corn and cattle; but they were obliged to dismiss
their servants, and this numerous class became the first victims of
starvation; for when they were turned off, they were refused admission
by their relations, who had not the means of feeding them. Tailors,
shoemakers, and other artisans who worked for the lower classes,
lost their employment and became destitute also. While the means of
support failed upon every side, and food rose to such enormous prices
that everything that could possibly be eaten was economised, so that
the starving dogs were drowned from compassion, the famine steadily
advanced from the west and south to the east and north, till it
involved the whole population in its crushing grasp. It was painfully
interesting to mark the progress of the visitation, even in those parts
of the country where its ravages were least felt. The small farmer had
only his corn, designed for rent and seed. He was obliged to take it
to the mill, to ward off starvation. The children of the poor, placed
on short allowance, were suffering fearfully from hunger. Mothers,
heart-broken and worn down to skeletons, were seen on certain days
proceeding in groups to some distant depôt, where Indian meal was to be
had at reduced prices, but still double that of the ordinary market. As
they returned to their children with their little bags on their heads,
a faint joy lit up their famine-stricken features. Those children, who
had lived for two days and two nights on a dole of raw turnips, would
now be relieved by a morsel of nourishing food. The fathers, who had
absented themselves from home in order to avoid the agony of listening
to their heart-piercing cries, might now sit down and look their little
ones in the face. But, if the mother failed to obtain the relief for
which she had travelled so far, what then? Yesterday no breakfast, no
dinner, no supper; the same to-day; no prospect of better to-morrow.
The destitute rushed to the workhouses, which soon became crowded to
excess by those who had been able-bodied men and women, while the
aged, the sickly, and the children were left to starve. Overpowered by
hunger, they lay down helpless, the ready victims of the pestilence
that walked close upon the footsteps of famine, and died in thousands.
Let us consider the state of a population such as has been described.
Scattered over remote districts, with no gentry resident within many
miles, none to whom a complaint could be made but the clergyman, whose
energies were overtaxed, how utterly helpless must have been the
condition of those doomed people!

A few sketches of the state of the population given by the agents
of the Relief Committee of the Society of Friends, who exerted
themselves nobly in relieving the distress, may help to give us a
more vivid impression of the horrors of the famine. At Boyle they
found numbers that had eaten nothing but cabbages or turnips for
weeks. The children were in a condition of starvation, ravenous with
hunger. At Carrick-on-Shannon a most painful and heartrending scene
presented itself: poor wretches in the last stage of famine, imploring
to be received into the house; women that had six or seven children
begging that even two or three of them might be taken in, as their
husbands were earning but eightpence a day. Famine was written in their
faces. On bread being given to some of these poor creatures, many of
them devoured it with ravenous voracity. But the mothers restrained
themselves, and carried home portions to their children. The famine
produced a peculiar effect on the appearance of the young. Their
faces looked wan and haggard, seeming like old men and women, with an
extraordinary sharpness of expression; they had lost all their natural
sprightliness, making no attempt to play. In the crowded workhouses
their bedding consisted of dirty straw, in which they were laid in
rows on the floor, even as many as six persons being crowded under one
rug--the living and the dying stretched side by side beneath the same
miserable covering. The town of Westport was in itself a strange and
fearful sight, like what we read of in beleaguered cities; its streets
crowded with gaunt wanderers, sauntering to and fro with hopeless air
and hunger-struck appearance; a mob of starved, almost naked women
around the poor-house, clamouring for soup-tickets.

When the visitors entered a village, their first question was, "How
many deaths?" "_The hunger is upon us_," was everywhere the cry; and
involuntarily they found themselves regarding this hunger as they would
an epidemic, looking upon starvation as a disease. In fact, as they
passed along, their wonder was, not that the people died, but that they
lived; and Mr. W. E. Forster, in his report, said, "I have no doubt
whatever that in any other country the mortality would have been far
greater; and that many lives have been prolonged, perhaps saved, by
the long apprenticeship to want in which the Irish peasant has been
trained, and by that lovely, touching charity which prompts him to
share his scanty meal with his starving neighbour. But the springs of
this charity must be rapidly dried up. Like a scourge of locusts, _the
hunger_ daily sweeps over fresh districts, eating up all before it. One
class after another is falling into the same abyss of ruin."

One of the most appalling of the narratives sent to the Central
Committee of the Society of Friends was Mr. William Bennet's account
of his journey in Ireland. He left Dublin on the 12th of January,
and proceeded by coach to Longford, and thence to Ballina, from
which he penetrated into remote districts of the county Mayo. In the
neighbourhood of Belmullet he and his companion visited a district
which may serve as a representation of the condition of the labouring
class generally in the mountainous and boggy districts, where they
burrowed and multiplied, more like a race of inferior animals than
human beings. "Many of the cabins," wrote Mr. Bennet, "were holes in
the bog, covered with a layer of turf, and not distinguishable as
human habitations from the surrounding moors, until close down upon
them. The bare sod was about the best material of which any of them
were constructed. Doorways, not doors, were provided at both sides of
the latter, mostly back and front, to take advantage of the way of
the wind. Windows and chimneys, I think, had no existence. A second
apartment or partition of any kind was exceedingly rare. Furniture
properly so called, I believe, may be stated at nil. I cannot speak
with certainty, and wish not to speak with exaggeration, we were too
much overcome to note specifically; but as far as memory serves, we saw
neither bed, chair, nor table at all. A chest, a few iron or earthen
vessels, a stool or two, the dirty rags and night coverings, formed
about the sum total of the best-furnished. Outside many were all but
unapproachable from the mud and filth surrounding them; the scene
inside is worse, if possible, from the added closeness, darkness, and
smoke.... And now language utterly fails me in attempting to depict
the state of the wretched inmates.... We entered a cabin. Stretched
in one dark corner, scarcely visible from the smoke and rags that
covered them, were three children huddled together, lying there because
they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly; their little limbs, on
removing a portion of the covering, perfectly emaciated; eyes sunk,
voice gone, and evidently in the last stage of actual starvation.
Crouched over the turf embers was another form, wild and all but naked,
scarcely human in appearance. It stirred not nor noticed us. On some
straw, soddened upon the ground, moaning piteously, was a shrivelled
old woman, imploring us to give her something, baring her limbs
partly to show how the skin hung loose from her bones, as soon as she
attracted our attention. Above her, on something like a ledge, was a
young woman with sunken cheeks, a mother, I have no doubt, who scarcely
raised her eyes in answer to our inquiries; but pressed her hand upon
her forehead, with a look of unutterable anguish and despair.... Every
infantile expression had entirely departed; and, in some, reason and
intelligence had evidently flown. Many were remnants of families,
crowded together in one cabin; orphaned little relatives taken in by
the equally destitute, and even strangers--for these poor people are
kind to each other, even to the end. In one cabin was a sister, just
dying, lying beside her little brother, just dead. I have worse than
this to relate; but it is useless to multiply details, and they are, in
fact, unfit."

It was not only in the wild and dreary west, always the most neglected
part of Ireland, without resident gentry, without a middle class,
without manufacturers, and almost without towns, that the desolating
effects of the famine were felt. In Ulster, even in the best counties
and most thriving manufacturing districts, where the people were
intensely industrious, orderly, and thrifty, some of its worst horrors
were endured. In the county of Armagh, where the very small farmers
kept themselves in comfort by weaving linen in their own houses, they
were obliged to work their looms by night as well as by day in order
to keep hunger from their homes. They worked till, by exhaustion and
want of sleep, they were compelled to lie down. Many of them were
obliged to sell or pawn all their clothes. In many cases, and as a last
resource, those stout-hearted Presbyterians had to sell their Bibles
in order to purchase a meal of food for their children. A clergyman
of the Church of England in that county wrote to the Committee of the
Society of Friends that he had seen the living lying on straw by the
side of the unburied dead, who had died three days before. Not only
the aged and infirm, not only women and children, but strong men, he
had known to pine away till they died of actual starvation. Strong,
healthy girls became so emaciated that they could not stand or move
a limb. He visited houses, once comfortable homes, in which not an
article of furniture remained. The poor-house of Lurgan was shut.
Seventy-five persons died there in one day. In Armagh poor-house
forty-five died weekly. The poor-houses became pest-houses, which
sent forth the miasma of death into every parish, already full of
dysentery and fever. The congregations in the various churches were
reduced to almost nothing. Deaths occurred so rapidly that the Roman
Catholic priest ceased to attend funerals in his graveyard. The most
deplorable accounts came from Cork, and especially from Skibbereen, a
remote district of that county. In December, 1846, Father Mathew wrote
to Mr. Trevelyan, then Secretary of the Treasury, that men, women, and
children were gradually wasting away. They filled their stomachs with
cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops, etc., to appease the cravings of hunger.
There were then more than 5,000 half-starved wretches from the country
begging in the streets of Cork. When utterly exhausted they crawled to
the workhouse to die. The average of deaths in that union were then
over 100 a week. At Crookhaven the daily average of deaths was from ten
to twelve; and as early as the first Sunday in September a collection
was made to purchase a public bier, on which to take the coffinless
dead to the grave, the means to procure coffins being utterly exhausted
in that locality. Earlier still in Skibbereen numerous cases had
occurred of the dead being kept for several days above ground for want
of coffins. In some cases they were buried in the rags in which they
died. Throughout the entire west of the county of Cork it was a common
occurrence to see from ten to a dozen funerals in the course of the day
during the close of 1846.

[Illustration: FATHER MATHEW.]

Mr. J. F. Maguire, who writes as an eye-witness of the scenes he
describes, referring to the spring of 1847, says:--"The famine now
raged in every part of the afflicted country, and starving multitudes
crowded the thoroughfares of the cities and large towns. Death was
everywhere--in the cabin, on the highway, in the garret, in the
cellar, and even on the flags or side-paths of the most public streets
of the city. In the workhouses, to which the pressure of absolute
starvation alone drove the destitute, the carnage was frightful. It was
now increasing at prodigious pace. The number of deaths at the Cork
workhouse in the last week of January, 1847, was 104. It increased to
128 in the first week in February, and in the second week of that month
it reached 164; 396 in three weeks. During the month of April as many
as thirty-six bodies were interred in one day in that portion of Father
Mathew's cemetery reserved for the free burial of the poor; and this
mortality was entirely independent of the mortality in the workhouse.
During the same month there were 300 coffins sold in a single street
in the course of a fortnight, and these were chiefly required for the
supply of a single parish. From the 27th of December, in 1846, to the
middle of April, in 1847, the number of human beings that died in
the Cork workhouse was 2,130! And in the third week of the following
month the free interments in the Mathew cemetery had risen to 277--as
many as sixty-seven having been buried in one day. The destruction of
human life in other workhouses of Ireland kept pace with the appalling
mortality in the Cork workhouse. According to official returns, it had
reached in April the weekly average of twenty-five per 1,000 inmates;
the actual number of deaths being 2,706 for the week ending the 3rd of
April, and 2,613 in the following week. Yet the number of inmates in
the Irish workhouses was but 104,455 on the 10th of April, the entire
of the houses not having then been completed.

[Illustration: ON BOARD AN EMIGRANT SHIP AT THE TIME OF THE IRISH
FAMINE. (_See p._ 542.)]

"More than 100 workhouse officers fell victims to the famine fever
during this fatal year, which also decimated the ranks of the Catholic
clergy of the country. Mr. Trevelyan gives names of thirty English
and Scottish priests who sacrificed their lives to their zealous
attendance on the immigrant Irish, who carried the pestilence with them
in their flight to other portions of the United Kingdom. Pestilence
likewise slew its victims in the fetid hold of the emigrant ship,
and, following them across the ocean, immolated them in thousands in
the lazar houses that fringed the shores of Canada and the United
States. The principal business of the time was in meal, and coffins,
and passenger ships. A fact may be mentioned which renders further
description of the state of the country needless. The Cork Patent Saw
Mills had been at full work from December, 1846, to May, 1847, with
twenty pairs of saws, constantly going from morning till night, cutting
planks for coffins, and planks and scantlings for fever sheds, and for
the framework of berths for emigrant ships."

At the Church of St. Anne, Shandon, under a kind of shed attached to
a guard-house, lay huddled up in their filthy fetid rags about forty
human creatures--men, women, children, and infants of the tenderest
age--starving and fever-stricken, most of them in a dying state, some
dead, and all gaunt, yellow, hideous from the combined effects of
famine and disease. Under this open shed they had remained during the
night, and until that hour--about ten in the morning--when the funeral
procession was passing by, and their indescribable misery was beheld
by the leading citizens of Cork, including the mayor, and several
members of the board of guardians. The odour which proceeded from that
huddled-up heap of human beings was of itself enough to generate a
plague.

Skibbereen was described as "one mass of famine, disease, and death;
the poor rapidly sinking under fever, dysentery, and starvation."
There, as early as the first week in February, 1847, there was constant
use for a coffin with movable sides, in which the dead were borne to
the grave, and there dropped into their last resting-place. On the
whole, the resignation of this stricken people was something wonderful.
Outrage was rare, and the violations of the rights of property were not
at all so numerous as might have been expected from persons rendered
desperate by hunger; and where such things occurred, the depredators
were not those who suffered the severest distress. But as the famine
proceeded in its desolating course, and people became familiar with
its horrors, the demoralising effects of which we have read in such
visitations were exhibited in Ireland also. Next to the French, the
Irish have been remarkable for their attention to the dead, as well as
for the strength of their domestic affections. They had a decent pride
in having a respectable "wake" and funeral when they lost any member
of the family; and however great their privations were, they made an
effort to spare something for the last sad tokens of respect for those
they loved. But now there was no mourning for the dead, and but little
attention paid to the dying. The ancient and deep-rooted custom with
regard to funerals was "swept away like chaff before the wind." The
funerals were rarely attended by more than three or four relatives or
friends. Sometimes the work of burial was left entirely to persons
hired to do it, and in many cases it was not done at all for five or
six days after death, and then it was only by threats and rewards that
any persons could be got to perform the dangerous duty.

The demoralisation appeared further in the abuses connected with the
distribution of relief. The reports of the Commissioners have stated
that, in those districts where the relief committees worked together
with zeal and in good faith, the administration was excellent, checking
fraud and imposture, while it relieved the really distressed. But in
some districts this was unhappily not the case. Abuses existed, varying
from apathy and neglect to connivance at frauds and misappropriation
of the funds. Gross impositions were daily practised by the poor. The
dead or absent were personated; children were lent for a few days in
order to give the appearance of large families, and thus entitle the
borrowers to a greater number of rations. Almost the whole population,
in many cases, alleged poverty and looked for relief; and then,
conceiving the receipt of cooked food a degradation, they endeavoured
to compel the issue of raw meal. One universal spirit of mendicancy
pervaded the people, to which in several places the committees offered
no opposition. Yielding to intimidation, or seeking for popularity,
they were willing to place the whole population indiscriminately on the
lists to be supported by public charity.

The Marquis of Lansdowne, the President of the Council in the Whig
Ministry which had replaced that of Sir Robert Peel, in a speech
delivered in the House of Lords on the 25th of January, 1847, gave an
estimate, as accurate as the best calculation could make it, of the
loss in money value that had been occasioned by the failure of the
crops in Ireland. "Taking a valuation of £10 per acre for potatoes, and
£3 10s. for oats, the deficiency on the potato crop alone amounted to
£11,350,000, while on the crop of oats it amounted to £4,660,000, or
to a total value of £16,010,000 for the whole of a country which, if
it could not be said to be the poorest, was certainty not one of the
richest in the world. In weight the loss was 9,000,000 or 10,000,000
tons of potatoes. The whole loss had been equivalent to the absolute
destruction of 1,500,000 arable acres." On the same day, Lord John
Russell, who had succeeded Peel as Prime Minister, gave a statement of
what the Government had done during the recess for the relief of the
Irish population, in pursuance of Acts passed in the previous Session.
He stated that an immense staff of servants had been employed by the
Board of Public Works--upwards of 11,000 persons--giving employment
to half a million of labourers, representing 2,000,000 of souls; the
expense for the month of January being estimated at from £700,000 to
£800,000.

It was proposed also to form, in certain districts, relief committees,
which should be empowered to receive subscriptions, levy rates, and
take charge of donations from the Government; and that out of the fund
thus raised they should establish soup kitchens, and deliver rations
to the famishing inhabitants. Sir John Burgoyne, Inspector-General
of Fortifications, was appointed to superintend the works. Lord John
Russell referred to measures for draining and reclaiming waste land in
Ireland, and to advances of money for this purpose to the proprietors,
to be repaid in instalments spread over a number of years. On a
subsequent day, in answer to questions from Mr. Roebuck, the noble lord
gave a statement of the sums that had already been advanced. £2,000,000
had been issued on account of the Poor Employment Act of the last
Session. He expected that not less than £500,000 or £600,000 a month
would be spent from the present time until August, and he calculated
the whole expenditure would not be less than £7,000,000. There was
great difference of opinion on the subject of the Government plans. A
counter-scheme for the establishment of reproductive works deserves to
be noticed for the interest it excited and the attention it occupied
for years afterwards--namely, the railway plan of Lord George Bentinck.
Acts of Parliament, he said, had been passed for 1,582 miles of railway
in Ireland, of which only 123 miles had then been completed, while
2,600 miles had been completed in England. In order to encourage the
formation of Irish railways, therefore, he proposed that for every
£100 expended by the companies £200 should be lent by the Government
at the same interest at which they borrowed the money, Mr. Hudson,
who was "chairman of 1,700 miles of railroad," pledging his credit
that the Government would not lose a shilling by the transaction. By
adopting this plan they could give reproductive employment to 109,000
men in different parts of the country, for earth-works, fences, drains,
and watercourses connected with the lines. This would give support of
550,000 souls on useful work, tend to develop the resources of the
country, and produce such improvement that the railways constructed
would add £23,000,000 to the value of landed property in twenty-five
years, and would pay £22,500 a year to the poor rates. The purchase of
land for the railways would moreover place £1,250,000 in the hands of
Irish proprietors, for the employment of fresh labour, and £240,000
in the hands of the occupying tenants for their own purposes. The
Government also would reap from the expenditure of £24,000,000 on
railways in Ireland, an enormous increase of revenue in the augmented
consumption of articles of excise and customs. The noble lord's speech,
which lasted two hours and a half, was received with cheers from both
sides of the House. Leave was given to bring in the Bill, though it was
strongly objected to by Lord John Russell, Mr. Labouchere, and other
members of the Government. It was also opposed by Sir Robert Peel, who
exposed the unsoundness of the economic principles involved in it. The
Bill was rejected by a majority of 204, the numbers being 118 for the
second reading, and 322 against it. Notwithstanding this decision,
loans were subsequently advanced to certain Irish railways, amounting
to £620,000, so that the objection of the Government was more to the
extent than to the principle of Lord George Bentinck's measure.

As in the whole history of the world, perhaps, so great a calamity
as the Irish famine never called for sympathy and relief, so never
was a more generous response elicited by any appeal to humanity. The
Government and the Legislature did all that was possible with the means
at their disposal, and the machinery that already existed, or could
be hastily constructed, to meet the overwhelming emergency. The newly
established Poor Law system, though useful as far as it went, was quite
inadequate to meet such great distress. It had been passed while the
country was comparatively prosperous, and contained no provision for
such a social disorganisation as this famine. By the Acts of 1 and
2 Victoria, c. 56, no outdoor relief whatever could be given in any
circumstances. The size of the unions was also a great impediment to
the working of the Poor Law. They were three times the extent of the
corresponding divisions in England. In Munster and Connaught, where
there was the greatest amount of destitution and the least amount of
local agency available for its relief, the unions were much larger
than in the more favoured provinces of Ulster and Leinster. The union
of Ballina comprised a region of upwards of half a million acres, and
within its desert tracts the famine assumed its most appalling form,
the workhouse being more than forty miles distant from some of the
sufferers. As a measure of precaution, the Government had secretly
imported and stored a large quantity of Indian corn, as a cheap
substitute for the potato, which would have served the purpose much
better had the people been instructed in the best modes of cooking it.
It was placed in commissariat depôts along the western coast of the
island, where the people were not likely to be supplied on reasonable
terms through the ordinary channels of trade. The public works
consisted principally of roads, on which the people were employed as a
sort of supplement to the Poor Law. Half the cost was a free grant from
the Treasury, and the other half was charged upon the barony in which
the works were undertaken. The expense incurred under the Labour Rate
Act, 9 and 10 Victoria, c. 107," amounted to £4,766,789. It was almost
universally admitted, when the pressure was over, that the system of
public works adopted was a great mistake; and it seems wonderful that
such grievous blunders could have been made with so many able statesmen
and political economists at the head of affairs and in the service of
the Government. The public works undertaken consisted in the breaking
up of good roads to level hills and fill hollows, and the opening
of new roads in places where they were not required--work which the
people felt to be useless, and which they performed only under strong
compulsion, being obliged to walk to them in all weathers for miles, in
order to earn the price of a breakfast of Indian meal. Had the labour
thus comparatively wasted been devoted to the draining, subsoiling, and
fencing of the farms, connected with a comprehensive system of arterial
drainage, immense and lasting benefit to the country would have been
the result, especially as works so well calculated to ameliorate the
soil and guard against the moisture of the climate might have been
connected with a system of instruction in agricultural matters of
which the peasantry stood so much in need, and to the removal of the
gross ignorance which had so largely contributed to bring about the
famine. As it was, enormous sums were wasted. Much needless hardship
was inflicted on the starving people in compelling them to work in
frost and rain when they were scarcely able to walk, and, after all the
vast outlay, very few traces of it remained in permanent improvements
on the face of the country. The system of Government relief works
failed chiefly through the same difficulty which impedes every mode
of relief, whether public or private--namely, the want of machinery
to work it. It was impossible suddenly to procure an efficient staff
of officers for an undertaking of such enormous magnitude--the
employment of a whole people. The overseers were necessarily selected
in haste; many of them were corrupt, and encouraged the misconduct
of the labourers. In many cases the relief committees, unable to
prevent maladministration, yielded to the torrent of corruption, and
individual members only sought to benefit their own dependents. The
people everywhere flocked to the public works; labourers, cottiers,
artisans, fishermen, farmers, men, women, and children--all, whether
destitute or not, sought for a share of the public money. In such
a crowd it was almost impossible to discriminate properly. They
congregated in masses on the roads, idling under the name of work, the
really destitute often unheeded and unrelieved because they had no
friend to recommend them. All the ordinary employments were neglected;
there was no fishing, no gathering of seaweed, no collecting of manure.
The men who had employment feared to lose it by absenting themselves
for any other object; those unemployed spent their time in seeking to
obtain it. The whole industry of the country seemed to be engaged in
road-making. It became absolutely necessary to put an end to it, or
the cultivation of the land would be neglected. Works undertaken on
the spur of the moment--not because they were needful, but merely to
employ the people--were in many cases ill-chosen, and the execution
equally defective. The workers, desirous to protect their employment,
were only anxious to give as little labour as possible, in which their
overlookers or gangers in many cases heartily agreed. The favouritism,
the intimidation, the wholesale jobbing practised in many cases
were shockingly demoralising. The problem was to support 2,000,000
or 3,000,000 of destitute persons, and this was in a great measure
effected, though at an enormous cost to the empire.

[Illustration: FIGHTING AT THE BARRICADES IN PARIS. (_See p._ 551.)]

The following statement of the numbers receiving rations, and the total
expenditure under the Act in each of the four provinces, compared with
the amount of population, and the annual value assessed for poor-rate,
may serve to illustrate the comparative means and destitution of each
province:--

                                         Greatest number    Total
               Population.   Valuation.    of rations     Expenditure.
                                           given out.

    Ulster     2,386,373     £3,320,133      346,517        £170,598
    Leinster   1,973,731      4,624,542      450,606         308,068
    Munster    2,396,161      3,777,103    1,013,826         671,554
    Connaught  1,418,859      1,465,643      745,652         526,048
               ---------    -----------    ---------      ----------
               8,175,124    £13,187,421    2,556,601      £1,676,268

In order to induce the people to attend to their ordinary spring work,
and put in the crops, it was found necessary to adopt the plan of
distributing free rations. On the 20th of March, therefore, a reduction
of twenty per cent. of the numbers employed on the works took place,
and the process of reduction went on until the new system of gratuitous
relief was brought into full operation. The authority under which
this was administered was called the "Temporary Relief Act," which
came into full operation in the month of July, when the destitution
was at its height, and three millions of people received their daily
rations. Sir John Burgoyne truly described this as "the grandest
attempt ever made to grapple with famine over a whole country." Never
in the history of the world were so many persons fed in such a manner
by the public bounty. It was a most anxious time--a time of tremendous
labour and responsibility to those who had the direction of this
vast machinery. This great multitude was, however, rapidly lessened
at the approach of harvest, which happily was not affected by the
disease. Food became comparatively abundant, and labour in demand. By
the middle of August relief was discontinued in nearly one half of
the unions, and ceased altogether on September 12th. It was limited
by the Act to the 1st of October. This was the second year in which
upwards of 3,000,000 of people had been fed out of the hands of the
magistrates in Ireland; but it was now done more effectually than
at first. Organised armies, it was said, had been rationed before;
but neither ancient nor modern history can furnish a parallel to the
fact that upwards of three millions of persons were fed every day in
the neighbourhood of their own homes, by administrative arrangements
emanating from, and controlled by, one central office. The expense
of this great undertaking amounted to £1,559,212--a moderate sum in
comparison with the extent of the service performed, and in which
performance the machinery of the Poor Law unions was found to afford
most important aid. Indeed, without such aid the service could hardly
have been performed at all; and the anticipations of the advantages
to be derived from the Poor Law organisation in such emergencies were
fully verified.

The relief committees were also authorised to adopt measures to avert
or mitigate the famine fever, which had prevailed to an awful extent.
They were to provide temporary hospitals, to ventilate and cleanse
cabins, to remove nuisances, and procure the proper burial of the dead,
the funds necessary for these objects being advanced by the Government
in the same way as for furnishing food. Upwards of 300 hospitals and
dispensaries were provided under the Act, with accommodation for at
least 23,000 patients, and the sanitary powers which it conferred were
extensively acted upon. The expense incurred for these objects amounted
to £119,000, the whole of which was made a free gift to the unions
in aid of the rates. The entire amount advanced by the Government in
1846 and 1847 towards the relief of the Irish people under the fearful
calamity to which they were exposed was £7,132,286, of which one half
was to be repaid within ten years, and the rest was a free grant.

The clergy, Protestant and Roman Catholic, almost the only resident
gentry in several of the destitute districts, worked together on the
committees with commendable zeal, diligence, and unanimity. Among the
Roman Catholic clergy, Father Mathew was at that time by far the most
influential and popular. The masses of the peasantry regarded him as
almost an inspired apostle. During the famine months he exerted himself
with wonderful energy and prudence, first, in his correspondence with
different members of the Government, earnestly recommending and urging
the speedy adoption of measures of relief; and next in commending
those measures to the people, dissuading the hungry from acts of
violence, and preaching submission and resignation under the heavy
dispensation of Providence. If the temperance organisation established
by Father Mathew had been perverted to political purposes by the Repeal
agitation, there is no doubt that it contributed in a very large degree
to the preservation of life and property during the two awfully trying
years of famine. "It is a fact," said Father Mathew--"and you are not
to attribute my alluding to it to vanity--that the late provision riots
have occurred in the districts where the temperance movement has not
been encouraged. Our people are as harmless in their meetings as flocks
of sheep, unless when inflamed and maddened by intoxicating drink. Were
it not for the temperate habits of the greater portion of the people
of Ireland, our unhappy country would be before now one wide scene of
tumult and bloodshed."

The consumption of Indian corn during the famine caused a great deal
of wild speculation in the corn trade. Splendid fortunes were rapidly
made, and as rapidly lost. The price of Indian corn in the middle of
February, 1847, was £19 per ton; at the end of March it was £13; and
by the end of August it had fallen to £7 10s. The quantity of corn
imported into Ireland in the first six months was 2,849,508 tons.

The action of private benevolence was on a scale proportioned to
the vast exertions of the Government. It is quite impossible to
estimate the amount of money contributed by the public for the relief
of Irish distress. We know what sums were received by associations
and committees; but great numbers sent their money directly, in
answer to appeals from clergymen and others, to meet demands for
relief in their respective localities. In this way we may easily
suppose that abuses were committed, and that much of the money
received was misappropriated, although the greater portion of it was
honestly dispensed. Among the organisations established for raising
contributions, the greatest was the British Relief Association, which
had for its chairman and vice-chairman two of our merchant princes--Mr.
Jones Loyd, afterwards Lord Overstone, and Mr. Thomas Baring. The
amount of subscriptions collected by this association, "for the relief
of extreme distress in Ireland and Scotland," was £269,302. The Queen's
letters were issued for collections in the churches throughout England
and Wales, and these produced £200,738, which was also entrusted to
the British Relief Association. These sums made together no less than
£470,040, which was dispensed in relief by one central committee.
One-sixth of the amount was apportioned to the Highlands of Scotland,
where there was extensive destitution, and the rest to Ireland. In
fact, the amount applied to these objects by the association exceeded
half a million sterling, for upwards of £130,000 had been obtained
by the sale of provisions and seed corn in Ireland, and by interest
accruing on the money contributed. In administering the funds placed at
their disposal, the committee acted concurrently with the Government
and the Poor Law authorities. It wisely determined at the outset
that all grants should be in food, and not in money; and that no
grant should be placed at the disposal of any individual for private
distribution. The committee concluded their report to the subscribers
by declaring that although evils of greater or less degree must attend
every system of gratuitous relief, they were confident that any evils
that might have accompanied the application of the funds would have
been far more than counterbalanced by the benefits that had been
conferred upon their starving fellow-countrymen, and that if ill-desert
had sometimes participated in their bounty, a vast amount of human
misery and suffering had been relieved.

But the chief source whence the means at their disposal were derived
was the magnificent bounty of the citizens of the United States
of America. The supplies sent from America to Ireland were on a
scale unparalleled in history. Meetings were held in Philadelphia,
Washington, New York, and other cities in quick succession, presided
over by the first men in the country. All through the States the
citizens evinced an intense interest, and a noble generosity, worthy of
the great Republic. The railway companies carried free of charge all
packages marked "Ireland." Public carriers undertook the gratuitous
delivery of packages intended for the relief of Irish distress. Storage
to any extent was offered on the same terms. Ships of war, without
their guns, came to the Irish shores on a mission of peace and mercy,
freighted with food for British subjects. Cargo after cargo followed
in rapid succession, until nearly 100 separate shipments had arrived,
our Government having consented to pay the freight of all donations of
food forwarded from America, which amounted in the whole to £33,000.
The quantity of American food consigned to the care of the Society of
Friends was nearly ten thousand tons, the value of which was about
£100,000. In addition to all this, the Americans remitted to the
Friends' Committee £16,000 in money. They also sent 642 packages of
clothing, the precise value of which could not be ascertained. There
was a very large amount of remittances sent to Ireland during the
famine by the Irish in the United States. Unfortunately, there are no
records of those remittances prior to 1848; but after that time we are
enabled to ascertain a large portion of them, though not the whole,
and their amount is something astonishing. The following statement of
sums remitted by emigrants in America to their families in Ireland was
printed by order of Parliament:--During the years 1848, £460,180; 1849,
£540,619; 1850, £957,087; 1851, £990,811.




CHAPTER XVIII.

The Reign of Victoria (_continued_).

    Insecurity of the Orleanist Monarchy--the Spanish Marriages--lord
    Palmerston's Foreign Policy--meeting of the French
    Chambers--prohibition of the Reform Banquet--the Multitude in
    Arms--Vacillation of Louis Philippe--He Abdicates in favour
    of His Grandson--Flight of the Royal Family--Proclamation of
    the Provisional Government--Lamartine quells the Populace--The
    Unemployed--Invasion of the Assembly--Prince Louis Napoleon--The
    _Ateliers Nationaux_--Paris in a State of Siege--The Rebellion
    quelled by Cavaignac--A New Constitution--Louis Napoleon
    Elected President of the French Republic--Effect of the French
    Revolution in England--The Chartists--Outbreak at Glasgow--The
    Monster Petition--Notice by the Police Commissioners--The 10th
    of April--The Special Constables--The Duke of Wellington's
    Preparations--The Convention on Kennington Common--Feargus O'Connor
    and Commissioner Mayne--Collapse of the Demonstration--Incendiary
    Placards at Glasgow--History of the Chartist Petition--Renewed
    Gatherings of Chartists--Arrests--Trial of the Chartist
    Leaders--Evidence of Spies--The Sentences.


Louis Philippe, King of the French, had been the subject of constant
eulogy for the consummate ability and exquisite tact with which he had
governed France for seventeen years. It was supposed that the "Citizen
King" had at length taught his restless and impulsive subjects the
blessings of constitutional government, and that they were perfectly
contented with the free institutions under which it was now their
happiness to live. Guizot, regarded as one of the greatest statesmen
on the Continent, was at the head of affairs in 1847, and it was
hoped that his profound wisdom and keen sagacity would enable him to
guard the state against any dangers with which it might be threatened
by the Legitimists on one side or the Democrats on the other. But
the whole aspect of public affairs in France was deceptive, and the
unconscious monarch occupied a throne which rested on a volcano. The
representative government of which he boasted was nothing but a sham--a
gross fraud upon the nation. The basis of the electoral constituency
was extremely narrow, and majorities were secured in the Chambers by
the gross abuse of enormous government patronage. The people, however,
saw through the delusion, and were indignant at the artifices by
which they were deceived. The king, who interfered with his Ministers
in everything, and really directed the Government, was proud of his
skill in "managing" his Ministry, his Parliament, and the nation. But
the conviction gained ground everywhere, and with it arose a feeling
of deep resentment, that he had broken faith with the nation, that
he had utterly failed to fulfil his pledges to the people, who had
erected the barricades, and placed him upon the throne in 1830. The
friends of the monarchy were convinced that it could only be saved by
speedy and effectual reform. But the very name of Reform was hateful
to the king, and his aide-de-camp took care to make known to the
members of the Chambers his opinions and feelings upon the subject. M.
Odillon Barrot, however, originated a series of Reform banquets, which
commenced in Paris, and were held in the principal provincial cities,
at which the most eminent men in the country delivered strong speeches
against political corruption and corrupters, and especially against the
Minister who was regarded as their chief defender--Guizot.

While thus tottering on the verge of revolution the Orleanist monarchy
had the misfortune to affront the British Court. The reason of the
rupture is known to history as the affair of the Spanish marriages,
of which it is enough to say here that Louis Philippe succeeded in
marrying the young Queen of Spain to her cousin, the Duke of Cadiz,
who was imbecile, while at the same time he secured the hand of her
sister for his youngest son, the Duc de Montpensier. Thus he apparently
acquired the reversion of the throne for his family, but the _coup_ was
effected in defiance of pledges made repeatedly to Lord Aberdeen and
continued to his successor at the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston. It
was undoubtedly the advent of the latter to power which hurried on the
conclusion of the intrigue. Louis Philippe and Guizot suspected him of
trying to secure the hand of the Queen of Spain for a prince of the
House of Coburg, and was justified to a certain extent by an imprudent
despatch sent by the English Foreign Secretary to our Minister at
Madrid. Thereupon the King of the French frightened the Queen-Mother of
Spain into giving her consent to the marriages, which were celebrated
simultaneously on the 10th of October, 1846. The calculating cunning
displayed by Louis Philippe and the deliberate sacrifice of a young
girl to sordid requirements of State aroused a feeling of universal
disgust. From Queen Victoria the proceedings provoked a letter to Louis
Philippe's queen, which concluded with the scathing remark--"I am
glad that I can say for myself that I have always been _sincere_ with
you." It was in fact, as her Foreign Minister wrote to his brother, "a
twister."

[Illustration: LOUIS PHILIPPE HEARS OF THE REVOLUTION. (_See p._ 551.)]

Thus the _entente cordiale_ was broken, and the two Powers were
left isolated in Europe, for the efforts of Louis Philippe to form
an alliance with the Austrian Court were without success. In the
circumstances Lord Palmerston's foreign policy during these eventful
years was inevitably somewhat unsatisfactory. When Austria, in defiance
of pledges, annexed the Republic of Cracow, he could only issue a
solitary protest, which was completely disregarded. In Portugal affairs
were once more in complete confusion, the Conservative party, headed
by the Queen, being in arms against the so-called Liberals led by Das
Antas. Palmerston left them to fight it out until foreign intervention
appeared inevitable from Spain, if not from France; then he made an
offer of help to the Queen Donna Maria, on condition that she would
grant a general amnesty and appoint a neutral Administration. The
terms were accepted by the Conservatives. The Liberal Junta submitted
on hearing that its fleet had been captured by the British, and the
civil war came to an end. Meanwhile, in Switzerland Lord Palmerston
was upholding the cause of the Diet against the secessionist cantons
known as the Sonderbund, by refusing to countenance the intervention of
the Powers in Swiss affairs, which was advocated by Prince Metternich
and also by Guizot. For a moment his position was dangerous, as Guizot
declared that the opportunity had come for France to take vengeance
upon England by forming another Quadruple Treaty, from which Great
Britain should be excluded. But the prompt victory of the Diet's
general, Dufour, over the forces of the Sonderbund saved the situation,
and owing to Palmerston's representations the victorious party
abstained from vindictive measures. Thus revolution was postponed in
Europe for another year, and Palmerston attempted similar results in
Italy, whither he sent Lord Minto, the First Lord of the Admiralty, on
a special mission to support constitutional reforms in Sardinia and at
Rome, where the new Pope, Pius IX. by title, was supposed to be the
friend of progress. But the blind hostility of Metternich prevailed.
The reforms granted by his puppet princes were wholly insufficient
in extent, and events in Italy were evidently hastening towards an
upheaval, when the train of the European explosion was fired in France.

The French Chambers were summoned for the 28th of December, and the
king opened them in person, reading a Speech which was vague, vapid,
and disappointing. It contained one passage, however, which was
sufficiently intelligible. It was a denunciation and a defiance of
Reform. He said:--"In the midst of the agitation fomented by hostile
and blind passions, one conviction sustains and animates me--it is
that in the Constitutional monarchy, in the union of the great powers
of the State, we possess the most assured means of surmounting all
obstacles, and of satisfying the moral and material interests of our
dear country." Next day a meeting of the Opposition deputies was held
in Paris at the Café Durand, in the Place de la Madeleine, when it
was proposed that they should all send in their resignations. This
would cause 102 elections, at which the conduct of the Government
would be fully discussed at the hustings in different parts of the
country. This was objected to by the majority, who were for holding
a banquet in defiance of the Government. A committee was appointed
to make the arrangements, and the announcement caused the greatest
excitement. On the 21st of February, 1848, the Government issued a
proclamation forbidding the banquet, which was to take place on the
following day. The prohibition was obeyed; the banquet was not held.
In the meantime, great numbers of people arrived in Paris from the
country, and immense multitudes from all the faubourgs assembled at
the Madeleine, in the Champs Elysées, and at the Place de la Concorde,
consisting for the most part of workmen and artisans. The people seemed
violently agitated, as if prepared for the most desperate issues. The
troops were under arms, however, and the king, who was in the gayest
humour, laughed with his courtiers at the pretensions of Barrot and the
reformers. The excitement, however, increased every moment. When the
troops came near the crowd, they were received with hisses and assailed
with stones. The Rue Royale, the Rue de Rivoli, and Rue St. Honoré,
were cleared and occupied by cavalry, and the populace were driven into
the back streets, where some barricades were constructed, and some
occasional shots exchanged between the military and the insurgents. The
principal struggles, however, were between the people and the Municipal
Guard, which they abhorred. Wherever they met through the city, the
conflict became fierce, sanguinary, and ruthless. But the National
Guard had no such animosity against the people; on the contrary, they
sympathised with them thoroughly, raised with them the cry of "_Vive la
Réforme_," and refused to act against them. The king could not be got
to believe this fact till the last moment.

On the 23rd the aspect of the insurgent multitude became more fierce,
daring, and determined. Guizot had announced the resignation of his
Cabinet; the king had sent for Count Molé, then for M. Thiers, who was
asked to form a new Ministry. He declined unless Odillon Barrot became
one of his colleagues. The king gave a reluctant consent, but Barrot
was not prepared to sanction measures of military repression. Marshal
Bugeaud, the hero of Algiers, whose exploits there made his name
terrible, had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the first military
division, and of the National Guard of Paris, but the National Guard
were not prepared to fight against the people. The people, knowing
this, shouted, "_Vive la Garde Nationale!_" and the National Guard
shouted, "_Vive la Réforme!_" In the evening, about seven o'clock, an
immense body of the working classes formed in procession, headed by men
carrying blazing torches, and marching along the Boulevards, chanted
two lines of the Girondists' song--

    "Mourir pour la patrie,
    C'est le sort le plus beau, le plus digne d'envie!"

This was only interrupted by the cries of "_À bas Guizot!_" "_À bas
les Ministres!_" These cries, everywhere received with electrical
enthusiasm, were uttered with the greatest bitterness about Guizot's
house, where an incident occurred that, whether intended or not, sealed
the fate of the Orleans dynasty. The people were pressing on the
military, and in the confusion a man named Lagrange stepped forward and
shot the commanding officer. The troops then fired point blank into the
dense mass, and many were killed. When the firing ceased, a funeral
procession was rapidly formed, the bodies were collected and placed
upon a large cart, their still bleeding wounds exposed under the glare
of torchlight. The effect may be imagined: it thrilled the whole city
with feelings of horror and revenge.

New barricades were now raised at the end of almost every street,
and the astonished army, who had received no orders either to attack
or retreat, remained passive spectators of the insurrection, a prey
to emotions of terror and grief. At daybreak on the 23rd Paris was
a vast battlefield. Upon the barricades, hastily constructed of
overturned omnibuses, carts, furniture, and large paving-stones, were
seen glistening weapons of every size and form. "Vengeance, vengeance,
for the murders committed under the windows of Guizot!" was the only
cry. The people did not for a moment doubt that the deed was done by
the order of that Minister. Their feelings were still more inflamed
by the appointment of Bugeaud. Even at this moment, however, the king
could with difficulty be brought to see his position. However, his
eyes were opened at last, when too late, and a proclamation was issued
announcing that Barrot and Thiers were charged by the king with the
formation of a Ministry; that the Chamber would be dissolved; that
General Lamoricière was Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard of
Paris, instead of Bugeaud (whose appointment was cancelled); and
concluding with the words, "_Liberté_, _Ordre_, _Union_, _Réforme_."
Barrot himself rode along the Boulevards to explain the nature of the
changes, but without effect. The people had lost all faith in the
king; they would trust him no more; nothing would satisfy them but his
dethronement. On the morning of the 24th of February the royal family
were assembled in the gallery of Maria, where breakfast was about to
be served. At this moment it was announced to the king that the troops
were quitting their ranks, and delivering up their arms to the people.
The Tuileries were now filled with deputies and functionaries of all
parties and ranks, all bringing the same tidings, that the city was
in possession of the insurgents; that the army had fraternised with
the people; that the École Polytechnique were behind the barricades;
that the troops had delivered up their muskets and cartouches, and the
Revolution was everywhere triumphant. The fatal word, "abdication,"
was pronounced. The king faltered, but the heroic queen energetically
resisted. But, while she spoke, the insurgents were attacking the last
post which protected the Tuileries. The fusillade which thundered in
the Place du Carrousel reverberated in the chamber in which the king
then stood, and already an armed multitude was entering the palace of
the ancient kings of France. Thereupon the king abdicated in favour of
his young grandson, the Count of Paris, whom his mother, the Duchess
of Orleans, presented to the Chamber of Deputies. It was, however, too
late; the Revolution had got the upper hand. The king and queen had
escaped through the garden of the Tuileries, and hastened to the gate
which opens upon the Place de la Concorde. After various vicissitudes
they arrived at Honfleur at eight o'clock, on the 26th of February,
and after many hairbreadth escapes and fruitless efforts to sail from
Trouville, they embarked on the 2nd of March at Honfleur, for Havre,
among a crowd of ordinary passengers, with a passport made out in the
name of William Smith. There he was received by the English Consul.
He embarked in the _Express_, which arrived at Newhaven on the 3rd of
March. The royal party reached Claremont, and remained there, under
the protection of Queen Victoria, whom he had not long since visited
in regal pomp, and whom he had welcomed with parental affection at
the Chateau d'Eu. Such are the vicissitudes of human life! He died at
Claremont on the 26th of August, 1850, in the seventy-sixth year of his
age.

The first proclamation issued by the Provisional Government was the
following:--"A retrograde Government has been overturned by the heroism
of the people of Paris. This Government has fled, leaving behind it
traces of blood, which will for ever forbid its return. The blood
of the people has flowed, as in July; but, happily, it has not been
shed in vain. It has secured a national and popular Government, in
accordance with the rights, the progress, and the will of this great
and generous people. A Provisional Government, at the call of the
people, and some deputies, in the sitting of the 24th of February, is
for the moment invested with the care of organising and securing the
national victory. It is composed of MM. Dupont (de L'Eure), Lamartine,
Crémieux, Arago, Ledru Rollin, and Garnier Pagès. The secretaries to
this Government are MM. Armand Marrast, Louis Blanc, and Ferdinand
Flocon." Scarcely had the ex-king found a resting-place on British soil
than every vestige of royalty was obliterated in France.

The 25th was a day of extreme agitation among the surging masses of the
Paris population. The Communistic party were struggling for ascendency,
and for the establishment of the Republic. An immense multitude
thronged the square in front of the Hôtel de Ville, in such a state
of excitement that Lamartine was obliged to come out and address them
from the windows five times. They were vociferous and imperative in
their demand that the red flag should float over the hotel, instead of
the tricolour, which they required to be pulled down. To this demand
Lamartine offered a courageous resistance, and by the magic of his
eloquence he succeeded in arresting the torrent of popular passion,
and turning its course. The multitude unanimously expressed their
enthusiasm in cheering and clapping of hands, and the orator was
almost suffocated by the pressure of the crowd, and the efforts of the
people to shake hands with him. On the 26th the Provisional Government
sat again at the Hôtel de Ville, and proclaimed the result of their
deliberations. It decreed the abolition of royalty, the proclamation of
a republic, the establishment of national workshops for all who needed
employment, and the abolition of the punishment of death for political
offences. On the next day, which was Sunday, an immense multitude
assembled at the Place de la Bastille, and there, on the steps of the
Column of July, M. Arago again proclaimed the Republic in presence
of the whole of the National Guard. Although the rain descended in
torrents and the weather was boisterous, the people remained out of
doors, and made the day a great festival, in honour of their victory.
It was agreed that a Constituent Assembly should be chosen on the 9th
of April, and should meet on the 20th; that the suffrage should be
universal, and voting by ballot; that all Frenchmen twenty-one years
of age should be electors; that all Frenchmen twenty-five years of age
should be eligible; that the representatives should be 900 in number,
and that each should be paid twenty-five francs a day during the
Session.

The army had declared for the Republic; the clergy were passive; but
the great difficulty was with the unemployed workmen of Paris, to
whom promises were made which it was utterly impossible to fulfil.
The Government undertook "to put an end to the long and iniquitous
sufferings of workmen, and to give employment to every one, at good
wages;" for which purpose a commission was appointed, whose president
was M. Louis Blanc, and his vice-president M. Albert, formerly a
manufacturer, to whose name the word _ouvrier_ was always attached.
This commission fixed the time of labour as ten hours for all
professions. One of the first fruits of its interference with the
labour market was a demand that the British workmen should be expelled
from the railways and different manufacturing establishments. In many
places they had to fly for their lives, to escape the fury of the mob.

The National Assembly commenced its sittings on the 4th of May in a
temporary wooden structure erected for the purpose. One of its first
acts was to pass a resolution--that the Provisional Government had
deserved well of the country. But the revolutionary passions out of
doors were far from being appeased. Secret societies and clubs were
actively at work, and on the 11th of May a placard appeared, citing a
proclamation of the Provisional Government dated the 25th of February,
in which it unwisely undertook "to guarantee labour for all the
citizens," and proceeding thus:--"The promises made on the barricades
not having been fulfilled, and the National Assembly having refused,
in its sitting on the 10th of May, to constitute a Ministry of Labour,
the delegates of the Luxembourg decline to assist at the fête called
'de la Concorde.'" On the 15th of May the Chamber was invaded by a
body of men, carrying banners in their hands, and shouting for Poland.
The President put on his hat, and the Assembly broke up. After a short
time he returned. The National Guard appeared in force, and quickly
cleared the hall. After these measures were taken to suppress the
counter-revolution, the Assembly resumed its labours. A proclamation
was issued, stating that the National Guard, the Garde Mobile, all
the forces in Paris and the neighbourhood, had driven before them the
insane conspirators, who concealed their plots against liberty under
the pretence of zeal for Poland.

The Fête de la Concorde took place on Sunday, the 21st of May, and
passed off without any attempt at disturbance. On the contrary, the
people were in excellent humour, and everything upon the surface of
society seemed in keeping with the object of the festivity. On the 26th
the Assembly decreed the perpetual banishment of Louis Philippe and his
family, by a majority of 695 to 63. But the ex-king was not the only
pretender who occupied the attention of the new Government; a far more
dangerous one was Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the Emperor and
then an exile in London. He had gone over to Paris when the Republic
was proclaimed, but acting on the advice of the Government, he quietly
retired from the country. So potent, however, was still the charm that
attached to the name of Napoleon, that his heir was elected a member
of the National Assembly by no less than four constituencies. It was
moreover discovered that money had been distributed in Paris by his
partisans; that placards in his favour were posted upon the walls, and
cries of "_Vive Napoleon!_" resounded through the city. Within four
days, three journals had been established in Paris preparing the way
for the candidature of Louis Napoleon as President. After a violent
debate, it was resolved by a large majority that he should be permitted
to take his seat as a representative. On the Monday following Paris
was excited by a rumour that Louis Napoleon had arrived, and while
Lamartine was speaking in the Assembly several shots were fired, one
at the Commandant of the National Guard, another at an officer of the
army, and this was done to the cry of "_Vive l'Empereur Napoleon!_"
"This," said Lamartine, "is the first drop of blood that has stained
our revolution; and if blood has now been shed, it has not been for
liberty, but by military fanaticism, and in the name of an ambition
sadly, if not voluntarily, mixed up with guilty manœuvres. When
conspiracy is taken _in flagrante delicto_, with its hand dyed in
French blood, the law should be voted by acclamation." He then proposed
a decree, causing the law of banishment of 1832 against Louis Napoleon
to be executed. It was voted by acclamation, the Assembly rising in a
body, and shouting, "_Vive la République!_"

[Illustration: LOUIS BLANC.]

In the meantime, the _Ateliers Nationaux_, or Government workshops,
had, as might have been expected, miserably failed to answer their
object, and the working classes were now in a state of great
destitution and dangerous discontent. The number of persons employed in
the national workshops had increased to 120,000; misery was extending
to all classes of society; one half of Paris was said to be feeding
the other half, and it was expected that in a short time there would
not be a single manufacture in operation in Paris. It was therefore
determined to reduce the number of workmen employed by the Government,
and the reduction was begun by sending back 3,000 who had come from
the provinces. But having passed the barrier, 400 returned, and sent a
deputation to the Executive Committee at the Palace of the Luxembourg.
The interview was unsatisfactory, and the deputation marched through
the streets, shouting, "Down with the Executive Commission! down with
the Assembly!" They were joined by great numbers, and it was soon
discovered that an insurrection had been fully organised; and, although
next morning the National Guard appeared in great force in the streets,
the people began to erect barricades at the Porte St. Denis, the Porte
St. Martin, in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and in various other places.
The Government had, however, made effectual arrangements for putting
down the riots; but the army, the National Guard, and the Garde Mobile
had to encounter the most desperate resistance. Paris was declared by
the Assembly to be in a state of siege, and all the executive powers
were delegated to General Cavaignac. Next day he was reinforced by
large numbers of National Guards from the provinces. Sunday came,
and the dreadful conflict still continued. In the evening of that
day the President of the Assembly announced that the troops of the
Republic were in possession of a great number of the strongholds of the
insurgents, but at an immense loss of blood. Never had anything like
it been seen in Paris. He hoped that all would that night be finished.
This day (June 25th) was signalised by the murder of the Archbishop of
Paris.

On the morning of the 26th the conflict was confined chiefly to the
Faubourg St. Antoine and the greatest stronghold of the insurgents,
the Clos St. Lazare. The barriers were built of paving stones of large
size, and blocks of building-stone. All the houses commanding them were
occupied by the insurgents. The city wall was perforated for a mile in
length with loopholes, and from behind it a deadly fire upon the troops
was kept up for two days by invisible enemies, who ran from loophole
to loophole with the agility of monkeys. General Lamoricière commanded
here, and having ordered cannon and mortars, he made breaches in the
barricades, and reduced many of the fortified houses to heaps of ruins.
The Faubourg St. Antoine was surrounded by troops on all sides. The
insurgents were summoned to surrender, and after some parleying, a flag
of truce was sent forward, and they finally submitted, permitting the
troops to take quiet possession of the district. General Cavaignac at
once announced the result to the President of the Assembly, stating
that the revolt was suppressed, that the struggle had completely
ceased, and that he was ready to resign his dictatorship the moment the
powers confided to him were found to be no longer necessary for the
salvation of the public. He resigned accordingly, but he was placed
at the head of the Ministry, as President of the Council. During this
tremendous conflict between the Red Republicans and the guardians of
society more than 300 barricades had been erected, 16,000 persons were
killed and wounded, 8,000 prisoners were taken, and the loss to the
nation by the insurrection was estimated at 30,000,000 francs.

The plan of a very liberal constitution was discussed for several
days, and ultimately adopted. It is unnecessary here to describe in
detail the principles of a constitution so short-lived. One of those
principles led to its speedy destruction. It was, that the President of
the Republic should be chosen, not by the Assembly, but by the nation
at large. This was a very extraordinary course for the Assembly to
take, because they must have known that Louis Napoleon would be elected
by universal suffrage; whereas their own choice would have fallen upon
Cavaignac. The following was the result of the voting:--Louis Napoleon,
5,434,226; Cavaignac, 1,448,107; Ledru Rollin, 370,119; Raspail,
36,900; Lamartine, 17,910; Changarnier, 4,790; votes lost, 12,600.
On the 20th of December Prince Napoleon was proclaimed President of
the French Republic, in the National Assembly, by the President, M.
Marrast, and took the oath required by the Constitution.

All Europe was astonished by the news of the French Revolution. The
successful insurrection of the working classes in Paris--the flight of
the king--the abolition of monarchy--the establishment of a Republic,
all the work of two or three days, were events so startling that the
occupants of thrones might well stand aghast at their recital, and
tremble for their own possessions. It would not have been surprising if
the revolutionary spirit emanating from Paris had, to a large extent,
invaded Great Britain and Ireland. The country had just passed through
a fearful crisis; heavy sacrifices had been made by all classes to
save the people from starvation; many families had been utterly ruined
by gigantic failures, and there was still very general privation
prevailing in all parts of the United Kingdom. In such circumstances
the masses are peculiarly liable to be excited against the Government
by ignorant or unprincipled agitators, who could easily persuade them
that their sufferings arose from misgovernment, and that matters could
never go right till the people established their own sovereignty--till
they abolished monarchy and aristocracy, and proclaimed a republic.
The Chartist agitation, though not formally proposing any such issue
of the movement, had, nevertheless, familiarised the minds of the
working classes with the idea of such a revolution. The points of
their charter comprised vote by ballot, universal suffrage, annual
parliaments, payment of the members, and the abolition of the property
qualification. Besides, the Chartist leaders had been in the habit of
holding what was called a National Convention, which was a kind of
parliament of their own, in which the leaders practised the art of
government. The train was thus laid, and it seemed to require only a
spark to ignite it; but a thick shower of sparks came from Paris, as if
a furnace had been emptied by a hurricane. It would have been almost
miraculous if there had been no explosions of disaffection in Great
Britain in such circumstances as these.

The first place that reeled under the electric shock of the French
Revolution was Glasgow. On the 5th of March, in the afternoon, a body
of 5,000 men suddenly assembled on the Green in that city, tore up the
iron railings for weapons, and thus formidably armed, they commenced
an attack on the principal shops, chiefly those of gunsmiths and
jewellers. The police, apprehending no outbreak of the kind, were
scattered on their beats, and could afford no protection until forty
shops had been pillaged and gutted, and property to the value of
£10,000 carried off or destroyed. Next morning about 10,000 persons
assembled on the Green, armed with muskets, swords, crowbars, and
iron rails, and unanimously resolved--"To march immediately to the
neighbouring suburb of Calton, and turn out all the workers in the
mills there, who, it was expected, would join them; to go from thence
to the gas manufactory, and cut the pipes, so as to lay the city at
night in darkness; to march next to the gaols and liberate all the
prisoners; and to break open the shops, set fire to and plunder the
city." They immediately set out for the Calton mills, meeting on their
way fourteen pensioners in charge of a prisoner. These they attempted
to disarm, but the veterans fired, and two men fell dead. Instantly
the rioters raised the cry, "Blood for blood!" and were wresting the
muskets from the soldiers, when a squadron of cavalry galloped up with
drawn swords. The people fell back, and the riot was suppressed. It
afterwards transpired that the Chartists in all the manufacturing towns
of the west of Scotland only awaited the signal of success from Glasgow
to break out in rebellion. The prompt suppression of the movement was
therefore a matter of great importance.

For some time a monster petition to the House of Commons was being
signed by the Chartists in all the towns throughout the United Kingdom,
and the signatures were said to have amounted to five millions. It
was to be presented on the 10th of April. Two hundred thousand men
were to assemble on Kennington Common, and thence they were to march
to Westminster, to back up their petition. Possibly they might force
their way into the House of Commons, overpower the members, and put Mr.
Feargus O'Connor in the Speaker's chair. Why might they not in this
way effect a great revolution, like that which the working classes of
Paris had just accomplished? If the French National Guard, and even
the troops of the line, fraternised with the people, why should not
the British army do likewise? Such anticipations would not have been
unreasonable if Parliamentary and Municipal Reform had been up to
this time resisted; if William IV. had been still upon the throne;
if a Guizot had been Prime Minister, and a York or a Cumberland at
the Horse Guards. The Chartists, when they laid their revolutionary
plans, must have forgotten the loyalty of the English people, and
the popularity of the young Queen. They could not have reflected
that the Duke of Wellington had the command of the army; that he had
a horror of riots; and that there was no man who knew better how to
deal with them. Besides, every one in power must have profited by the
unpreparedness of the French authorities, and the fatal consequences
of leaving the army without orders and guidance. All who were charged
with the preservation of the peace in England were fully awake to the
danger, and early on the alert to meet the emergency. On the 6th of
April a notice was issued by the Police Commissioners, warning the
Chartists that the assemblage of large numbers of people, accompanied
with circumstances tending to excite terror and alarm in the minds of
her Majesty's subjects, was criminal; and that, according to an Act of
the 13th of Charles II., no more than ten persons could approach the
Sovereign, or either House of Parliament, on pretence of delivering
petitions, complaints, or remonstrances; and that whereas information
had been received that persons had been advised to procure arms and
weapons to carry in procession from Kennington Common to Westminster,
and whereas such proposed procession was calculated to excite terror in
the minds of her Majesty's subjects, all persons were strictly enjoined
not to attend the meeting in question, or take part in the procession;
and all well-disposed persons were called upon and required to aid
in the enforcement of the law, and the suppression of any attempt at
disturbance.

Well-disposed people happily comprised the great mass of the population
of all ranks and classes, who responded with alacrity to the appeal
of the Government for co-operation. Great alarm was felt in the
metropolis lest there should be street-fighting and plundering, and
it might be said that society itself had taken effective measures
for its own defence. The 10th of April, 1848, will be a day for ever
remembered with pride by Englishmen, and posterity will read of it with
admiration. In the morning nothing unusual appeared in the streets,
except that the shops were mostly closed, the roar of traffic was
suspended, and an air of quiet pervaded the metropolis. No less than
170,000 men, from the highest nobility down to the humblest shopkeeper,
had been enrolled and sworn as special constables--a great army of
volunteers, who came forward spontaneously for the defence of the
Government. In every street these guardians of the peace might be
seen pacing up and down upon their respective beats, and under their
respective officers. Among them was Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,
acting as a private, under the command of the Earl of Eglinton. No
soldiers appeared in the streets; but, during the previous night, the
Duke of Wellington had taken the most effective measures to prevent
any violation of the peace. Strong bodies of foot and horse police
were placed at the ends of the bridges, over which the Chartists must
pass from Kennington Common to Westminster, and these were assisted
by large numbers of special constables, posted on the approaches at
each side. And lest these should be overpowered by the Chartists in
attempting to force a passage, a strong force of military--horse,
foot, and artillery--was kept concealed from view in the immediate
neighbourhood. The public buildings were all occupied by troops and
strongly fortified. Two regiments of the line were stationed at
Millbank Penitentiary. There were 1,200 infantry at the Deptford
Dockyards. At the Tower 30 pieces of heavy field ordnance were ready
to be shipped by hired steamers to any spot where their services might
be required. The public offices at the West-end, Somerset House, and
in the City, were occupied by troops and stored with arms. The Bank of
England was strongly fortified, sandbags being piled all round upon the
roof, as parapets to protect the gunners, while the interior was filled
with soldiers. There were also similar barricades to the windows, with
loopholes for muskets. In the space of Rose Inn Yard, at the end of
Farringdon Street, a large body of troops was posted ready to move at
a moment's notice, and another in the enclosure of Bridewell Prison.
At several points immediately about Kennington Common, commanding the
whole space, bodies of soldiers were placed out of view, but ready for
instant action. The Guards--horse and foot--were all under arms, in
Scotland Yard and in other places.

In the meantime the Chartists had made their preparations. The
members of the National Convention met early in the morning at its
hall in John Street, Fitzroy Square, and after this the members took
their places in a great car, which had been prepared to convey them
to the Common. It was so large that the whole Convention and all
the reporters who attended it found easy accommodation--Mr. Feargus
O'Connor and Mr. Ernest Jones sitting in the front rank. It was drawn
by six fine horses. Another car drawn by four horses contained the
monster petition, with its enormous rolls of signatures. Banners with
Chartist mottoes and devices floated over these imposing vehicles. The
Convention thus driven in state passed down Holborn, over Blackfriars
Bridge, and on to the Common, attended by 1,700 Chartists, marching
in procession. This was only one detachment; others had started from
Finsbury Square, Russell Square, Clerkenwell Green, and Whitechapel.
The largest body had mustered in the East, and passed over London
Bridge, numbering about 6,000. They all arrived at the Common about
ten o'clock, where considerable numbers had previously assembled; so
the Common appeared covered with human beings. In all monster meetings
there are the widest possible differences in the estimates of the
numbers. In this case they were set down variously at 15,000, 20,000,
50,000, and even 150,000. Perhaps 30,000 was the real number present.

[Illustration: SOMERSET HOUSE, LONDON (RIVER FRONT).]

The great car which bore Feargus O'Connor and his fortunes was of
course the central object of attraction. Everything about it indicated
that some great thing was going to happen, and all who could get within
hearing of the speakers were anxiously waiting for the commencement
of the proceedings. But there was something almost ludicrous in
the mode of communication between the tremendous military power
which occupied the metropolis, waiting the course of events, in the
consciousness of irresistible strength, and the principal leader of the
Chartist convention. Immediately after the two cars had taken their
position, a police inspector, of gigantic proportions, with a jolly
and good-humoured expression of countenance, was seen pressing through
the crowd toward Mr. O'Connor. He was the bearer of a message from the
Police Commissioners, politely desiring Mr. O'Connor's attendance for a
few minutes at the Horns Tavern. Mr. O'Connor immediately alighted and
followed the inspector, whose burly form made a lane through the mass
of people as if he were passing through a field of tall wheat. Murmurs
were heard through the crowd. What could this mean? Was their leader
deserting, or was he a prisoner? A rush was made in the direction
which they had taken, and it was said that their faces were blanched
with fear, and that at one time they were almost fainting. Protected
by those who were near them, they reached Mr. Commissioner Mayne in
safety. The commissioner informed Mr. O'Connor that the Government
did not intend to interfere with the right of petitioning, properly
exercised, nor with the right of public meeting; therefore they did
not prevent the assemblage on the Common; but if they attempted to
return in procession, they would be stopped at all hazards; and that
there were ample forces awaiting orders for the purpose. The meeting
would be allowed to proceed, if Mr. O'Connor pledged himself that it
would be conducted peaceably. He gave the pledge, shook hands with the
commissioner, and returned to his place on the car. He immediately
announced to his colleagues the result of his interview, and the whole
demonstration collapsed as suddenly as a pierced balloon. Some brief,
fiery harangues were delivered to knots of puzzled listeners; but the
meeting soon broke up in confusion. Banners and flags were pulled down,
and the monster petition was taken from the triumphal car, and packed
up in three cabs, which were to convey it quietly to the House of
Commons. The masses then rolled back towards the Thames, by no means
pleased with the turn things had taken. At every bridge they were
stopped by the serried ranks of the police and the special constables.
There was much pressing and struggling to force a passage, but all
in vain. They were obliged to move off, but after a while they were
permitted to pass in detached parties of not more than ten each. About
three o'clock the flood of people had completely subsided. Had the
movement been successful to any extent, it would have been followed by
insurrections in the provincial towns. Early on the morning of the 10th
the walls of the city of Glasgow were found covered with a placard,
calling upon the people, on receipt of the news from London, "to rise
in their thousands and tens of thousands, and put an end to the vile
government of the oligarchy which had so long oppressed the country."
Another placard was issued there, addressed to soldiers, and offering
£10 and four acres of land to every one of them who should join the
insurgents. Strange to say, the printers' names were attached to both
these treasonable proclamations. They were arrested, but not punished.

The history of the Chartist petition was the most extraordinary part
of this whole business. It was presented on the 10th of April, by Mr.
Feargus O'Connor, who stated that it was signed by 5,706,000 persons.
It lay upon the floor of the House in five large divisions; the first
sheet being detached, the prayer was read, and the messengers of the
House rolled the enormous mass of parchment to the table. A day was
appointed to take its prayer into consideration; but in the meantime it
was subjected to investigation, and on the 13th of April Mr. Thornley
brought up a special report from the Select Committee on Public
Petitions, which contained the most astounding revelations. Instead of
weighing five tons, as Mr. O'Connor alleged, it weighed 5¾ cwt. The
signatures were all counted by thirteen law-stationers' clerks, in
addition to those usually employed in the House, who devoted seventeen
hours to the work, and the number of signatures was found to be only
1,975,496, instead of nearly 6,000,000. Whole consecutive sheets were
filled with names in the same handwriting; and amongst the signatures
were "Victoria _Rex_," Prince Albert, the Duke of Wellington, Sir
Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, etc. The Duke of Wellington's name was
written thirty times, and Colonel Sibthorpe's twelve times. Some of
the signatures were not names at all--such as "No Cheese," "Pug Nose,"
"Flat Nose," etc. There were also many insertions so indecent that they
could not be repeated by the committee.

The London Chartists contrived to hold their meetings and to march in
procession; and as this sometimes occurred at night, accompanied by
the firing of shots, it was a source of alarm to the public. There
were confederate clubs established, consisting chiefly of Irishmen,
who fraternised with the English Chartists. On the 31st of May they
held a great meeting on Clerkenwell Green. There, after hearing some
violent speeches, the men got the word of command to fall in and march,
and the crowd formed rapidly into columns four abreast. In this order
they marched to Finsbury Square, where they met another large body,
with which they united, both forming into new columns twelve abreast,
and thus they paced the square with measured military tread for about
an hour. Thence they marched to Stepney, where they received further
accessions, from that to Smithfield, up Holborn, Queen Street, and Long
Acre, and on through Leicester Square to Trafalgar Square. Here the
police interfered, and they were gradually dispersed. This occurred on
Monday. On Tuesday night they assembled again at Clerkenwell Green, but
were dispersed by a large body of horse and foot police. There was to
be another great demonstration on Wednesday, but the police authorities
issued a cautionary notice, and made effectual arrangements for the
dispersion of the meeting. Squadrons of Horse Guards were posted in
Clerkenwell and Finsbury, and precautions were taken to prevent the
threatened breaking of the gas and water mains. The special constables
were again partially put in requisition, and 5,000 of the police force
were ready to be concentrated upon any point, while the whole of the
fire brigade were placed on duty. These measures had the effect of
preventing the assembly. Similar attempts were made in several of the
manufacturing towns, but they were easily suppressed. In June, however,
the disturbances were again renewed in London. On Whit Monday, the 4th,
there was to be a great gathering of Chartists in Bonner's Fields,
but the ground was occupied early in the morning by 1,600 policemen,
500 pensioners, and 100 constables mounted. There was also a body of
Horse Guards in the neighbourhood. Up to the hour of two o'clock the
leaders of the movement did not appear, and soon after a tremendous
thunderstorm accompanied by drenching rain, caused the dispersion
of all the idlers who came to witness the display. Ten persons were
arrested on the ground, and tried and sentenced to various terms of
imprisonment.

It was thought time to put a stop to such proceedings, and several
of the leaders were arrested, namely, Messrs. Ernest Jones, John
Fussell, J. Williams, A. Sharpe, and Y. Vernon. They were committed
for sedition, but bail was accepted. At Ashton-under-Lyne, Birmingham,
Liverpool, and other places, Chartist and confederate disturbances took
place. The police hunted up their leaders, and in some towns seized the
papers of the clubs as well as the pikes and fire-arms which they had
concealed. There had, in fact, been an extensively ramified conspiracy,
the headquarters of which were in the metropolis. On the 11th of August
the police, acting upon information they had received, assembled at the
station in Tower Street, 700 strong, and suddenly marched to the Angel
Tavern in Webber Street, Blackfriars. Surrounding the house, Inspector
Butt entered, and found fourteen Chartist leaders in deliberation.
In a few minutes they were all quietly secured, and marched to Tower
Street. On searching the place the police found pistols loaded to the
muzzle, swords, pikes, daggers, and spear-heads, also large quantities
of ammunition. Upon one man were found seventy-five rounds of ball
cartridge. Some of the prisoners wore iron breastplates. Similar visits
were paid to houses in Great Ormond Street, Holborn, and York Street,
Westminster, with like results. In the last place the party got notice
and dispersed before the police arrived. One man, leaping out of a
window, broke his leg. Tow-balls were found amongst them; and from
this and other circumstances it was believed they intended to fire the
public buildings and to attack the police in every part of London.
The whole of the military quartered in London were under arms on the
night of the threatened attack, and an unbroken line of communication
was kept up between the military and the different bodies of police.
Twenty-five of the leaders were committed for felony, bail being
refused; their principal leader being a man named Cuffey.

The Chartist trials took place at the September Sessions of the Central
Criminal Court. The facts disclosed on the trial revealed, to a larger
extent than is usual in such cases, how completely the men who are
betrayed into such conspiracies are at the mercy of miscreants who
incite them to crime for their own base purposes. The witnesses against
Cuffey and others of the Chartists were all voluntary spies--the chief
of whom was a person named Powell--who joined the confederacy, aided
in its organisation, and had themselves appointed "presidents" and
"generals," with the sole purpose of betraying their dupes, in order
that they might be rewarded as informers, or, at all events, well
paid as witnesses. It was probably by those double traitors that the
simultaneous meetings of the clubs were arranged, so that the police
might seize them all at the same time. The trial lasted the entire
week. On Saturday the jury returned a verdict of "Guilty" against all
the prisoners. The sentence was transportation for life. Others were
indicted for misdemeanour only, and were sentenced to various terms of
imprisonment, with fines. About a score of the minor offenders were
allowed to plead not guilty, and let out on their own recognisances.
And so ended Chartism.




CHAPTER XIX.

THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    The General Election--Crime in Ireland--Increased Powers granted
    to the Executive--Ireland on the Verge of Rebellion--Death of
    O'Connell--Viceroyalty of Lord Clarendon--Special Commission in
    Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary--The Commission at Clonmel--Rise
    of the Young Ireland Party--The _Nation_--Meagher and Smith
    O'Brien--They try to dispense with the Church--The Irish
    Confederation--The _United Irishman_--News of the French
    Revolution--Panic in Dublin--Lord Clarendon and Mr. Birch--The
    Deputation to Paris--Smith O'Brien in Parliament--Preparations
    for Civil War--Young and Old Ireland at blows--Arrest and
    Trial of Mitchel, Smith O'Brien, and Meagher--Transportation
    of Mitchel--Lord Clarendon's Extraordinary Powers--Smith
    O'Brien in the South--Commencement of the Insurrection--Battle
    of Ballingarry--Arrest of Smith O'Brien--Collapse of the
    Rebellion--Trial of the Conspirators--Trials and Sentences--The
    Rate in Aid--The Encumbered Estates Act--The Queen's Visit to
    Ireland--Cove becomes Queenstown--A Visit to Cork--Kingstown and
    Dublin--Departure from Dublin--An Affecting Incident--Belfast.


The disorganised state of Ireland, occasioned by the famine and
the enormous system of public relief which fostered idleness and
destroyed the customary social restraints that kept the people in
order, naturally led to much outrage and crime in that country. At
the close of the ordinary Session of 1847, the Parliament, which had
existed six years, was dissolved. The general election excited very
little political interest, the minds of all parties being concentrated
upon the terrible famine in Ireland, and the means necessary to
mitigate its effects. The first Session of the new Parliament
commenced on the 18th of November. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre was re-elected
Speaker without opposition, some leading Conservatives expressing
their admiration of the impartiality and dignity with which he had
presided over the deliberations of the House. The Royal Speech was
delivered by commission. It lamented that in some counties in Ireland
atrocious crimes had been committed, and a spirit of insubordination
had manifested itself, leading to an organised resistance to legal
rights. Parliament was therefore requested to take further precautions
against the perpetration of crime in that country; at the same time
recommending the consideration of measures that would advance the
social improvement of its people. In the course of the debate on the
Address the state of Ireland was the subject of much discussion; and
on the 29th of November Sir George Grey, then Home Secretary, brought
in a Bill for this purpose. In doing so, he gave a full exposition of
the disorganised state of the country. He showed that "the number of
attempts on life by firing at the person, which was, in six months
of 1846, 55, was in the same six months of 1847, 126; the number of
robberies of arms, which was, in six months of 1846, 207, in the same
six months of 1847 was 530; and the number of firings of dwellings,
which in six months of 1846 was 51, was, in the same six months of
1847, 116. Even this statement gave an inadequate idea of the increase
of those offences in districts which were now particularly infested
by crime. The total number of offences of the three classes which
he had just mentioned amounted, in the last month, to 195 in the
whole of Ireland; but the counties of Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary
furnished 139 of them--the extent of offences in those counties being
71 per cent. on the total of offences in Ireland, and the population
being only 13 per cent. on the whole population of Ireland." It was
principally to those counties that his observations applied; but as
the tendency of crime was to spread, they must be applied in some
degree also to King's County, Roscommon, and part of Fermanagh. The
crimes which he wished to repress were not directed against the
landlord class alone, but against every class and description of
landowners. Their ordinary object was the commission of wilful and
deliberate assassination, not in dark or desolate places, but in broad
daylight--of assassination, too, encouraged by the entire impunity with
which it was perpetrated; for it was notorious that none but the police
would lend a hand to arrest the flight, or capture the person, of the
assassin.

The murder of one landlord was sufficient to spread terror throughout
the whole class, the most recent and horrible case being used for this
purpose in the threatening notices. Thus, when Major Mahon was shot, a
letter was sent to the wife of another landed proprietor, warning her
that if her husband did not remit all the arrears of rent due by his
tenants, two men would be sent to dispatch him as they had dispatched
the demon Mahon. The Lord-Lieutenant had increased the constabulary
force in the disturbed districts, and called out the military to
aid in the execution of the law. But it was the opinion of the
magistrates in those districts that the powers of the executive were
not sufficient. The object of Sir George Greys measure was to extend
those powers--not to create any new tribunal, for trial by jury had
worked satisfactorily. What he proposed was that the Lord-Lieutenant
should have power to "proclaim" disturbed districts, to increase in
them the constabulary force to any extent he might think fit out of
the reserve of 600 in Dublin, to limit the use of firearms, and to
establish nocturnal patrols. He thought that by such a measure the
Government would be able to put down the crimes that were disorganising
society in Ireland. Sir Robert Peel supported the Government measure.
Mr. Feargus O'Connor divided the House against it; but was supported
by only twenty members. It was soon after read a second time, having
been strenuously resisted by some of the Irish members. It rapidly
went through committee, and was read a third time, when the minority
against it was only fourteen. The Bill passed through the Lords without
alteration.

[Illustration: TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. (_From a Photograph by Poulton
and Son, Lee._)]

Misery and privation in large masses of people naturally engender
disaffection, and predispose to rebellion; and this was the state of
things in Ireland at the beginning of the memorable year of 1848.
O'Connell had passed away from the scene. On the 28th of January,
1847, he left Ireland, never to return. He went to London for the
purpose of attending his Parliamentary duties, but shortly after his
arrival there he went for benefit of his health to Hastings. But a
still greater change of scene and climate was found necessary, and he
embarked for France, and proceeding to Paris, he was received with
great consideration by the Marquis of Normanby, and other distinguished
persons. In reply to a complimentary address from the electoral
committee, of which Montalembert was chairman, O'Connell said,
"Sickness and emotion close my mouth. I would require the eloquence
of your president to express to you all my gratitude. But it is
impossible for me to say what I feel. Know, simply, that I regard this
demonstration on your part as one of the most significant events of my
life." He went from Paris to Lyons, where he became much weaker. In
all the French churches prayers were offered on behalf of "_Le célèbre
Irlandais, et le grand libérateur d'Irlande._" At Marseilles he became
rather better; but at Genoa death arrested his progress. He expired on
the 15th of May (1847), apparently suffering little pain. He was on
his way to Rome, intending to pay his homage in person to Pius IX.,
but finding this impossible, he ordered that his heart might be sent
to Rome, and his body to Ireland. It has been remarked that O'Connell
was the victim of the Irish famine, and that its progress might have
been learnt from the study of his face. The buoyancy had gone out of
his step; he had become a stooping and a broken-down man, shuffling
along with difficulty, his features betraying despondency and misery.
His memory was respected by Englishmen, because of the devotion of his
life to the service of his country. Born of a conquered race and a
persecuted religion, conscious of great energies and great talents, he
resolved to make every Irishman the equal of every Englishman. After
the labours of a quarter of a century he obtained Catholic Emancipation.

It was the lot of the Earl of Clarendon to govern Ireland during the
most trying period of her history. It was a trying crisis, affording
great opportunity to a statesman of pre-eminent ability to lay broad
and solid foundations for a better state of society. But though a
painstaking and active administrator, Clarendon was not a great
statesman; he had no originating power to organise a new state of
things, nor prescience to forecast the future; but he left no means
untried by which he could overcome present difficulties. The population
had been thinned with fearful rapidity; large numbers of the gentry had
been reduced from affluence to destitution; property was changing hands
on all sides; the Government had immense funds placed at its command;
a vast machinery and an enormous host of officials operating upon
society when it was in the most plastic and unresisting state, a high
order of statesmanship could have made an impress upon it that would
have endured for ages. But Lord Clarendon's government, instead of
putting forth the power that should have guided those mighty resources
to beneficial and permanent results, allowed them to be agencies of
deterioration. The truth is, he was frightened by a contemptible
organisation, existing openly under his eyes in Dublin, for the
avowed purpose of exciting rebellion and effecting revolution. The
conspirators might have been promptly dealt with and extinguished in a
summary way; but instead of dealing with it in this manner, Clarendon
watched over its growth, and allowed it to come to maturity, and then
brought to bear upon it a great military force and all the imposing
machinery of State trials; the only good result of which was a display
of forensic eloquence worthy of the days of Flood and Grattan.

The opening of the year 1848 was signalised by the appointment of
a special commission, which was convened to try those accused of
agrarian murders in the counties of Tipperary, Limerick, and Clare. The
judges were the Chief Justice Blackburne and the Chief Baron Pigot.
The commission was pre-eminently successful. The trials commenced
at Limerick on the 4th of January. The Chief Justice, in his charge
to the jury, drew a melancholy picture of the demoralised state of
the country. He praised the patience and enduring fortitude of the
people under the visitation of famine, which were generally in the
highest degree exemplary, and he made this remarkable statement:--"I
do not find in the calendar before me, nor after the experience of the
last two circuits have I been able to find, a single case in which
destitution or distress, arising from the visitation of God, has in the
remotest degree influenced this illegal confederacy, or stimulated any
of those outrages." The first person tried was the notorious William
Ryan, nicknamed "Puck," one of the greatest ruffians ever brought to
the bar of justice. He was tried for the murder of a neighbour, named
John Kelly, into whose house he entered, and shot him dead upon the
spot, in the presence of his family. He was found guilty, and hanged on
the 8th of February. He was well known to have committed nine murders
during the previous year. A man named Frewin, a respectable farmer,
was transported for life, being found guilty of harbouring Ryan, and
screening him from justice. The next batch of prisoners consisted
of six ill-looking young fellows, all of whom appeared to be about
twenty years of age, charged with the abduction of the daughter of a
respectable farmer, named Maloney, for whom they were in the habit of
working, in order that another farmer, named Creagh, might marry her.

These cases may serve as illustrations of the state of the country at
that time. On the 10th of January between twenty and thirty of the
convicts were brought up together for sentence, and it seemed difficult
to believe that so ill-looking and desperate a set of villains could
be congregated in one place. They had all, with one exception, been
found guilty, without any recommendation to mercy from the jury. After
an impressive address from the judge, the sentences were pronounced,
varying in the amount of punishment assigned. But they heard their
doom with the greatest indifference. The commission next adjourned
to Ennis, the assize town of the county of Clare, where the results
were equally satisfactory. The judges arrived at Clonmel, the chief
town of Tipperary, on the 24th of January. There they found upwards of
four hundred prisoners in gaol, charged with crimes marked by various
degrees of atrocity. The trial that excited most attention here was
that of John Sonergan, for the murder of Mr. William Roe, a landed
proprietor and a magistrate of the county, who was shot in the open
day, upon the road near one of his own plantations. The scene which was
presented in this court on the 31st of January, was described in the
report of the trials as scarcely ever paralleled. Five human beings,
four of whom were convicted of murder, and one of an attempt to murder,
stood in a row at the front of the dock, to receive the dreadful
sentence of the law, which consigned them to an ignominious death.

Agrarian outrage had thus been effectually put down by the special
commission; but a much more formidable difficulty was now to be
encountered by the Government, which was called upon to suppress a
rebellion. In order that its origin may be understood, it will be
necessary to sketch briefly the rise and progress of the Young Ireland
party. It had its origin in the establishment of the _Nation_ newspaper
in 1842, by Thomas Davis, Charles Gavan Duffy, and John Mitchel.
Davis was a native of the county of Cork, a member of the Church of
England, and a barrister who had devoted himself to literature. He was
a man of genius and enthusiastic temperament, combined with habits of
study and a love of system. As a member of the Repeal Association,
and as a writer in the _Nation_, he constantly advocated national
independence. He was a vigorous writer, and also a poet. He was much
respected personally by all classes, and would have exerted a powerful
influence, but he was cut off by fever in the midst of his career. His
memory received the honour of a public funeral, which was one of the
largest and most respectable that had for some time taken place in
Dublin. Mr. Duffy, the proprietor and editor of the _Nation_, a Roman
Catholic and a native of Monaghan, had been connected with the press in
Dublin. Mr. Mitchel, also a northerner and a solicitor by profession,
was the son of a Unitarian minister in Newry. These men were all
animated by the same burning love of Ireland, and unmitigated hatred
of English domination. The _Nation_ soon attained a vast circulation;
its leading articles were distinguished by an earnestness, a fire, a
power, an originality and boldness, till then unknown in the Irish
press. Its columns were filled with the most brilliant productions
in literature and poetry, all designed to glorify Ireland at the
expense of England, and all breathing the spirit of war and defiance
against the Government. In addition to the _Nation_, they prepared
a number of small books, which they issued in a cheap form as an
Irish library, devoted chiefly to the history of their country, and
its struggles for independence. By their exertions, reading-rooms
were established throughout the country, and a native literature was
extensively cultivated. The orator of the party was Thomas Meagher,
at a later period general in the American army, son of a Waterford
merchant, who was afterwards member of Parliament. He was a brilliant,
fluent, ardent, daring speaker; his appearance and manners were those
of a gay, reckless, dashing cavalier; and his warlike harangues had
won for him the designation, "Meagher of the Sword." His speeches
fired his audience with wild enthusiasm. Since 1844, as we have seen,
Mr. William Smith O'Brien had become the leader of this party, which
differed in spirit and purpose from the Old Ireland party, of which
O'Connell had been so long the leader. O'Connell's agitation even
for Repeal was essentially religious. Ireland and the Roman Catholic
Church were indissolubly associated in his mind. His habits as a _nisi
prius_ barrister made him an advocate more than a statesman; and having
pleaded the cause of his Church for forty years, having been rewarded
and retained for so doing by an annual "tribute" collected in the
chapels of the kingdom, and having won his unparalleled popularity
and almost kingly power by his services in this cause, he could not
help regarding himself as the special champion of the Irish priests
and their people. For them he courted Whig alliances, for them he
abused the Tories, for them he sought Repeal, and for their sakes he
deprecated war. He knew that the Protestants of Ireland would never
sufficiently trust him or his ecclesiastical clients, to join them in
a war against English supremacy, which they disliked far less than
Roman Catholic ascendency. He knew that a war for Repeal must be a
civil and religious war; and he too well remembered the horrors of
1798, and was too well aware of the power of England, seriously to
encourage anything of the kind. He talked indeed about fighting at the
monster meetings, but he did so merely to intimidate the Government,
confident of his power to hold the masses in check, and to prevent
breaches of the peace. The State prosecutions and the proceedings
of the Young Ireland party worked in him the painful and almost
heart-breaking conviction that he had gone too far. Another essential
difference existed between the two parties regarding religion. The
Young Irelanders wanted to ignore religion in the national struggle.
Their object was to unite all Irishmen in the great cause, to exorcise
the spirit of bigotry, and to cultivate the spirit of religious
toleration. But neither the Protestants nor the Catholics were prepared
for this. The peasantry of the South especially would not enter into
a contest in which their priests refused to lead and bless them; and
these would neither lead nor bless except in the interest of their
Church. This truth was discovered too late by Mr. Smith O'Brien and Mr.
Meagher. The latter gentleman is said to have remarked in his prison,
"We made a fatal mistake in not conciliating the Catholic priesthood.
The agitation must be baptised in the old Holy Well."

When the two parties separated in 1846, the Young Irelanders
established the Irish Confederation, which held its meetings in the
Music Hall, Abbey Street, and whose platform was occupied by a number
of young men, who subsequently figured in the State trials--Mr.
Dillon, a barrister, who had been a moderator in Trinity College,
Mr. Doheny, solicitor, Mr. O'Gorman, and Mr. Martin, a Protestant
gentleman of property in the county Down. The object of the confederacy
was to prepare the country for national independence, "by the force
of opinion, by the combination of all classes of Irishmen, and the
exercise of all the political, social, and moral influence within their
reach." They disclaimed any intention of involving the country in civil
war, or invading the just rights of any of its people; and they were
specially anxious that Protestants and Roman Catholics should be united
in the movement. Resolutions to this effect were adopted at a great
meeting in the Rotunda, a revolutionary amendment by Mr. Mitchel having
been rejected, after a stormy debate, which lasted three days, and did
not terminate on the last day until one o'clock at night. This led to
Mitchel's secession from the _Nation_, and the establishment of the
_United Irishman_, in which he openly and violently advocated rebellion
and revolution. He continually insisted on the adoption of the most
diabolical and repulsive measures, with the utmost _sang froid_. Every
Saturday his journal contained a letter "To the Earl of Clarendon, Her
Majesty's Executioner-General and Butcher-General of Ireland." Plans
of insurrection were freely propounded; the nature and efficiency
of street fighting were copiously discussed; ladies were invited to
throw vitriol from their windows on the Queen's troops, and to fling
empty bottles before the cavalry that they might stumble and fall.
Precise instructions were given, week after week, for the erection of
barricades, the perforation of walls, and other means of attack and
defence in the war against the Queen.

Such was the state of things in Ireland when the news of the French
Revolution arrived and produced an electric effect throughout the
country. The danger of permitting such atrocious incitements to civil
war to be circulated among the people was obvious to every one, and yet
Lord Clarendon allowed this propagandism of rebellion and revolution to
go on with impunity for months.· Mitchel might have been arrested and
prosecuted for seditious libels any day; the newsvendors who hawked the
_United Irishman_ through the streets might have been taken up by the
police, but the Government still remained inactive. Encouraged by this
impunity, the revolutionary party had established confederate clubs, by
means of which they were rapidly enlisting and organising the artisans
of the city, at whose meetings the most treasonable proceedings were
adopted.

[Illustration: MUSTER OF THE IRISH AT MULLINAHONE. (_See p._ 568.)]

In the meantime rumours were in circulation, said to have emanated from
Dublin Castle, to the effect that a conspiracy existed to massacre
the members of the Government and the loyal citizens. However these
rumours may have originated, they spread a panic through the city.
People expected that when they woke some morning they would find the
barricades up in the leading streets, and behold an imitation of the
bloody scenes lately enacted in Paris. The Government seemed to share
the alarm. Strong bodies of soldiers were posted in different parts of
the city. Trinity College, the buildings of the Royal Dublin Society,
the Linen Hall, and the Custom House were occupied as temporary
barracks. The Bank of Ireland was put in a state of defence, and cannon
were placed on the roof in such a way as to command the streets.
Bullet-proof shutters were furnished for the front of Trinity College.
The Viceroy evidently apprehended some serious work, for he ordered
the troops in all these extemporised fortresses to be furnished with
rations for several days. These preparations for a siege continued
throughout the months of March and April. For more than three months
the chambers of the College were turned into barracks; the troops
were paraded in the quadrangles every morning. In all the fortified
positions the soldiers were kept under arms at unreasonable hours. In
fact the whole community was in a state of painful suspense, hourly
anticipating the attacks of an imaginary enemy. During all this time
there was not a single depôt of arms seized nor a single rebellious
leader arrested. The clubs, indeed, were meeting and plotting, and the
Government spies were amongst them, but they had made no preparations
for insurrection that should have excited alarm. There was much talk of
the manufacture of pikes, but the only instance made public was one in
which a blacksmith had been asked to make one by a detective policeman.

During this protracted agony of suspense and alarm business was almost
at a standstill. Nobody seemed to think or talk of anything but the
rebellion--the chances of success and the possibility of having to
submit to a republic. There could not be a more striking proof of
the inability of Lord Clarendon to cope with this emergency than his
dealings with the proprietors of the _World_, a journal with a weekly
circulation of only 500 or 600 copies, which subsisted by levying
blackmail for suppressing attacks on private character. It was regarded
as a common nuisance, and yet the Lord-Lieutenant took the editor into
his confidence, held private conferences with him on the state of the
country, and gave him large sums for writing articles in defence of law
and order. These sums amounted to £1,700, and he afterwards gave him
£2,000 to stop an action in the Court of Queen's Bench. Mr. Birch, the
gentleman in question, was not satisfied with this liberal remuneration
for his services; the mine was too rich not to be worked out, and he
afterwards brought an action against Sir William Somerville, then
Chief Secretary, for some thousands more, when Lord Clarendon himself
was produced as a witness, and admitted the foregoing facts. The
decision of the court was against Birch; but when, in February, 1852,
the subject was brought before the House of Commons by Lord Naas, the
Clarendon and Birch transactions were sanctioned by a majority of 92.

While the Irish Government was in this state of miserable trepidation,
the Dublin confederates carried on their proceedings with the most
perfect unconcern and consciousness of impunity. Among these
proceedings was the sending of a deputation to Paris to seek the aid
of the republican Government on behalf of the "oppressed nationality
of Ireland." The deputation consisted of Messrs. O'Brien, Meagher, and
O'Gorman. They were the bearers of three congratulatory addresses, to
which Lamartine gave a magniloquent reply about the great democratic
principle--"this new Christianity bursting forth at the opportune
moment." The destinies of Ireland had always deeply moved the heart of
Europe. "The children of that glorious isle of Erin," whose natural
genius and pathetic history were equally symbolic of the poetry
and the heroism of the nations of the North, would always find in
France under the republic a generous response to all its friendly
sentiments. But as regarded intervention, the Provisional Government
gave the same answer that they had given to Germany, to Belgium, and
to Italy. "Where there is a difference of race--where nations are
aliens in blood--intervention is not allowable. We belong to no party
in Ireland or elsewhere except to that which contends for justice,
for liberty, and for the happiness of the Irish people. We are at
peace," continued Lamartine, "and we are desirous of remaining on
good terms of equality, not with this or that part of Great Britain,
but with Great Britain entire. We believe this peace to be useful and
honourable, not only to Great Britain and to the French Republic, but
to the human race. We will not commit an act, we will not utter a
word, we will not breathe an insinuation, at variance with principles
of the reciprocal inviolability of nations which we have proclaimed,
and of which the continent of Europe is already gathering the fruits.
The fallen monarchy had treaties and diplomatists. Our diplomatists
are nations--our treaties are sympathies." The sympathies felt for
the Irish revolutionists, however, were barren. Nevertheless the
deputation who were complimented as "aliens in blood" shouted "_Vive
la République_," "_Vive Lamartine_," who had just declared that the
French would be insane were they openly to exchange such sympathy for
"unmeaning and partial alliance with even the most legitimate parties
in the countries that surrounded them."

Mr. Smith O'Brien returned to London, took his seat in the House of
Commons, and spoke on the Crown and Government Securities Bill, the
design of which was to facilitate prosecutions for political offences.
He spoke openly of the military strength of the Republican party in
Ireland, and the probable issue of an appeal to arms. But his address
produced a scene of indescribable commotion and violence, and he was
overwhelmed in a torrent of jeers, groans, and hisses, while Sir George
Grey, in replying to him, was cheered with the utmost enthusiasm.

In the meantime the preparations for civil war went on steadily on
both sides in Dublin, neither party venturing to interfere with the
other. Lest the Government should not be able to subdue the rebellion
with 10,000 troops in the strong points of the city, and artillery
commanding the great thoroughfares, with loopholes for sharpshooters
in every public building, an association was formed to provide loyal
citizens with arms and combine them in self-defence. The committee of
this body ordered six hundred stand of arms from the manufacturer, and
also some thousands of knots of blue ribbon to be worn by the loyal
on the night of the barricades. It was intimated that the Government
would pay for those things, but as it did not, an action for the
cost of the muskets was brought against a gentleman who went to
inspect them. Circulars were sent round to the principal inhabitants,
with directions as to the best means of defending their houses when
attacked by the insurgents. There were instances in which the lower
parts of houses were furnished with ball-proof shutters, and a
month's provisions of salted meat and biscuits actually laid in. The
Orange-men--regarded with so much coldness by the Government in quiet
times--were now courted; their leaders were confidentially consulted
by the Lord-Lieutenant; their addresses were gratefully acknowledged;
they were supplied with muskets, and the certificate of the master of
an Orange lodge was recognised by the police authorities as a passport
for the importation of arms.

A regrettable episode in this rebellious movement occurred on the
29th of April in the city of Limerick. The Sarsfield Club in that
place invited Messrs. Smith O'Brien, Mitchell, and Meagher to a public
_soirée_. The followers of O'Connell, known as the Old Ireland party,
being very indignant at the treatment O'Connell had received from the
Young Ireland leaders, resolved to take this opportunity of punishing
the men who had broken the heart of the Liberator. They began by
burning John Mitchel in effigy, and, placing the flaming figure against
the window where the _soirée_ was held, they set fire to the building.
As the company rushed out they were attacked by the mob. Mr. Smith
O'Brien, then member for the county of Limerick, was roughly handled.
He was struck with a stone in the face, with another in the back of
the head, and was besides severely hurt by a blow on the side. Had it
not been for the protection of some friends who gathered round him, he
would probably have been killed.

At length, after much mischievous delay, the Government ventured to
lay hands upon the disseminators of sedition and the organisers of
rebellion. On the 13th of May John Mitchel was arrested and committed
to Newgate. On the 15th, Mr. Smith O'Brien, who had been previously
arrested and was out on bail, was brought to trial in the Queen's
Bench, and arraigned on _ex officio_ information as being a wicked,
seditious, and turbulent person, and having delivered a speech for the
purpose of exciting hatred and contempt against the Queen in Ireland,
and inducing the people to rise in rebellion. He was defended by Mr.
Butt, a Conservative barrister, who spoke of the ancient lineage
and estimable character of the prisoner, concluding thus:--"Believe
me, gentlemen, all cannot be right in a country in which such a man
as William Smith O'Brien is guilty, if guilty you pronounce him, of
sedition." At the conclusion of this sentence the majority of the bar,
and of the people in court, rose from their seats and loudly cheered,
the ladies in the galleries waving their handkerchiefs. The jury were
locked up all night without refreshments, but they could not agree.
The next day Meagher was tried, with a similar result, and was hailed
by a cheering multitude outside, whom he addressed from a window in
the _Nation_ office. Mitchel, however, was tried, found guilty, and
sentenced to transportation for fourteen years; he was immediately
conveyed in the police prison van to a small steamer which waited in
the bay, and then to a man-of-war which conveyed him to Bermuda.

But it was not till the end of July that Lord Clarendon obtained the
extraordinary powers which he demanded for putting down rebellion.
These were conveyed in an Act to empower the Lord-Lieutenant to
apprehend and detain till the 1st day of March, 1849, such persons
as he should "suspect" of conspiring against her Majesty's person or
Government. On the 27th of July a despatch from Dublin appeared in the
late editions of some of the London morning papers, stating that the
railway station at Thurles had been burned; that for several miles
along the lines the rails had been torn up; that dreadful fighting
had been going on in Clonmel; that the people were armed in masses;
that the troops were over-powered; that some refused to act; that the
insurrection had also broken out in Kilkenny, Waterford, and Cork,
and all through the South. This was pure invention. No such events had
occurred. In order to avoid arrest, the leaders fled from Dublin, and
the clubs were completely dispersed. Mr. Smith O'Brien started on the
22nd by the night mail for Wexford. From Enniscorthy he crossed the
mountains to the county Carlow; at Graiguemanagh he visited the parish
priest, who offered him no encouragement, but gave him to understand
that, in the opinion of the priests, those who attempted to raise a
rebellion in the county were insane. He passed on to the towns of
Carlow and Kilkenny, where he harangued the people and called upon
them to rise. He arrived at Carrick-on-Suir on the 24th, and thence
he went to Cashel. Leaders had been arrested--namely, Duffy, Martin,
Williams, O'Doherty, Meagher, and Doheny. The Act, which received the
Royal Assent on the 29th of July, was conveyed by express to Dublin,
and immediately the Lord-Lieutenant issued a proclamation ordering
the suppression of the conspiracy, which should have been done six
months before. In pursuance of this proclamation, the principal cities
were occupied by the military. Cannon were planted at the ends of
the streets, and all but those who had certificates of loyalty were
deprived of their arms. The police entered the offices of the _Nation_
and _Felon_, seized all the copies of those papers, and scattered
the types. Twelve counties were proclaimed, and a number of young
men arrested having commissions and uniforms for the "Irish Army of
Liberation."

A Privy Council was held at Dublin Castle, at which it was determined
to offer rewards for the arrest of the principal conspirators--£500
for William Smith O'Brien, and £300 each for Meagher, Dillon, and
O'Doherty. The offence charged was, having taken up arms against her
Majesty. The rewards offered soon brought matters to a crisis. As soon
as the proclamations were posted up, Sub-Inspector Trant proceeded
from Callan, in the county Kilkenny, with a body of between fifty
and sixty of the constabulary, in the hope of capturing some of the
proclaimed rebels. Arrived on Boulagh Common, near Ballingarry, on the
borders of Tipperary and Kilkenny, they took possession of a slated
farmhouse, belonging to a widow named Cormack. This house they hastily
fortified, by piling tables, beds, and other articles against the doors
and windows. The insurrection actually commenced at a place called
Mullinahone, where, at the ringing of the chapel bell, large numbers
of the peasantry assembled in arms, and hailed Smith O'Brien as their
general. He was armed with a short pike and several pistols, which
he had fastened to a belt. On the 26th of July he went to the police
barrack, where there were but six men, and endeavoured to persuade them
to join him, promising better pay and promotion under the republic,
and telling them that they would resist at their peril. They refused.
He then demanded their arms, but they answered that they would die
rather than surrender them. He gave them an hour to consider, but
departed without carrying his threat into execution. On the 29th Mr.
Smith O'Brien appeared on Boulagh Common with increased forces, who
surrounded the house in which the constabulary were shut up. He went
into the cabbage garden to speak to the police at an open window. He
addressed one of the men, and earnestly pressed them to surrender and
give up their arms. The constable said he would call Mr. Trant. That
gentleman immediately hastened to the spot; but the rebel chief had
taken his departure. Apprehending an attack, Mr. Trant immediately
ordered his men to fire, when a battle commenced, which speedily
terminated in the defeat of the rebels, of whom two were killed and
several wounded. Two shots were aimed at Smith O'Brien without effect;
but one of them hit a rebel who was standing by his side brandishing
a pike. He was killed on the spot. Another party of police under the
command of Mr. Cox, and accompanied by Mr. French, the stipendiary
magistrate, came up at the instant, and fired on the rebels, after
which they fled in the greatest disorder. Eighteen were killed, and a
large number wounded. The police suffered no loss whatever. A large
detachment of the 83rd Regiment and about 150 of the constabulary,
with Inspector Blake, hastened to the defence of the besieged party;
but when they arrived the danger was over, and the police returned to
Callan. That evening twenty signal fires blazed on the mountain of
Slieve-na-mon. Next day, being Sunday, the military did not attend
public worship, and were everywhere kept on the alert. The greatest
excitement appeared amongst the peasantry at the Roman Catholic
chapels, who were in hourly expectation of being called upon to act,
the most anxious solicitude being painted upon the countenances of the
women. There is no doubt, from the temper of the population, that had
the priests given the word, there would have been a general rising. But
they almost universally condemned the conduct of the leaders as insane,
and as certain to involve them and all who joined them in destruction.
In the meantime, General Macdonald, at the head of his flying
column, consisting of 1,700 men, pursued the insurgents, while troops
and artillery were poured into Clonmel, Kilkenny, and Thurles. Near
the latter place General Macdonald encamped on the domain of Turtulla,
the seat of Mr. Maher, M.P. The butchers of Thurles refused to supply
the men with meat, and consequently provisions had to be brought from
the commissariat stores at Limerick, and large quantities of biscuits
from Dublin, the people having broken into the house of the baker who
supplied them with bread at Thurles and destroyed his furniture.

[Illustration: _By permission, from the Picture in the Corporation of
Leicester Art Gallery._

AN IRISH EVICTION, 1850.

FROM THE PAINTING BY F. GOODALL, R.A.]

[Illustration: SMITH O'BRIEN.]

After the flight from Ballingarry, and the desertion of his followers,
Smith O'Brien abandoned the cause in despair, and concealed himself
for several days among the peasantry in a miserable state of mind.
He had none of the qualities of a rebel chief, and he had not at all
calculated the exigencies of the position that he had so rashly and
criminally assumed, involving the necessity of wholesale plunder and
sanguinary civil strife, from which his nature shrank. Besides, he
soon found that the people would not trust a Protestant leader, and
that there was, after all, no magic in the name of O'Brien for a Roman
Catholic community. But to the honour of the peasantry it should be
spoken, that though many of them were then on the verge of starvation,
not one of them yielded to the temptation of large rewards to betray
him or his fugitive colleagues, and several of them ran the risk of
transportation by giving them shelter. In these circumstances, on the
5th of August, Mr. O'Brien walked from his hiding-place in Keeper
Mountain into Thurles, where he arrived about eight o'clock in the
evening. He went immediately to the railway station to procure a
ticket for Limerick. On the platform there were seventeen constables in
plain clothes, who did not know him; but a railway guard named Hulme,
an Englishman, recognised him, and tapping him on the shoulder, he
presented a pistol at him and said, "You are the Queen's prisoner."
A strong escort of police was immediately procured, and the prisoner
was conveyed in a special train to Dublin, where he was lodged in
Kilmainham gaol.

Thus ended the rebellion of 1848, which had so long kept the country
in a state of alarm. It is true that some of the leaders headed small
bodies of insurgents in the county of Waterford, and attacked several
police barracks, but in none of the affrays were the insurgents
successful. The police, who were not more than one to fifty of the
rebels, routed them in every instance without any loss of life on
their part. The constabulary were then 10,000 strong in Ireland, and
Smith O'Brien confidently counted upon their desertion to his ranks;
but though the majority of the force were Roman Catholics, they were
loyal to a man. Dillon and O'Gorman had escaped to France, but Terence
McManus, a fine young man, who had given up a prosperous business as a
broker in Liverpool, to become an officer in the "Army of Liberation,"
was arrested in an American vessel proceeding from Cork to the United
States. A special commission for the trial of the prisoners was
opened on the 21st of September, at Clonmel, high treason having been
committed in the county Tipperary.

The trial of the chief prisoner lasted nine days. The jury brought in
a verdict of guilty, but unanimously and strongly prayed that his life
might be spared. It was generally understood that this recommendation
would be acted upon, especially as the insurgents had killed none of
the Queen's subjects, and their leader had done all in his power to
dissuade them from the perpetration of crime. McManus and Meagher were
next tried, and also found guilty, with a similar recommendation to
mercy. When they were asked why sentence of death should not be passed
upon them, Smith O'Brien answered that he was perfectly satisfied
with the consciousness of having performed his duty to his country,
and that he had done only what, in his opinion, it was the duty of
every Irishman to have done. This no doubt would have been very noble
language if there had been a certainty or even a likelihood that the
sentence of death would be executed, but as no one expected it, there
was perhaps a touch of the melodramatic in the tone of defiance adopted
by the prisoners. The Government acted towards them with the greatest
forbearance and humanity. They brought a writ of error before the House
of Lords on account of objections to the jury panel; but the sentence
of the court was confirmed. The sentence of death was commuted to
transportation for life; but they protested against this and insisted
on their legal right to be either hanged or set free, in consequence of
which an Act was passed quickly through Parliament to remove all doubt
about the right of the Crown to commute the sentence. The convicts were
sent to Van Diemen's Land, where they were allowed to go about freely,
on their parole. Meagher and McManus ultimately escaped to America,
and Smith O'Brien after some years obtained a free pardon, and was
permitted to return home to his family, but without feeling the least
gratitude to the Government, or losing the conviction that he had
only done his duty to his country. Mr. (afterwards Sir) Gavan Duffy
was tried for high treason in Dublin, in February, 1849, but the jury
disagreed. He was again tried in April following, when the same thing
occurred, and Mr. Duffy gave security to appear again, if required,
himself in £1,000.

It was not to be expected that the difficulties of Ireland would have
passed away with the paroxysm of the crisis through which that nation
had been working into a better state of existence. The social evils of
that country were too deep-rooted and too extensive to be got rid of
suddenly. The political disturbances above recorded, coming immediately
after the famine, tended to retard the process of recovery. Another
failure of the potato crop caused severe distress in some parts of the
country, while in the poorer districts the pressure upon the rates
had a crushing effect upon the owners of land, which was, perhaps, in
the majority of cases, heavily encumbered. This led to the passing of
a measure for the establishment of a "rate in aid," in the Session
of 1849, by which the burden of supporting the poor was more equally
divided, and a portion of it placed upon the shoulders most able to
bear it. In anticipation of this rate the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Sir Charles Wood, proposed an advance of £100,000 to meet the existing
pressure. The proposed "rate in aid" was sixpence in the pound, to be
levied in every union in Ireland, towards a general fund for the relief
of the poor, and this was connected with a provision that the maximum
rate should not exceed five shillings in the pound in any electoral
division. The proposition of the Government, with the exception of the
maximum rate clause, was agreed to after a good deal of discussion and
various amendments. In the House of Lords the Bill was carried with
difficulty, after much discussion and the moving of various amendments.

But at length the Legislature adopted a measure which attempted to
go to the root of one of the greatest evils that afflicted Ireland.
This was a Bill for facilitating the transfer of encumbered estates,
which was passed into law, and is generally known as the Encumbered
Estates Act. It was introduced by the Solicitor-General, Sir Samuel
Romilly, on the 26th of April. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory
than the state of landed property in that country. Many of the estates
had been in Chancery for a long series of years, under the management
of receivers, and periodically let at rack-rents. Many others which
were not in Chancery were so heavily mortgaged that the owners were
merely nominal. Others again were so tied up by family settlements,
or held by such defective titles, that they could not be transferred.
Consequently, a great portion of the landed property of the country
was in such a condition that capital could not be invested in it, or
expended on it. The course of proceeding in Chancery was so slow,
so expensive, so ruinous, and the court was so apparently incapable
of reform, that nothing could be expected from that quarter. The
Government, therefore, proposed to establish a commission, invested
with all the powers of that court, and capable of exercising those
powers in a summary manner, without delay and without expense, so
that an encumbered estate could be at once sold, either wholly or in
part, and a parliamentary title given, which should be good against
all the world. This important measure met with general approval in
both Houses. Indeed it was hailed with satisfaction by all classes of
the community, with the exception of a portion of the Irish landed
gentry. There were three commissioners appointed, lawyers of eminence
and experience in connection with land. By a subsequent enactment in
1849, it was regulated as a permanent institution, under the title of
the Landed Estates Court; the three commissioners were styled judges,
ranking with the judges of the Law Courts. The number of petitions or
applications for sale made to this court from the 17th of October,
1849, to the 1st of August, 1850, was 1,085, and of this number those
by owners amounted to 177--nearly one-sixth of the whole. The rental
of the estates thus sought to be sold by the nominal proprietors,
anxious to be relieved of their burdens, was £195,000 per annum, and
the encumbrances affecting them amounted to no less than £3,260,000.
The rental of the estates included in 1,085 applications, made by
others not owners, amounted to £655,470 per annum, and the debt upon
these amounted to the enormous sum of £12,400,348. One of the estates
brought before the court had been in Chancery for seventy years, the
original bill having been filed by Lord Mansfield in 1781. The estates
were broken up into parcels for the convenience of purchasers, many of
whom were the occupying tenants, and the great majority were Irishmen.
Generally the properties brought their full value, estimated by the
poor-law valuation, not by the rack rents which were set down in the
agents' books, but never recovered. The amount of capital that lay
dormant in Ireland, waiting for investment in land, may be inferred
from the fact that in nine years--from 1849 to 1858--the sum of
twenty-two millions sterling was paid for 2,380 estates. But in the
pacification of Ireland the Act accomplished far less than was hoped by
Sir Robert Peel, who practically forced the measure upon the Ministry.
Men of capital looked for a fair percentage for their investments: many
of them were merchants and solicitors, without any of the attachments
that subsisted between the old race of landlords and their tenants,
and they naturally dealt with land as they did with other matters--in
a commercial spirit--and evicted wholesale tenants who were unable to
pay.

Soon after the prorogation of Parliament in the autumn her Majesty
resolved to pay her first visit to her Irish subjects. At Cowes a royal
squadron was in readiness to convoy the _Victoria and Albert_ across
the Channel. The Queen was accompanied by Prince Albert, the Prince of
Wales, Prince Alfred, the Princess Royal, and the Princess Alice. The
royal yacht anchored alongside the _Ganges_, her arrival off the Irish
coast being announced by the booming of artillery on the 2nd of August,
which was the signal for the lighting of bonfires upon the hills
around the picturesque town of Cove. In the morning a deputation went
on board, consisting of the Marquis of Thomond, head of the house of
O'Brien, the Earl of Bandon and several of the nobility and gentry of
the county, with the Mayor of Cork, and Mr. Fagan, M.P. for that city.
They were introduced to her Majesty by Sir George Grey, the Secretary
of State in attendance during the visit. Arrangements were then made
for the landing, and about three o'clock the Queen first set foot upon
Irish ground, amidst the most enthusiastic demonstrations of loyalty
from the multitudes assembled to bid their Sovereign welcome, mingling
their cheers with the roar of cannon, which reverberated from the hills
around. A pavilion had been erected for her Majesty's reception, and
over it floated a banner, with the word "Cove" emblazoned upon it.
The Queen had consented, at the request of the inhabitants, to change
the name of the place and call it "Queenstown," and when she left the
pavilion the first flag was pulled down and another erected in its
stead, with the new name. Thus the old name of "Cove" was extinguished
by the Queen's visit, just as the old name of "Dunleary" had been
extinguished by the visit of George IV.

The royal party then proceeded up the beautiful river Lee, to the city
of Cork, hailed by cheering crowds at every point along the banks
where a sight of the Queen could be obtained. All the population of
the capital of Munster seemed to have turned out to do homage to their
Sovereign. A procession was quickly formed. The Queen and the Royal
Family occupied carriages lent for the occasion by Lord Bandon. The
procession passed under several beautiful triumphal arches, erected at
different points. The public buildings and many private houses were
adorned with banners of every hue, evergreens, and all possible signs
of rejoicing. The windows, balconies, and all available positions
were crowded by the citizens, cheering and waving their hats and
handkerchiefs. When this ceremony had been gone through, the Queen
returned to the _Victoria and Albert_ in Queenstown Harbour. At night
the whole of that town was brilliantly illuminated. In Cork, also, the
public buildings and the principal streets were lit up in honour of her
Majesty's visit. Her Majesty, before she departed, was pleased to say
to Sir Thomas Deane that "nothing could be more gratifying" than her
reception.

About ten o'clock on the morning of the 4th of August the squadron
weighed anchor for Dublin Bay. They passed that night in Waterford
Harbour, and arrived at Kingstown on the afternoon of the following
day. When the Queen appeared on deck there was a tremendous burst
of cheering, which was renewed again and again, especially when the
_Victoria and Albert_ amidst salutes from yachts and steamers, swung
round at anchor, head to wind. At that time it is calculated that
there must have been 40,000 people present. Monday, the 6th of August,
was an auspicious day for the Irish metropolis. It opened with a
brilliant sun, and from an early hour all the population of Dublin
seemed astir. Trains began to run to Kingstown as early as half-past
six, and from that hour to noon the multitudes poured in by sea and
land in order to see and welcome their Queen. The Earl of Clarendon
(the Lord-Lieutenant), Lady Clarendon, Prince George of Cambridge, the
Marquis of Lansdowne, Sir Edward Blakeney, Commander of the Forces,
the Archbishop of Dublin, the Duke of Leinster, the chief judges, and
a number of peers and leading gentry, arrived early to welcome the
Sovereign. There was also a deputation from the county of Dublin,
consisting of the High Sheriff, Mr. Ennis, Lords Charlemont, Brabazon,
Howth, Monck, Roebuck, and others. The Queen landed at ten o'clock.
The excitement and tumultuous joy at that moment cannot be described.
There was a special train in waiting to convey the Queen to Dublin,
which stopped at Sandymount Station, where the procession was to be
formed. In addition to the innumerable carriages waiting to take
their places, there was a cavalcade of the gentry of the county and a
countless multitude of pedestrians. The procession began to move soon
after ten o'clock, passing over Ball's Bridge and on through Baggot
Street. At Baggot Street Bridge the city gate was erected. All was
enthusiasm, exultation, and joy. Nobody could then have imagined that
only one short year before there had been in this very city bands of
rebels arming themselves against the Queen's authority. All traces of
rebellion, disaffection, discontent and misery were forgotten in that
demonstration of loyalty.

On Monday night the whole city was brilliantly illuminated. The
excitement of the multitude had time to cool next day, for it rained
incessantly from morning till night. But the rain did not keep the
Queen in-doors. She was out early through the city, visiting the Bank
of Ireland, the National Model Schools, the University, and the Royal
Hospital at Kilmainham. There she cheered the hearts of the brave old
pensioners by saying, "I am glad indeed to see you all so comfortable."
The illuminations were repeated this evening with, if possible,
increased splendour, and the streets were filled with people in every
direction, all behaving in the most orderly manner. Her Majesty
held a levee in Dublin Castle on Wednesday, which was attended by
unprecedented numbers. On Thursday she witnessed a grand review in the
Phœnix Park, and held a Drawing-room in her palace in the evening. The
Queen left Dublin on Friday evening, followed to the railway station by
immense multitudes, cheering and blessing as only enthusiastic Celts
can cheer and bless. The scene at the embarkation in Kingstown Harbour
was very touching. The whole space and the piers were crowded as when
she arrived. The cheering and waving of handkerchiefs seemed to affect
her Majesty as the royal yacht moved slowly out towards the extremity
of the pier near the lighthouse. She left the two ladies-in-waiting
with whom she was conversing on deck, ran up to the paddle-box, and,
taking her place beside Prince Albert, she gazed upon the scene before
her, graciously waving her hand in response to the parting salutations
of her loyal Irish subjects. She appeared to give some order to the
commander, the paddles immediately ceased to move, and the vessel
merely floated on; the royal standard was lowered in courtesy to the
cheering thousands on shore; and this stately obeisance was repeated
five times. This incident produced a deep impression on the hearts of
the people, and it was this picture that dwelt longest on their minds.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN AT KILMAINHAM HOSPITAL. (_See p._ 572.)]

After a rough passage the squadron arrived, at three in the morning,
in Carrickfergus Road, about seven miles from Belfast. The water in
the Channel was not deep enough for the _Victoria and Albert_, and the
royal party went on board the _Fairy_ tender, in which they rapidly
glided up the lough, and anchored at the quay, where they landed in
order to see the town. Loyal mottoes told, in every form of expression,
the welcome of the inhabitants of the capital of Ulster. An arch of
grand architectural proportions, richly decorated with floral ornaments
and waving banners, spanned the High Street. Her Majesty visited the
Queen's College and the Linen Hall. Although a flourishing city,
Belfast had not then much to boast of architecturally, and therefore
there was not much to be seen. The numerous mills about the town
would remind the Queen more of Lancashire than of Ireland, giving her
assurance by that same token that Ulster was the most industrious
and most prosperous province of the Emerald Isle. If, in Cork, where
O'Connell had been obeyed almost as Sovereign of the country, the Queen
was hailed with such enthusiastic devotion, how intense must have been
the loyal demonstrations in a town out of which the Repeal chief was
obliged to fly secretly, to avoid being stoned to death.




CHAPTER XX.

REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    The Year of Revolutions--Lord Palmerston's Advice to Spain--It
    is rejected by the Duke of Sotomayor--Dismissal of Sir H.
    Bulwer--The Revolution in Germany--Condition of Prussia--The
    King's Ordinance--He disclaims a Desire to become German
    Emperor--The National Assembly dispersed by Force--A New
    Constitution--The King declines the German Crown--The Revolution
    in Vienna--Flight of Metternich and of the Emperor--Affairs
    in Bohemia--Croats and Hungarians--Jellachich secretly
    encouraged--Revolt of Hungary--Murder of Lamberg--Despotic
    Decrees from Vienna--The second Revolution in Vienna--Bombardment
    of Vienna--Accession of Francis Joseph--Commencement of the
    War--Defeats of the Austrians--Quarrel between Kossuth and
    Görgei--Russian Intervention--Collapse of the Insurrection--The
    Vengeance of Austria--Death of Count Batthyani--Lord Palmerston's
    Protest--Schwartzenberg's Reply--The Hungarian Refugees--The
    Revolution in Italy--Revolt of Venice--Milan in Arms--Retreat
    of Radetzky--Enthusiasm of the Italians--Revolution and
    counter-Revolution in Sicily and Naples--Difficulties of
    the Pope--Republic at Rome--The War in Lombardy--Austrian
    Overtures--Radetzky's Successes--French and British
    Mediation--Armistice arranged--Resumption of Hostilities--Battle
    of Novara--Abdication of Charles Albert--Terms of Peace--Surrender
    of Venice, Bologna, and other Italian Cities--Foreign
    Intervention in Rome--The French Expedition--Temporary Successes
    of the Romans--Siege and Fall of Rome--Restoration of the
    Pope--Parliamentary Debates on Italian Affairs--Lord Palmerston's
    Defence of his Policy.


The downfall of the French monarchy was the cause, more or less
directly, of a series of Continental revolutions, but Spain was less
affected by the flight of the monarch who had exerted so baneful
an influence upon its policy and its Royal Family than might have
been anticipated. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer was then British Minister
at Madrid, and Lord Palmerston was Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs. He evidently expected another revolution in Spain, as
appears from a remarkable despatch which he addressed to Sir Henry.
Its tone was certainly rather dictatorial, and it is not much wonder
that it fired the pride of the Spanish Government. The noble lord
wrote as follows:--"Sir,--I have to recommend you to advise the
Spanish Government to adopt a legal and constitutional system. The
recent downfall of the King of the French and of his family, and the
expulsion of his Ministers, ought to indicate to the Spanish Court and
Government the danger to which they expose themselves in endeavouring
to govern a country in a manner opposed to the sentiments and opinions
of the nation; and the catastrophe which has just occurred in France
is sufficient to show that even a numerous and well-disciplined army
offers only an insufficient means of defence to the Crown, when the
system followed by it is not in harmony with the general system of the
country. The Queen of Spain would act wisely, in the present critical
state of affairs, if she were to strengthen her executive Government,
by widening the basis on which the administration reposes, and in
calling to her councils some of the men in whom the Liberal party
places confidence."

The irritation which this note caused was increased by the fact
that before it was communicated by Sir Henry Bulwer to the Spanish
Minister, the Duke de Sotomayor, a copy of it had got into print in
one of the Opposition journals. In replying to it the Duke reminded
our representative that when Lord Palmerston sent the despatch in
question the Spanish Cortes were sitting, the press was entirely free,
and the Government had adopted a line of conduct admitted to be full
of kindness and conciliation. He asked, therefore, what motive could
induce the British Minister to make himself the interpreter of the
feelings and opinions of a foreign and independent nation in regard to
its domestic affairs, and the kind of men that should be admitted to
its councils. The Spanish Cabinet, which had the full confidence of
the Crown and the Cortes and had been acting in conformity with the
constitution and the laws, could not see "without the most extreme
surprise the extraordinary pretensions of Lord Palmerston, which led
him to interfere in this manner with the internal affairs of Spain, and
to support himself on inexact and equivocal data, and the qualification
and appreciation of which could not, in any case, come within his
province." They declined to give any account of their conduct at the
instigation of a foreign Power, and declared that all the legal parties
in Spain unanimously rejected such a humiliating pretension. And, he
triumphantly asked, "What would Lord Palmerston say if the Spanish
Government were to interfere in the administrative acts of the British
Cabinet, and recommend a modification of the _régime_ of the State;
or if it were to advise it to adopt more efficacious or more liberal
measures to alleviate the frightful condition of Ireland? What would
he say if the representative of her Catholic Majesty in London were
to qualify so harshly as your Excellency has done, the exceptional
measures of repression which the English Government prepares against
the aggression which threatens in the midst of its own States? What
would he say if the Spanish Government were to demand, in the name
of humanity, more consideration and more justice on behalf of the
unfortunate people of Asia? What, in fine, would he say if we were to
remind him that the late events on the Continent gave a salutary lesson
to all Governments, without excepting Great Britain?"

Further correspondence on the subject did not heal the wound that had
been inflicted on the pride of the Spanish Government, but rather
inflamed it; and on the 19th of May the British ambassador received
a peremptory order to quit the kingdom within forty-eight hours. In
dismissing him, the Duke de Sotomayor administered to him a very sharp
rebuke. "Your conduct," he said, "in the execution of your important
mission has been reprobated by public opinion in England, censured
by the British press, and condemned in the British Parliament. Her
Catholic Majesty's Government cannot defend it when that of her
Britannic Majesty has not done so." Sir Henry Bulwer accordingly
departed, Mr. Otway, the principal attaché, remaining to transact any
necessary business connected with the embassy. Diplomatic relations
were not renewed for some time, and, it must be admitted, that the
insult that had been offered to England was in a great measure provoked.

Elsewhere, however, Lord Palmerston abstained from interference,
particularly in Germany. The immense phlegmatic mass of the Teutonic
population--amounting to 43,000,000, spread over 246,000 square miles,
and divided into thirty-five sovereign States--was powerfully moved by
the shock of the French Revolution. Those States existed under every
form of government, from absolutism to democracy. They were all united
into a _Bund_ or Confederation, the object of which was the maintenance
of the independence of Germany, and of its several States. The
Confederation consisted of a Diet, composed of the plenipotentiaries
of all the States. This Diet was no bad emblem of the German mind
and character--fruitful in speculation, free in thought, boundless
in utterance, but without strength of will or power of action. The
freer spirits demanded more liberal forms of government, and on these
being refused, the Revolution broke out in Baden, Hesse-Cassel, and
Bavaria. In Saxony the monarchy was saved by bending before the storm
of revolution: a new Administration was appointed, which at once issued
a programme of policy so liberal that the people were satisfied. Even
the King of Hanover yielded to the revolutionary pressure, and called
to his councils M. Hubé, a Liberal deputy, who had been imprisoned
several years for resisting an unconstitutional act of the Crown.
On the 20th of March he issued a proclamation, in which he stated
that, in compliance with the many representations addressed to him,
he had abolished the censorship of the press, granted an amnesty and
restoration of rights to all who had been condemned for political
offences, and was willing to submit to changes in the Constitution,
based upon the responsibility of Ministers to the country. It was
not without necessity that such appeals were addressed to the German
people. At Frankfort, while the Assembly were occupied in framing a
brand-new Constitution, the Republican party in the Chamber appealed
out of doors to the passions of the multitude, and excited them to such
a pitch that barricades were erected, and the red flag planted in the
streets. By midnight the struggle was over, and tranquillity everywhere
restored through the exertions of the military.

Prussia, it might be supposed, would escape the invasion of
Revolutionary principles in 1848. Great hopes had been excited on the
accession of Frederick William IV. to his father's throne. Yet it was
evident to close observers of the signs of the times that a spirit of
sullen discontent was brooding over the population. There was a feeling
that their amiable and accomplished Sovereign had disappointed them.
He proved to be excessively sensitive to the slightest infringement of
his prerogative, and he abhorred the idea of representative bodies,
who might oppose constitutional barriers to his own absolute will.
Hence, there grew up sensibly a mutual feeling of distrust between him
and the people, and the natural effect on his part was a change from
the leniency and liberality of his earlier years to a more austere
temper, while a tedious, inactive, and undecided course of policy wore
out the patience of those who expected a more constitutional system.
Consequently, although the administration of the country was free from
any taint of corruption, and was, on the whole, moderate and just, the
revolutionary earthquake of 1848 shook the kingdom of Prussia to its
very foundations.

[Illustration: FRANKFORT. (_From a Photograph by Frith & Co.,
Reigate._)]

After a week's popular tumult in his capital, the King's eyes were
opened, and he conceived the idea of putting himself at the head of the
popular movement, with a view, no doubt, of directing and controlling
it. On the 18th of March he issued an ordinance against convoking a
meeting of the Diet which had closed its Session only a fortnight
before. In this document he stated that he demanded that Germany should
be transformed from a confederation of States to one Federal State,
with constitutional representation, a general military system after the
Prussian model, a single Federal banner, a common law of settlement
for all Germany, and the right of all Germans to change their abode in
every part of the Fatherland, with the abolition of all custom-house
barriers to commercial intercourse, with uniformity of weights,
measures, and coinage, and liberty of the press throughout Germany.
Thereby he placed himself at the head of the United Germany movement.

Meanwhile difficulties thickened daily about the king. His Cabinets
resigned in rapid succession; there were no less than five of them
between March and October; till at last he got a man of nerve for
Prime Minister, in the person of Count von Brandenburg. The Ministry
addressed a document to the king for the purpose of disclaiming on his
behalf the desire to become German Emperor, stating that his assuming
the German colours, and putting himself at the head of the movement
for German unity, and proposing to summon a meeting of the Sovereigns
and States did not justify the interpretation it had received; that
it was not his intention to anticipate the unbiassed decision of the
sovereign princes and the people of Germany by offering to undertake
the temporary direction of German affairs. Thus the king was obliged
to back quietly out of a position which he had rashly assumed. The
United Diet acted as being itself only a temporary institution, having
established the electoral law on the basis of universal suffrage in
order to prepare the way for a constituent Assembly, by which means the
revolutionary spirit penetrated to the very extremities of Prussian
society.

The first Session of the National Assembly was opened by the king in
person on the 22nd of May, but it did not conduct itself in a manner
to recommend universal suffrage, or to make the friends of orderly
government enamoured of revolution. Eventually it was dispersed by
force. The new Chambers were opened on the 26th of February by the
king in person, Count Brandenburg having led him to the throne. He
stated that circumstances having obliged him to dissolve the National
Assembly, he had granted to the nation a Constitution which by its
provisions fulfilled all his promises made in the month of March. This
Constitution was modelled after that of Belgium. The House was to
consist of two Chambers, both elective--the former by persons paying
24s. a year of direct taxes, and the latter by a process of double
election: that is, the deputies were chosen by delegates, who had
themselves been elected by universal suffrage, there being one deputy
for every 750 inhabitants. All Prussians were declared equal in the eye
of the law, freedom of the press was established, and all exclusive
class privileges were abolished. The judges were made independent of
the Crown, and no ordinance was to have the force of law without the
sanction of the Assembly.

[Illustration: LOUIS KOSSUTH.]

The Frankfort Parliament had spent a year doing nothing but talking.
They came, however, to the important resolution of offering the
Imperial Crown of Germany to the King of Prussia. As soon as the
Prussian Assembly heard this, they adopted an address to the king,
earnestly recommending him to accept the proffered dignity. They were
deeply interested by seeing the house of Hohenzollern called to the
direction of the Fatherland and they hoped he would take into his
strong hands the guidance of the destinies of the German nation. On
the 3rd of April, 1849, the king received the Frankfort deputation
commissioned to present to him the Imperial Crown. He declined the
honour unless the several Governments of the German States should
approve of the new Imperial Constitution, and concur in the choice of
the Assembly. As soon as this reply was made known, the second Prussian
Chamber adopted a motion of "urgency," and prepared an address to the
king, entreating him to accept the glorious mission of taking into firm
hands the guidance of the destiny of regenerated Germany, in order
to rescue it from the incalculable dangers that might arise from the
conflicting agitations of the time. The address was carried only by
a small majority. The king had good reason for refusing the imperial
diadem; first, because Austria, Würtemberg, Bavaria, and Hanover
decidedly objected; and secondly because the king required changes in
the Frankfort Constitution which the Parliament refused to make. These
facts enabled his Majesty to discover that the imperial supremacy was
"an unreal dignity, and the Constitution only a means gradually, and
under legal pretences, to set aside authority, and to introduce the
republic." In July the state of siege was terminated in Berlin, and the
new elections went in favour of the Government.

Austria, the centre of despotic power on the Continent, the model of
absolutism, in which the principle of Divine Right was most deeply
rooted, enjoyed peace from 1815, when Europe was tranquillised by
the Holy Alliance, down to 1848, when it felt in all its force the
tremendous shock of revolution. During that time Prince Metternich
ruled the Austrian Empire almost autocratically. This celebrated
diplomatist was the greatest champion and most powerful protector in
Europe of legitimacy and ultra-conservatism. The news of the French
Revolution reached Vienna on the 1st of March; and no censorship of
the press, no espionage, no sanitary cordon designed to exclude the
plague of revolution, could avert its electric influence, or arrest
its momentous effects. On the 13th the people rose, defeated the
Imperial troops, forced Metternich to fly, and the emperor to promise
constitutional reforms. The emperor and his family, however, soon
felt that Vienna was too hot for them, and notwithstanding unlimited
concessions, Ferdinand began to fear that his throne might share the
fate of Louis Philippe's. Therefore, he secretly quitted the capital
with the imperial family, on the evening of the 17th of May, 1848,
alleging the state of his health as a reason for his flight, which took
his Ministers quite by surprise. He proceeded to Innsbruck in Tyrol.

The Viennese repeatedly sent petitions and deputations imploring him in
vain to return; and it was not till the 8th of August that he consented
to quit the safe asylum he had chosen. Personally he had nothing to
apprehend. He was amiable and kind, and wanted both the ability and
energy to make himself feared. It was not at Vienna alone, or in the
Austrian province, that the imperial power was paralysed. Every limb of
the vast empire quivered in the throes of revolution. Two days after
the outbreak in Vienna a great meeting, convoked anonymously, was held
at Prague, the capital of Bohemia, which passed resolutions demanding
constitutional government; perfect equality in the two races--German
and Czech; the union of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, with a common
Diet to meet alternately at Prague and Brünn; that judicial proceedings
should be public; that there should be a separate and responsible
government at Prague, with security for personal liberty; free press,
and religious equality. A deputation was sent with these demands to
Vienna. They were all granted; Bohemia was recognised as having a
distinct nationality; the Prince Francis Joseph, afterwards Emperor
of Austria, having been appointed Viceroy. Even so Slav ambition was
unsatisfied, and Prague had to be bombarded by the Austrian troops.

Jellacic, the Ban, or Governor, of Croatia, resolved to hold a Slavonic
Diet at Agram on the 5th of June; but it was forbidden as illegal
by the Austrian Government, and the Ban was summoned to Innsbruck
to explain his conduct to the emperor. He disobeyed the summons.
The Diet was held, and one of its principal acts was to confer upon
Jellacic the title of Ban, which he had held under the now repudiated
authority of the emperor. He was consequently denounced as a rebel,
and divested of all his titles and offices. The emperor proceeded to
restore his authority by force of arms. Carlowitz was bombarded, and
converted into a heap of ruins; and other cities surrendered to escape
a similar fate. It was not, however, from disloyalty to the imperial
throne, but from hostility to the ascendency of Hungary, that the Ban
had taken up arms. He therefore went to Innsbruck early in July, and
having obtained an interview with the emperor, he declared his loyalty
to the Sovereign, and made known the grievances which his nation
endured under the Hungarian Government. His demands were security and
equality of rights with the Hungarians, both in the Hungarian Diet and
in the administration. These conditions were profoundly resented by
the Magyars, who, headed by Count Batthyány and Louis Kossuth, had in
1847 extorted a Constitution from the emperor. It was the unfortunate
antipathy of races, excited by the Germanic and Pan-Slavonic movements,
that enabled the emperor to divide and conquer. The Archduke Stephen in
opening the Hungarian Diet indignantly repelled the insinuation that
either the king or any of the royal family could give the slightest
encouragement to the Ban of Croatia in his hostile proceedings against
Hungary. Yet, on the 30th of September following, letters which had
been intercepted by the Hungarians were published at Vienna, completely
compromising the emperor, and revealing a disgraceful conspiracy
which he appears to have entered into with Jellacic, when they met at
Innsbruck. Not only were the barbarous Croatians, in their devastating
aggression on Hungary, encouraged by the emperor while professing to
deplore and condemn them, but the Imperial Government were secretly
supplying the Ban with money for carrying on the war. Early in August
the Croatian troops laid siege to several of the most important cities
in Hungary, and laid waste some of the richest districts in that
country. In these circumstances the Diet voted that a deputation of
twenty-five members should proceed at once to Vienna, and make an
appeal to the National Assembly for aid against the Croats, who were
now rapidly overrunning the country under Jellacic, who proclaimed that
he was about to rid Hungary "from the yoke of an incapable, odious, and
rebel Government." The deputation went to Vienna, and the Assembly,
by a majority of 186 to 108, resolved to refuse it a hearing. Deeply
mortified at this insult, the Hungarians resolved to break completely
with Austria. They invested Kossuth with full powers as Dictator,
whereupon the Archduke resigned his vice-royalty on the 25th of
September, and retired to Moravia.

In the midst of the excitement at Pesth, Count Lamberg was appointed
Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial army in Hungary; and a decree
appeared at the same time ordering a suspension of hostilities. The
Count immediately started for Pesth without a military escort. In
the meantime Kossuth had issued a counter-proclamation, in which the
appointment of Lamberg was declared to be illegal and null, as it
was not countersigned by the Hungarian Minister, according to the
Constitution, and all persons obeying him were declared to be guilty
of high treason. Unknown assassins, translating this language into
action, stabbed the Count to death in the public street (September 28,
1848). The Government of Vienna resolved now to crush the Hungarian
insurrection at any cost. A decree was issued by the emperor, who
had lately returned to the capital, dissolving the Diet, declaring
all its ordinances and acts illegal and void, constituting Jellacic
Commander-in-Chief in Hungary and Transylvania, with unlimited powers,
and appointing also a new Hungarian Ministry. Kossuth met this by a
counter-proclamation, asserting the entire independence of Hungary, and
denouncing the Ban and the new Prime Minister as traitors. The power
given to Jellacic excited the indignation not only of all Hungarians,
but of the citizens of Vienna. They rose the second time, and again
forced the Emperor to fly, this time to Olmütz.

But the triumph of the insurgents was brief. From Radetzky, triumphant
in Italy, from Windischgrätz at Prague, and from Jellacic in Hungary,
came assurances that they were making haste to rally round the
emperor's flag, and to cause it to wave in triumph over the vanquished
revolution. The last with his Croats moved up by forced marches,
availing himself of the Southern Railway, and on the 9th of October
he was within two hours' march of Vienna. On the news of the approach
of this formidable enemy, consternation seized the Viennese. The
reinforcements brought by Windischgrätz swelled the Imperial forces at
Vienna to 70,000 men. In the presence of this host, hanging like an
immense thunder-cloud charged with death and ruin over the capital,
the citizens relied chiefly upon the Hungarian army. But this was held
in check by the Croatian army; and Kossuth, deeming it prudent not
to enter into the contest, withdrew his troops within the bounds of
Hungarian territory. On the 28th, Prince Windischgrätz began to bombard
the city, and the troops advanced to the assault. The Hungarians at
last advanced in aid of the insurgents, but were beaten off, and on
the night of the 31st of October the city surrendered, and was in
possession of the Imperial troops.

A new Ministry was appointed with Prince Schwarzenberg at its head,
and on the 2nd of December the Emperor Ferdinand abdicated in favour
of his nephew, Francis Joseph, whose father Francis Charles, next in
succession, renounced his claim to the throne. The retiring emperor
stated that the pressure of events, and the immediate want of a
comprehensive reformation in the forms of State, convinced him that
more youthful powers were necessary to complete the grand work which
he had commenced. The real reason was that Lord Palmerston, who in
his private correspondence held the Emperor to be "next thing to an
idiot," had been constantly advising him to resign his sceptre into
firmer hands. The young Emperor, in his proclamation, expressed his
conviction of the value of free institutions, and said that he entered
with confidence on the path of a prosperous reformation of the monarchy.

Windischgrätz was, meanwhile, diligently preparing for the conquest of
Hungary, with an army which numbered 65,000 men, with 260 guns. The
full details of the campaign, however, can hardly be said to belong
to English history. It is enough to say here that while Görgei more
than held him in check at the outset of the campaign, Bem, a Pole,
had been conducting the war in the east of Hungary with the most
brilliant success. He was there encountered by the Austrian General
Puchner, who had been shut up in the town of Hermannstadt with 4,000
men and eighteen guns, and Bem succeeded in completely cutting off his
communications with the main Austrian army. In these circumstances, the
inhabitants of Hermannstadt and Kronstadt, on the Russian frontier,
both menaced with destruction by the hourly increasing forces under
Bem's command, earnestly implored the intervention of Russia.
Puchner summoned a council of war, which concurred in the prayer for
intervention. For this the Czar was prepared, and a formal requisition
having been made by Puchner, General Luders, who had received
instructions from St. Petersburg, ordered two detachments of his troops
to cross the frontier, and occupy the two cities above mentioned.
Nevertheless Bem defeated the combined Russian and Austrian army, and
shortly afterwards Görgei won an important battle at Isaszeg.

An unhappy difference in principle of the most fundamental character
occurred between Kossuth and Görgei at this time, which brought ruin
on the Hungarian cause, now on the verge of complete success. Kossuth
was for complete independence; his rival for the maintenance of the
Hapsburg monarchy. Kossuth, however, had taken his course before
consulting Görgei--a fact that embittered the spirit of the latter. The
Hungarian Assembly, at his suggestion, had voted the independence of
Hungary (April 19, 1849), with the deposition and banishment for ever
of the House of Hapsburg Lorraine. After this declaration the Hungarian
forces increased rapidly. The highest hopes still pervaded the nation.
They gained several advantages over the enemy, having now in the field
150,000 men. Field-Marshal Welden, the Austrian Commander-in-Chief,
dispirited and broken down in health, resigned the command, and was
succeeded by the infamous Haynau--the "woman-flogger." But the fate of
Hungary was decided by Russian intervention actuated by the fear of
the Czar lest the movement should spread to Poland. Hungary would have
successfully defended itself against Austria; but when the latter's
beaten armies were aided by 120,000 Muscovites under Paskievitch,
their most famous general, coming fresh into the field, success was no
longer possible, and the cause was utterly hopeless. On the 31st of
July, 1849, Luders, having effected a junction with Puchner, attacked
Bem, and completely defeated him. On the 13th of August Görgei was
surrounded at Vilagos, and surrendered to the Russian general Rudiger.
The war was over with the capitulation of Comorn.

Paskievitch and the other Russian generals pleaded earnestly with the
Emperor of Austria, imploring him to extend his clemency to all the
officers and soldiers who had been engaged in the insurrection. But
the Emperor was deeply mortified at the humiliation of having to call
for Russian aid against his own rebellious subjects; he was vexed at
the horror the Hungarians felt about surrendering to his army, as well
as jealous of the magnanimity of the Muscovites. He therefore answered
the Russian appeal, that he had sacred duties to perform towards his
other subjects, which, as well as the general good of his people,
he was obliged to consider. The warmest apologists of Austria were
forced to condemn the vindictive and cruel policy now adopted. Görgei
was pardoned and offered rank in the Russian army, which he declined,
and Klapka escaped by the terms of his capitulation; but fourteen
other Hungarian officers of the highest rank were cruelly immolated
to Austrian vengeance. One lady was ordered to sweep the streets of
Temesvar, another was stripped and flogged by the soldiery. Many
eminent Magyars were hanged. But of all the atrocities which stained
the name of Austria, and brought down upon her the execration of the
civilised world, none was so base and infamous as the judicial murder
of Count Batthyány. This illustrious man, who had presided over the
Hungarian Ministry, was sentenced to be hanged. Having taken leave of
his wife, he endeavoured, in the course of the night, to escape the
infamy of such a death by opening the veins of his neck with a blunt
paper-knife; but the attempt was discovered, and the surgeon stopped
the bleeding. Next day the noble patriot procured a less ignominious
doom--he was shot (October 6, 1849).

[Illustration: ASSASSINATION OF COUNT LAMBERG. (_See p._ 579.)]

Meanwhile Lord Palmerston had been constant in his appeals to the
Austrian Court. When the Hungarian cause became desperate, he had
urged Austria to consent to some arrangement which, while maintaining
unimpaired the union with the House of Hapsburg, would satisfy the
national feelings of the Hungarians. After the surrender of Comorn, he
urged the Government to "make a generous use of the successes which it
had obtained," and to pay "due regard to the ancient constitutional
rights of Hungary." But he received from Prince Schwarzenberg, the
Austrian Minister, a scathing reply. "The world," he wrote, "is
agitated by a spirit of subversion. England herself is not exempt from
this spirit; witness Canada, the island of Cephalonia, and finally
unhappy Ireland. But, wherever revolt breaks out within the vast
limits of the British Empire, the English Government always knows how
to maintain the authority of the law, were it even at the price of
torrents of blood. It is not for us to blame her.... We consider it our
duty to refrain from expressing our opinion, persuaded as we are that
persons are apt to fall into gross errors in making themselves judges
of the often so complicated position of foreign affairs."

For this rebuff, to which he did not even venture an answer, Lord
Palmerston speedily obtained a dexterous revenge. Kossuth, Bem,
Dembinski, and some thousands of the Hungarian leaders, found refuge
at Shumla, within the Turkish frontier. A joint and imperative demand
was made by Austria and Russia upon the Sultan to deliver them up.
This demand was enforced by two envoys from each Court. The pressure
was resisted by the Sultan, who refused to yield to a demand which
required him to violate his own honour, the national dignity, the
dictates of humanity, and the most sacred rights of hospitality. He
took this course at the risk of a rupture with Russia, and though he
was pledged by treaty to refuse to shelter both Austrian and Russian
malcontents. But he was strongly supported by Lord Palmerston and the
French Government, who having gained time by the Sultan's despatch
of a special mission to St. Petersburg, ordered the British and
French fleets to move up to the Dardanelles and Smyrna. Thereupon
the autocratic Powers lowered their tone, Russia demanding only the
expulsion of the Poles, Austria the internment of some thirty of the
refugees. The refugees were removed to Kutaya, in Asia Minor, where
they remained till August 22nd, 1851. On the 1st of September in that
year Kossuth left Turkey. On his arrival at Marseilles he was refused
permission to travel through France; but he was hospitably received
at Gibraltar and Lisbon, and on the 28th of October arrived safely
in England, where he was welcomed with unbounded enthusiasm. During
these negotiations Palmerston had displayed a courage which raised his
reputation both at home and abroad.

Italy, of all the countries on the Continent, was most predisposed
for revolution in 1848. In fact, the train had long been laid in that
country--rather, a number of trains--designed to blow up the despotisms
under which the people had been so grievously oppressed. Mazzini, the
prince of political conspirators, had been diligently at work, and the
Carbonari had been actively engaged in organising their associations,
and making preparations for action. The hopes of the Italian people had
been greatly excited by the unexpected liberalism of the new Pope, Pius
IX., who startled the world by the novelty of his reforming policy.
Already partial concessions had been made by the Government, but these
proved wholly insufficient. Upon the news of the revolution in Vienna,
Venice rose, forced the Governor to release her leaders, Tommaseo and
Manin, compelled the Austrians to evacuate the city, and established
a Provisional Government. Meanwhile in Milan all was quiet until the
news arrived of the flight of Metternich. Then the inhabitants became
impatient and clamorous, and assembled in large numbers around the
Government House. In order to disperse them, the soldiers fired blank
cartridge. At this moment a fiery youth shouted "_Viva l'Italia!_" and
then, apparently, gave the preconcerted signal by firing a pistol at
the troops. Instantly the guards were overpowered, the Vice-Governor,
O'Donell, was made prisoner, and the success of the movement was
quickly signalised by the floating of the tricolour over the palace.
That night (March 18) and the next day (Saturday) the people were
busily occupied in the erection of barricades. The bells of Milan
tolled early on Sunday morning, summoning the population, not to
worship, but to battle. An immense tricolour flag floated from the
tower of the cathedral, and under that emblem of revolution the unarmed
people, men and women, fought fiercely against Marshal Radetzky's
Imperial troops, and in spite of his raking cannon, for five days. It
was the most terrific scene of street fighting by an enraged people
who had broken their chains that had ever occurred in the history of
the world. Every stronghold was defended by cannon, and yet one by one
they all fell into the hands of the people, till at last the troops
remained masters of only the gates of the city. But the walls were
scaled by emissaries, who announced to the besieged that Pavia and
Brescia were in open insurrection, and that the Archduke, son of the
Viceroy, had been taken prisoner. The citizens also communicated with
the insurgent population outside by means of small balloons, containing
proclamations, requesting them to break down the bridges and destroy
the roads, to prevent reinforcements coming to the Austrians. In vain
the Austrian cannon thundered from the Tosa and Romagna gates. The
undaunted peasantry pressed forward in increasing numbers, and carried
the positions. Radetzky was at length compelled to order a retreat.
He retired to Crema, within the Quadrilateral fortresses beyond the
Mincio. In the meantime a Provisional Government was appointed at
Milan, which issued an earnest appeal to all Italians to rise in arms.
"We have conquered," they said; "we have compelled the enemy to fly."
The proclamation also intimated that Charles Albert of Sardinia was
hastening to their assistance, "to secure the fruits of the glorious
revolution," to fight the last battle of independence and the Italian
Union. On the 25th of March the Piedmontese army was ordered across the
Ticino.

The enthusiasm which now pervaded the whole Italian peninsula was
unbounded, and broke forth in frantic expressions of joy and triumph.
The days of Continental despotism seemed numbered at last. Everything
promised well for the cause of Italian freedom and unity. The Italian
troops stationed at Bergamo, Cremona, Brescia, and Rovigo joined
the insurgents. The Grand Duke of Tuscany set his troops in motion;
the Pope blessed the volunteers; even Naples sent a contingent. The
Austrian garrisons had to abandon Padua and several other places,
while the great fortress of Verona was held with difficulty. In the
south of Italy the cause of despotism seemed to be going down rapidly.
Deceived by the promises of the King of Naples, the people of Sicily
determined to trust him no longer. In January, 1848, an address to the
Sicilians was issued from Palermo, which stated that prayers, pacific
protestations and demonstrations had all been treated by Ferdinand
with contempt. Palermo would receive with transport every Sicilian who
should come armed to sustain the common cause, and establish reformed
institutions, "in conformity with the progress and will of Italy and
of Pius IX." Property was to be respected, robbery was to be punished
as high treason, and whoever was in want would be supplied at the
common charge. The king's birthday was kept by unfurling the banner of
revolution, and calling the citizens to arms. The royal troops retired
into the barracks, the forts, and the palace, leaving the streets and
squares in possession of the insurgents. The determination of the
Sicilians caused the weak and wavering king, Ferdinand II., to yield;
and on the 28th of January a royal decree appeared upon the walls of
Naples, granting a Constitution for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Orders were sent the same day to Palermo for the withdrawal of the
Neapolitan troops, and an amnesty for political offences soon was
published. The troops remained in the garrison, however, and occasional
conflicts took place between them and the citizens till the 2nd of May,
when an armistice was agreed to, which lasted to the 2nd of August. In
the meantime the elections had taken place under the new Constitution,
which the king had promulgated; but the Neapolitan Chamber proceeded
to modify it, to which the king objected. The people, led on by the
National Guard, which had been established, determined to support the
Assembly. On the 15th of May, therefore, barricades were erected in
the streets, the royal palace was occupied by troops, and artillerymen
stood by their guns with lighted matches in their hands. The accidental
firing of a gun led to a collision with the Swiss troops; thereupon, a
tremendous battle ensued, lasting for eight hours, in which the royal
troops were completely victorious.

The Sicilian Chambers met on the 13th of April, and voted the
deposition of the royal family of Naples. It was resolved to elect a
new king, and to join the league for the independence of Italy. The
prince chosen King of Sicily was the Duke of Genoa, second son of
Charles Albert, with the title of Albert Amadeus I., King of Sicily.
Messina had revolted, and a fleet was sent from Naples to reduce
it. A bombardment commenced on September 3rd, and was continued
night and day. The insurgents bravely defended themselves till their
provisions were exhausted, and they were scarcely able to stand to
their guns. Their ammunition had been all consumed. On the other hand,
reinforcements by thousands were poured in from a fleet of Neapolitan
steamers. The city was now on fire in every quarter. The insurgents
were unable to return a single shot. The victorious royalists then
began to massacre the inhabitants, who fled in every direction from
their murderous assailants, 10,000 of them finding shelter on board
French and English vessels while the Bourbon standard floated over the
smoking ruins of Messina. The king promptly withdrew his fleet and
contingent of 20,000 men from Northern Italy.

The Pope had been labouring to satisfy his subjects by effecting
some mitigation of the ecclesiastical system of government. He had
promulgated a plan for the organisation of the executive in nine
departments; the chiefs of which were to compose the Council of
Ministers, to consist partly of laymen, with a cardinal as secretary.
The populace, however, became gradually more unmanageable. The
cardinals were insulted wherever they appeared in the streets.
In the new Administration, Count Rossi--formerly Ambassador from
France--occupied the post of Prime Minister. He was the object of
popular distrust; and it was supposed that by his temporising policy,
and the feint of practical reforms, he was merely trying to gain time,
and to delude the people--so, at least, thought the revolutionary
party. The 15th of November was the day appointed for the opening of
the Chambers, and on that day he was murdered on the steps of the
Cancellaria. The mob obtained the upper hand with surprising rapidity.
Thenceforth the Pope took no part in public affairs, and remained a
prisoner in his palace, though the Government was still carried on in
his name. It was not to be expected that the head of the Roman Catholic
Church would remain long in that position. But the difficulty was to
get out of the city unobserved. However, he escaped in disguise to
Gaeta. Garibaldi, who had returned from South America, and had been
serving with the army of Charles Albert as a guerilla leader, now
appeared on the Roman stage. He had collected together about 3,000
volunteers and refugees, with whom he arrived in Rome at the end of
January, 1849. A constituent Assembly was convoked, by which the Pope
was dethroned, and a republic proclaimed, at the head of which was a
triumvirate composed of Mazzini, Armellini, and Saffi.

Meanwhile these disturbances elsewhere were having a disastrous effect
upon the fortunes of the war in Lombardy. At first, indeed, everything
pointed to the success of the Italian cause. In May Peschiera fell, and
Radetzky, venturing beyond the Quadrilateral, was defeated by Charles
Albert at Goito. Already the Italians had rejected the help which
Lamartine offered them from France, and Austria in despair appealed to
Lord Palmerston for the mediation of Britain. Well would it have been
for the Italians if terms could have been arranged. Lord Palmerston,
indeed, who had already sent off a private note to the British Minister
at Vienna, advising the Austrians to give up their Italian possessions
at once, now consented to propose an armistice, while asserting that
"things had gone too far to admit of any future connection between
Austria and the Italians." But nothing came of the proposal; the
Sardinians declined to consent to the armistice, which would only be
for the benefit of Radetzky, who was at this moment somewhat hardly
pressed; and the maximum of the concessions offered by the Austrian
envoy, Baron Hummelauer, was that Lombardy should be freed from its
connection with Austria while Venice should be retained. Palmerston
considered the surrender insufficient, and the war went on.

[Illustration: GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI.]

Soon it became apparent that the Italians were disunited, monarchists
against republicans, and Milanese against Piedmontese. Radetzky,
meanwhile, had received ample reinforcements, and in June set himself
to reduce Venetia. Fortress after fortress fell, and by the end of the
month the province, with the exception of the capital, was once more in
Austrian hands. Then the sturdy old warrior crushed the Piedmontese
at Custozza and drove them pell-mell across the Mincio, after a battle
which lasted three days. Charles Albert, unequal to his position, and
worn out by the dissensions of his staff, surrendered Milan without
a struggle, and by August, 1848, the fate of Lombardy was sealed. In
vain the Lombards appealed to France; the cautious Cavaignac had there
replaced the sentimental Lamartine. He offered, indeed, to join with
England in mediation, and, with his consent, Lord Palmerston proposed
the terms which had been previously offered by Baron Hummelauer. The
Austrians, however, declined to negotiate on that basis, and at last on
the 25th of September declared that they would consent to no cession of
territory. However, there was a cessation of hostilities.

[Illustration: PIUS IX. QUITTING THE VATICAN IN DISGUISE. (_See p._
583.)]

An armistice was arranged with Piedmont, which lasted throughout the
autumn and winter. The events at Rome and the flight of the Pope had
meanwhile greatly altered the position of the Italian question; and
the revolutionary spirit was so strong that Charles Albert found
it impossible to resist the demand of his people for a renewal of
hostilities. "I must restore war," he said, "or abdicate the crown and
see a republic established." He opened his Parliament in person on the
1st of January, 1849, when he delivered a lengthy speech, in which he
fully expounded his policy. He invited the nation to co-operate in the
great struggle which was impending. In January, the Sardinian Prime
Minister, M. Gioberti, addressed a protest to the foreign Powers,
in which he stated that though the suspension of hostilities agreed
to on the 5th of August, 1848, was productive of fatal political
consequences, Sardinia had faithfully observed the agreement, while
Austria had disregarded her promises, and exhibited nothing but bad
faith. She had pursued an iniquitous system of spoliation. Under the
name of extraordinary war contributions her fleet seized Italian
vessels navigating the Adriatic. She had put to death persons whose
safety was guaranteed by the law of nations. She had violated the most
sacred compacts in a manner unparalleled in the annals of civilised
nations. Gioberti, however, who was obnoxious to the republican party,
was compelled to resign. On the 24th of February the new Ministry
issued a programme of its policy, and on the 14th of March M. Ratazzi,
Minister of the Interior, announced to the Chamber of Deputies the
expiration of the armistice, declaring that no honourable peace
with Austria could be expected unless won by arms. War would, of
course, have its perils; but between those perils and the shame of
an ignominious peace, which would not insure Italian independence,
the king's Government could not hesitate. Consequently, he stated
that, two days before, a special messenger had been sent to Radetzky,
announcing the termination of the armistice. He was perhaps justified
by the declaration of the Austrian envoy to London, Count Colloredo,
that Austria would not enter into any sort of conference unless she
was assured that no cession of territory would be required. The king,
meanwhile, had joined the army as a general officer, commanding the
brigade in Savoy. The nominal strength of his army at that time was
135,000 men; but the muster-roll on the 20th of March showed only
about 84,000 effective troops, including 5,000 cavalry, with 150
guns. Radetzky had under his command an army equal in number, but far
superior in equipment and discipline. He at once broke Charles Albert's
lines; drove him to retreat upon Novara, where he utterly defeated him.
Abdication only remained for the king, and his son, Victor Emmanuel,
concluded peace on terms dictated by Austria. The King of Sardinia
was to disband ten military corps composed of Hungarians, Poles, and
Lombards. Twenty thousand Austrian troops were to occupy the territory
between the Po, the Ticino, and the Sesia, and to form one half of the
garrison of Alessandria, consisting of 6,000 men, a mixed military
committee to provide for the maintenance of the Austrian troops.
The Sardinians were to evacuate the duchies of Modena, Piacenza,
and Tuscany. The Piedmontese in Venice were to return home, and the
Sardinian fleet, with all the steamers, was to quit the Adriatic. In
addition to these stipulations, Sardinia was to indemnify Austria
for the whole cost of the war. These terms were accepted with great
reluctance by the Piedmontese Government, and with even more reluctance
by the Genoese, who revolted, and had to be suppressed by the royal
troops.

It remained for Austria to put down the revolution in Venice. That
city had bravely stood a siege for nearly twelve months, when, after
wonderful displays of heroism, its defenders were at last compelled to
relinquish the unequal contest. This glorious defence was mainly owing
to the extraordinary energy and activity of Manin, who was at the head
of the Government. After the capitulation he escaped with General Hesse
and other leaders of the Republican party. Manin settled in Paris,
where he lived in retirement, supporting himself by giving lessons
in Italian. He died there in 1857. The people of Venice honoured his
memory by going into mourning on the anniversary of his death, though,
by doing so--such is the meanness of malice--even ladies incurred the
penalties of fine and imprisonment at the hands of the Austrians.

During the months of April and May Florence and all the other towns
of Tuscany recovered from the revolutionary fever, and returned to
their allegiance. At Bologna the Austrians met with a determined
resistance. The garrison consisted of 3,000 men, including some
hundreds of the Swiss Guards, who had abandoned the service of the
Pope. They defied the Austrians, stating that the Madonna was all for
resistance, and was actively engaged in turning aside the rockets of
the enemy. But the heavy artillery did its deadly work notwithstanding;
and after a short bombardment the white flag was hung out, the city
capitulated, and the garrison laid down their arms, but were permitted
to march out unmolested. Ancona also capitulated on the 10th, and
Ferrara was occupied without resistance by Count Thurn. In fact, the
counter-revolution was successful all over Central Italy, except in the
Papal States, which now became the centre of universal interest. The
leaders of the revolutionary party, chased from the other cities of
Italy, were warmly welcomed at Rome, and gladly entered the ranks of
its defenders.

The eyes of the world were now turned upon Rome. It was not to be
expected that the Catholic Powers would allow the bark of St. Peter
to go down in the flood of revolution without an effort to save it.
Spain was the first to interpose for this purpose. Its Government
invited France, Austria, Bavaria, Sardinia, Tuscany, and Naples to send
plenipotentiaries to consult on the best means of reinstating the Pope.
Austria also protested against the new state of things, complaining
that the Austrian flag, and the arms of the empire on the palace of
its ambassador at Rome, had been insulted and torn down. On the 8th
of February a body of Austrian troops, under General Haynau, entered
Ferrara, to avenge the death of three Austrian soldiers, and an insult
offered to an Austrian consul. He required that the latter should be
indemnified, that the Papal colours should be again displayed, that
the murderers of the soldiers should be given up, and that the city
should support 10,000 Austrian troops. This was a state of things not
to be endured by the French Republic, and its Government determined to
interpose and overreach Austria, for the purpose of re-establishing
French ascendency at Rome, even though based upon the ruins of a
sister republic. The French Republicans, it is well known, cared very
little for the Pope, but they were ready to make use of him to gratify
their own national ambition. Their attack on the Roman Republic would
therefore be fittingly described by the language which Pius IX. applied
to that republic itself, as "hypocritical felony."

It was agreed between the Catholic Powers that the Papal territory
should be invaded at the same time by Neapolitan, Austrian, and French
troops. France was determined to have the chief part, and, if possible,
all the glory of the enterprise. Odillon Barrot, President of the
Council, explained the objects of the French expedition, on the 16th
of April. The Minister demanded extraordinary credit for the expenses
of the expedition. It was promptly voted without any opposition,
save some murmurs from the Left. An expedition was immediately
organised, and an army, 6,000 strong, was embarked at Marseilles, with
astounding celerity, on the 22nd of April, 1849, under the command of
General Oudinot. But the Romans had no confidence in their professed
protectors. On the contrary, they set about making all possible
preparations for the defence of the city. In consequence of the hints
he had got, however, Oudinot sent forward a reconnoitring party, which
was saluted with a fire of artillery, certainly not meant as a _feu de
joie_. The French general then ordered an attack upon two gates, the
Portese and San Pancrazio, both on the right bank of the Tiber. The
Romans repelled them at both points with a discharge of grape-shot,
and they were compelled to retire with heavy loss; General Garibaldi,
with his Lombard legion, having surrounded a retreating column, and
made 200 prisoners. After this mortifying repulse, Oudinot retired
to Palo, near Civita Vecchia, to await reinforcements, in order to
enable him to vindicate the honour of the French arms, which could now
be done only by the capture of Rome; and the French Government were
probably not sorry to have this pretext for their unwarrantable course
of aggression. In the meantime reinforcements were rapidly sent from
Toulon. During this period a Neapolitan army, 16,000 strong, commanded
by the king in person, had entered the States of the Church. Garibaldi,
disregarding the orders of Roselli, went forth to meet the invaders,
fell upon them with the suddenness of a thunderbolt, won a victory over
them, and compelled them to retreat. All negotiations having failed,
the French general commenced a regular siege. The city was cannonaded
from the 11th to the 21st of June, when Garibaldi assured the Triumvirs
that the defence was no longer possible. So Pius IX. was restored by
foreign bayonets. Shortly after, the Pope issued a decree, _proprio
motu_, containing a programme of "liberal institutions," so far as
they were compatible with an absolute authority, enjoyed in virtue of
Divine Right. The people were up for a brief period; they were now
down, and would be kept down, if possible. They had presumed to think
that they were the source of political power; that they could give
their representatives the right of making laws and dethroning kings;
but they must now learn that their business was to obey, and submit to
anything which their superiors might think proper, of their own will
and pleasure, to ordain.

The affairs of Italy were the subject of warm debates in the British
Parliament in the Session of 1849. Lord Palmerston was assailed by
the Conservatives for having countenanced the Sicilian insurrection,
and for having sent Lord Minto to Italy on a mission of conciliation,
which they considered an unwarrantable meddling in the affairs of
foreign countries. His assailants, he said, belonged to a school which
maintained "the right divine to govern wrong," and they therefore
stigmatised the Sicilians as rebels. But the Sicilians had had a
Constitution for centuries, and their ancient and indisputable rights
were confirmed in 1812. As to Lord Minto, he interfered at the instance
of the King of Naples himself. The Treaty of Vienna recognised the
title of the king as King of the Two Sicilies; "but the recognition of
a title was one thing, the overturning of a Constitution another."

In the House of Lords the Earl of Aberdeen, Foreign Secretary in the
late Government, strongly censured our foreign policy with regard to
Northern Italy. He spoke with delight of the brilliant victories and
rare generosity of Radetzky, and warmly eulogised the administration
of the Austrian dominions in Italy. Lord Brougham spoke strongly on
the same side with Lord Aberdeen, indignantly condemning the Italian
policy of the Government. On the 20th of July he moved a set of
resolutions on the subject, in which he also praised Austria, as being
just and moderate, while Sardinia was aggressive and faithless. He
spoke of "the terrible tyranny established by those firebrands of
revolution, Mazzini and Garibaldi." He considered that an eternal debt
of gratitude was due to General Oudinot, for conducting the siege in
such a manner as to avoid any waste of blood, and to preserve the
treasures of art of which that city was the repository. With reference
to Southern Italy he protested against the conduct, not only of our
regular diplomatic body, but of "that mongrel sort of monster--half
nautical, half political--diplomatic vice-admirals, speculative ship
captains, observers of rebellions, and sympathisers therewith;" the
officers alluded to being Lord Napier, Sir William Parker, and Captain
Codrington. The Earl of Carlisle, in reply to Lord Brougham, ably
defended the conduct of our diplomatists and officers throughout
the Sicilian contest, and repelled the sarcasms with which they
were assailed. He vindicated the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston,
and called upon the House to reject "the illogical and unmeaning"
resolutions of Lord Brougham. Lord Minto, also, at length defended the
course he had taken. The Marquis of Lansdowne, while willing to rest
the defence of the Government upon the able speech of Lord Carlisle,
made some remarks in answer to the charge of partiality brought by the
Earl of Aberdeen against Lord Minto, after which the House divided,
when the resolutions of Lord Brougham were rejected by a majority of 12.

In the House of Commons, on the 21st of July, Mr. Bernal Osborne
raised a discussion on the affairs of Hungary, and was followed by
Mr. Roebuck, Colonel Thompson, and Lord Claud Hamilton: the latter
denounced the conduct of Kossuth as "infamous." This debate is
memorable chiefly on account of Lord Palmerston's great speech on the
causes of the revolutions of 1848. In reply to the eulogiums upon the
Austrian Government, the noble lord stated that Austria, in the opinion
of a great part of the Continent, had been identified with obstruction
to progress, resistance to improvement, political and social; and it
was in that capacity she won the affections of the Tories. He regarded
the conduct of such men as an example of "antiquated imbecility." He
firmly believed that in the war between Austria and Hungary there were
enlisted on the side of Hungary the hearts and souls of the whole
people of that country. He took the question then being fought for on
the plains of Hungary to be this, whether that country should maintain
its separate nationality as a distinct kingdom with a constitution of
its own, or be incorporated in the empire as an Austrian province. If
Hungary succeeded, Austria would cease to be a first-rate European
power. If Hungary were entirely crushed, Austria in that battle would
have crushed her own right arm. Every field that was laid waste was an
Austrian resource destroyed. Every Hungarian that perished upon the
field was an Austrian soldier deducted from the defensive forces of
the empire. "It is quite true," continued the noble lord, "that it may
be said, 'Your opinions are but opinions; and you express them against
our opinions, who have at our command large armies to back them--what
are opinions against armies?' Sir, my answer is, opinions are stronger
than armies. I say, then, that it is our duty not to remain passive
spectators of events that in their immediate consequences affect
other countries, but in their remote and certain consequences are
sure to come back with disastrous effect upon ourselves; that so far
as the courtesies of international intercourse will permit us to do
so, it is our duty--especially when our opinion is asked, as it has
been on many occasions on which we have been blamed for giving it--to
state our opinions, founded on the experience of this country--an
experience that might be, and ought to have been, an example to less
fortunate countries. We are not entitled to interpose in any manner
that will commit this country to embark in those hostilities. All
we can justly do is to take advantage of any opportunities that may
present themselves, in which the counsels of friendship and peace
may be offered to the contending parties.... Sir, to suppose that
any Government of England can wish to excite revolutionary movements
in any part of the world--to suppose that England can have any other
wish or desire than to confirm and maintain peace between nations, and
tranquillity and harmony between Governments and subjects--shows really
a degree of ignorance and folly which I never supposed any public man
could have been guilty of--which may do very well for a newspaper
article, but which it astonishes me to find is made the subject of a
speech in Parliament." The noble lord sat down amidst much cheering.
Lord Dudley Stuart said that he looked upon the speech which had been
delivered by Mr. Osborne, followed up as it had been by Mr. Roebuck and
Lord Palmerston, as one of the most important events of the Session.

[Illustration: THE CHANDNI CHOWK, DELHI. (_From a Photograph by Frith
& Co., Reigate._)]




CHAPTER XXI.

REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    Our Relations with Scinde--Occupation of the Country--Napier in
    Scinde--Ellenborough's Instructions--A New Treaty--Capture of
    Emaum-Ghur--The Treaty signed--Attack on the Residency--Battle of
    Meeanee--Defeat of Shere Mahommed--Subjugation of Scinde--Napier's
    Government of the Province--Position of the Sikhs--Disorders in
    Gwalior--Battle of Maharajpore--Settlement of Gwalior--Recall
    of Lord Ellenborough--Sir Henry Hardinge--Power of the
    Sikhs--Disorders on the Death of Runjeet Singh--The Sikhs
    cross the Sutlej--Battle of Moodkee--Battle of Ferozeshah--The
    Victory won--Battle of Aliwal--Battle of Sobraon--Terms of
    Peace--Administration of the Lawrences--Murder of Vans Agnew and
    Anderson--Renewal of the War--Battles of Chillianwallah and of
    Goojerat--Capture of Mooltan--Annexation of the Punjab.


The conclusion of the Afghan war did not end the difficulties with
the countries bordering on India. In the treaty with the Ameers of
Scinde it was provided that Britain should have liberty to navigate
the Indus for mercantile purposes, but that she should not bring into
it any armed vessels or munitions of war, and that no British merchant
should, on any account, settle in the country. Permission, however,
was given to a British agent to reside at Kurrachee, and in 1836, when
the country was threatened by Runjeet Singh, the British Government
took advantage of the occasion to secure a footing in the country, one
of the most fertile in the East. Kurrachee was only at the mouth of
the river, but in 1838 a great step in advance was gained by getting
a British agent to reside at Hyderabad, the capital, in order that
he might be at hand to negotiate with Runjeet Singh. But the agent
undertook to negotiate without consulting the Ameers, and awarded the
payment of a large sum claimed by the Prince whom they dreaded, for
which sum they produced a full discharge. This discharge was ignored
by the British Government in India, acting in the interests of Shah
Sujah, its royal _protégé_ in Afghanistan. This was not all. A British
army of 10,000 men, under Sir John Keane, marched, without permission,
through Scinde, in order to support the same Prince against his
competitors. Bolder encroachments were now made. The British Government
determined on establishing a military force at Yatah, contrary to the
wishes of the people, and compelled the Ameers to contribute to its
support, in consideration of the advantages which it was alleged it
would confer upon them. When the draft of a treaty to this effect was
presented to the Ameers, one of them took the former treaties out of
a box, and said, "What is to become of all these? Since the day that
Scinde has been covenanted with the English there has been always
something new. Your Government is never satisfied. We are anxious for
your friendship; but we cannot be continually persecuted. We have
given you and your troops a passage through our territories, and now
you wish to remain." But remonstrance was in vain. The treaty must be
signed; and the great Christian Power, which had its headquarters at
Calcutta, insisted that the British force might be located anywhere in
the country west of the Indus, and that the Ameers must pay for its
support three lacs of rupees.

Pottinger was the first political agent at Hyderabad. He was succeeded
by Major Outram, who could detect no hostility or treacherous purpose
in the rulers of the country, though he admitted that during the
reverses in Afghanistan they had intrigued freely with the enemy. But
this favourable account did not suit the designs of Lord Ellenborough.
He had issued a proclamation as hollow as it was high-sounding,
condemning the "political system" that had led to the Afghan war. But
he immediately began to act upon that system in Scinde, though with
the evacuation of Afghanistan the solitary reason for the occupation
had disappeared. In order to accomplish his objects more effectually,
he superseded Outram, and sent Sir Charles Napier, with full civil and
military authority, to get possession of the country any way; by fair
means if possible, but if not, he was at all events to get possession.
It was to be his first "political duty" to hear what Major Outram
and the other political agents had to allege against the Ameers of
Hyderabad and Khyrpore, tending to prove hostile designs against the
British Government, or to act hostilely against the British army. Lord
Ellenborough added, "that they may have had such hostile feelings
there can be no doubt. It would be impossible to suppose that they
could entertain friendly feelings; but we should not be justified in
inflicting punishment upon these thoughts. Should any Ameer or chief
with whom we have a treaty of friendship and alliance have evinced
hostile designs against us during the late events, which may have
induced them to doubt the continuance of our power, it is the present
intention of the Governor-General to inflict upon the treachery of
such ally or friend so signal a punishment as shall effectually deter
others from similar conduct. But the Governor-General would not proceed
in this course without the most ample and convincing evidence of the
guilt of the person accused." Certain letters were speedily produced
by Sir Charles Napier (which, no doubt, he considered authentic,
though never proved to be so, and which might very easily have been
fabricated by interested parties), showing a design among the chiefs
to unite for the defence of their country. On the pretence of danger
suggested by those documents, a new treaty was tendered to the Ameers
for signature on the 6th of December, 1842, which required that around
certain central positions the British Government should have portions
of territory assigned to it, and another portion should be given to
the Khan of Bhawlpore as a reward for his fidelity; that the Ameers
were to supply fuel for the steamers navigating the Indus, and that
failing to do so, the servants of the Company were to fell what wood
they required within a hundred yards of the river on either side, and
that the East India Company should coin money for Scinde, with the head
of the Queen of Great Britain stamped on one side. This was a virtual
assertion of sovereign rights; and if the people had any spirit at all,
any patriotism, the _casus belli_ so much desired was now forced upon
them. The Ameers were so circumstanced that they pretended to accept
the treaty; but it mattered little to Sir Charles Napier whether it was
signed or not; for long before it was ratified he issued a proclamation
in which he said, "The Governor-General of India has ordered me to take
possession of the districts of Ledzeel Kote and of Banghara, and to
reannex the said districts to the territory of his Highness the Nawab
of Bhawlpore, to whom they will immediately be made over." This was
done, and Sir Charles Napier forthwith marched into the country without
any declaration of war; having by this time succeeded in blackening the
character of the people, according to the custom of invaders, in order
to make the seizure and confiscation of their country seem to be an
act of righteous retribution. The following despatch from Sir Charles
Napier would be worthy of a Norman invader of the twelfth century:--"I
had discovered long ago that the Ameers put implicit faith in their
deserts, and feel confident that we can never reach them there.
Therefore, when negotiations and delays, and lying and intrigues of all
kinds fail, they can at last declare their entire obedience, innocence,
and humility, and retire beyond our reach to their deserts, and from
thence launch their wild bands against us, so as to cut off all our
communications and render Scinde more hot than Nature has already
done. So circumstanced, and after drawing all I could from Ali Moorad,
whom I saw last night at Khyrpore, I made up my mind that, although
war was not declared, nor is it necessary to declare it, I would at
once march upon Emaum-Ghur, and prove to the whole Talpoor family,
both of Khyrpore and Hyderabad, that neither their deserts nor their
negotiations could protect them from the British troops. While they
imagine they can fly with security they never will."

The forces on which the Ameers relied numbered about 20,000 men,
who had retired to a great stronghold, eight days' journey distant,
in the dreary desert of Beloochistan. Thither, notwithstanding the
difficulties of the march, Sir Charles Napier boldly determined to
pursue them. The wells being all dry, water for the troops and their
horses had to be carried on camels' backs. With 360 men of the Queen's
Regiment, mounted on camels, and 200 irregular cavalry, followed by
ten camels bearing provisions, and eighty loaded with water, the
adventurous general directed his perilous course into the desert,
commencing his march on the 5th of January, 1843. After three or four
days' march over burning sands, the camels became too weak to draw
the howitzers. Their place was supplied, or their failing strength
aided, by the hardy and indomitable Irishmen who formed part of the
expedition. "At length, on the evening of the 14th, the square tower
of Emaum-Ghur was discerned, rising on the distant horizon in solitary
grandeur, in that profound solitude." They found the place deserted;
Mahommed Khan, the governor, having retired with his treasure the day
before, leaving an immense quantity of ammunition behind. With this the
fortress was blown up. No fewer than twenty-four mines were run under
it in different parts. As Major Warburton, the engineer, was applying
his fusee to the last one, his assistant cried, "The other mines are
going to burst." "That may be," he replied; "but this must burst
also." He then set fire to the fusee with his own hand, and quietly
walked away. In a few minutes the stronghold of the Beloochees was
blown into fragments. They had another, of equal strength, farther on
in the desert; but to attack that with the forces now at his command
was an impossibility; and so Sir Charles Napier returned, and rejoined
his main army near Hyderabad, having sent Outram to negotiate the
details of the treaty.

On the 12th of February, 1843, Outram persuaded the Ameers, who were
in deadly fear of Napier, to sign the treaty. But the negotiator, who
continued to place implicit confidence in the pacific professions of
the Ameers--they being anxious to gain time till the hot weather should
come, and give them an advantage against their enemies--was convinced
of his mistake by a treacherous attack made on the British residency;
the Ameers boasting that "every man, woman, and child belonging to the
British army in Scinde should be collected on the field of battle,
and have their throats cut, except the general, who should be led,
chained, with a ring in his nose to the durbar." Outram's garrison
consisted only of 100 soldiers, with forty rounds of ammunition each,
with which he had to defend himself against 8,000 men with six guns.
The British fired with effect from behind a wall till their ammunition
was exhausted, when they slowly retired till they got safe on board the
British steamers, protected by their guns, which swept the flank of
the enemy. The war had now come in earnest, and so Sir Charles Napier
resolved to show the Ameers what British troops could do. The odds were
greatly against him, for he had but 8,600 men, of whom only 400 were
Europeans, with which he was to engage an army 22,000 strong, with
5,000 horse, and fifteen guns, all well posted in a strong position at
Meeanee. It required marvellous hardihood in the veteran warrior of
the Peninsula to enter upon such an unequal contest. But it was the
first time that the ambition of his life was realised--in being placed
in a position of supreme command--and he longed to show the world how
worthily he could have filled it long ago. The officers who fought
under him in that memorable battle deserve to be mentioned. Major Lloyd
commanded the Artillery, Captain Henderson the Sappers and Miners;
next to them stood the 22nd, commanded by Colonel Pennefather; Colonel
Teesdale led the 25th Sepoys; Colonel Read the 12th Native Infantry;
Major Clibborne the Bengal Engineers; Colonel Pattle the 9th Bengal
Horse; and Captain Tait the Poonah Horse. The plain between the two
armies was about 1,000 yards in breadth. The space was rapidly passed
over. Napier's men rushed forward, and crossing the bed of a river
which intervened, they ran up the slope, while the artillery of the
Beloochees fired over their heads. Reaching the summit, they beheld,
for the first time, the camp of the enemy, which was carried by the
22nd. The Native Infantry also behaved well, and while the little army
was doing terrible execution upon the enemy, the artillery swept their
ranks with shot and shell. Nevertheless, they fought bravely, and held
their ground for three hours in a hand to hand encounter with their
assailants. The chasms which were repeatedly made by the guns in the
living mass were quickly filled up by those behind rushing forward to
the conflict. The pressure of numbers bearing down the hill seemed more
than once on the point of overwhelming the British, and obliterating
their "thin red lines." Nearly all the officers were killed or wounded.
Everything now depended upon the cavalry, which were commanded by
Colonel Pattle, who was ordered to charge instantly. They went at full
gallop through the jungle: fifty were thrown off their horses, but the
rest pressed on, ascended the ridge of the hill, dashed into the thick
of the enemy's ranks, fiercely cutting their way with their swords
right and left, trampling down the men under their horses' feet, never
ceasing till they had traversed the whole camp. The confusion and
wavering thus occasioned gave courage to the infantry. The Irish and
the Sepoys, raising the cry of victory, pressed on with fury, drove the
enemy back down the hill, and compelled them to retreat, abandoning
their guns, their ammunition, and their baggage, leaving their dead
on the field, and marking their course by a long train of killed and
wounded. Their loss was estimated at 5,000--1,000 bodies being found in
the bed of the river. The British loss was almost incredibly small: six
officers and fifty-four privates killed, fourteen officers and 109 men
wounded.

Next day the victorious general sent a message to Hyderabad,
threatening to storm the city if it was not immediately surrendered.
The walls were very strong, and might have been defended successfully;
but the Ameers had lost heart, and six of them came out to the British
camp, and laid their swords at the feet of the conqueror. But though
the city was in his possession, conquest seemed only to increase his
difficulties. He had to keep possession of a large hostile city, and
to defend his own entrenched camp against 20,000 Beloochees, who were
still in the field under Shere Mahommed, and to accomplish all this
he had but 2,000 effective men under his command. Reinforcements,
however, were quickly dispatched by Lord Ellenborough. They arrived
safely and gave him an army of 5,000 veteran troops. In the meantime,
Shere Mahommed had come within five miles of the British camp, and
sent Sir Charles Napier a summons to surrender; he had an army of
20,000 men in an extremely strong position. Nothing daunted, Sir
Charles Napier attacked the enemy. His plan of action was altered,
on account of an unauthorised attack made by Colonel Stark with his
cavalry, in consequence of the giving way of the centre before an
onset of the Irish regiment. The cavalry charge, the result of a
sudden inspiration, was brilliantly successful. The cavalry swept
everything before them, and carried confusion and dismay into the rear
of the enemy's centre. The British general instantly took advantage
of this success, and, changing his plan, he led on the Irish infantry
to storm the first nullah. After a fierce resistance, the scarp was
mounted, and Lieutenant Coote fell wounded while in the act of waving
the Beloochee standard in triumph on the summit. The Sepoys were
equally successful in storming the second nullah, which was bravely
defended, but ultimately carried with great loss to the enemy, who were
routed in all directions, their retreating ranks being mowed down by
the artillery, and pursued by the cavalry for a distance of several
miles. The loss of the British in this great victory was only 270
men. Although the heat was then 110° in the shade, Sir Charles Napier
rapidly pursued the enemy, so that his cavalry arrived at Meerpoor, a
distance of forty miles, before Shere Mahommed could reach it. It was
his capital--strongly fortified, filled with stores of all kinds--and
it fell without resistance into the hands of the British general. Shere
Mahommed had retreated to the stronghold of Omerkote, in the desert.
Thither he was pursued by Captain Whitlie, at the head of the Light
Horse. The Ameer fled with some horsemen into the desert. The garrison
that remained, after a few shots, pulled down their colours, and, on
the 4th of April, the British standard waved on the towers of Omerkote.

The remnant of the Beloochee forces were hunted for some weeks by
flying columns. At length, Captain Roberts, at the head of one of them,
captured the brother of Shere Mahommed and 1,000 of his followers.
Another column was attacked by the Ameer himself; but his followers,
after the first round of fire, dispersed. The whole military force
of the Ameers was now annihilated, and the conquest of Scinde was
complete. "I think," said Sir Charles Napier, "I may venture to say
that Scinde is now subdued. The Scindian population everywhere express
their satisfaction at the change of masters." No doubt the change from
Mohammedan to British rule was an advantage to the poor Hindoos; and if
it be allowable to do evil that good may come, Lord Ellenborough was
justified in the means he had adopted for supplanting the Ameers.

[Illustration: THE CHARGE OF THE CAVALRY AT MEEANEE. (_See p._ 592.)]

The British public, thrilled by the news of his heroic achievements,
fully sympathised with the victorious general. The thanks of both
Houses of Parliament were voted to him and the army, and the Duke of
Wellington expressed in the House of Lords the highest admiration of
his generalship. Sir Charles Napier became the civil governor of the
province which his sword had won for his Sovereign; and he showed by
the excellence of his administration that his capacity as a statesman
was equal to his genius as a general. He encouraged trade; he carried
on extensive public works; he erected a pier at Kurrachee, extending
two miles into the water, and forming a secure harbour; he organised
a most efficient police; he raised a revenue sufficient to pay the
whole expenses of the administration, giving a surplus of £90,000,
which, added to the prize-money, brought half a million sterling into
the Company's treasury in one year. The cultivators of the soil were
protected in the enjoyment of the fruits of their industry; artisans,
no longer liable to be mutilated for demanding their wages, came back
from the countries to which they had fled; beautiful girls were no
longer torn from their families to fill the zenanas of Mohammedan
lords, or to be sold into slavery. The Hindoo merchant and the Parsee
trader pursued their business with confidence, and commerce added
to the wealth of the new province. The effect of these reforms was
conspicuous in the loyalty of the Scindians during the revolt of 1857.

No sooner was the conquest of Scinde completed than the
Governor-General began to discern another cloud looming in the
distance. In the Punjab, Runjeet Singh had organised a regular and
well-disciplined army of 73,000 men. He died in 1839. His heir died
the next year, it was supposed of poison. The next heir was killed
a few days afterwards by accident. The third, who succeeded, was
an effeminate prince, who left the government in the hands of his
Minister, a wicked man, who, conspiring with others, caused to be
murdered several members of the Royal Family. They were, in their turn,
punished by having their heads cut off, and the only surviving son of
Runjeet Singh, a boy only ten years of age, was proclaimed Maharajah.
This was the work of the Sikh army, now virtually masters of the
country. Lord Ellenborough and his Council suspected that this army,
still 40,000 strong, and very brave, was unfriendly to the British,
and might some day give trouble to the Indian Government--possibly
invade its territories and cut off its communications. In order to
guard against such contingencies, it was necessary, they thought,
to take possession of Gwalior, a powerful Mahratta State in Central
India. This country lay on the flank of our line of communications with
Allahabad, Benares, and Calcutta. In this country also there were,
fortunately for the British, a disputed succession, royal murders,
civil dissensions, and military disorganisation. A boy, adopted by the
queen, was proclaimed Sovereign by the chiefs, with a regency, over
which the British Government extended its protecting wing. The young
Sovereign died in 1843, leaving no child; but his widow, then thirteen
years of age, adopted a boy of eight, who became king under another
regency. The regent Nana Sahib was deposed, notwithstanding the support
of the British Government. This was an offence which Lord Ellenborough
would not allow to go unpunished; and besides, the disorganised army
of Gwalior was said to be committing depredations along the British
frontier. Here, then, in the estimation of the Governor-General, was a
clear case for military intervention, to put down disorder, and secure
a good position for future defence against the possible aggressions of
the warlike Sikhs of the Punjab. Lord Ellenborough explained his policy
to the Company, stating that the Indian Government could not descend
from its high position as the paramount authority in India.

His arguments seemed to satisfy the Home Government, and a large
force was sent from Agra to Gwalior, under Sir Hugh Gough, then
Commander-in-Chief of India, as successor of Sir Jasper Nicholls. So
much interest did Lord Ellenborough feel in this invading expedition
that it was accompanied by him in person. The Mahrattas of course
prepared to defend themselves. They were met at Maharajpore. After
a severe struggle, in which the enemy were bayoneted at their guns,
and a series of bloody conflicts had taken place in the streets, the
British were victorious, and got possession of twenty-eight guns, with
the key of the enemy's position. The battle, however, was not over
when this vantage ground was gained; for though the enemy had fallen
back, they were prepared for a desperate resistance in other less
favourable positions. A general attack was then ordered. Brigadier
Scott, at the head of the 10th Light Horse, and Captain Grant, with
his Horse Artillery, had scattered their cavalry which covered the
extreme right. General Vaillant then led on the 40th Queen's, and
successively gained three strong positions, which the enemy defended
with the utmost firmness and courage, not quitting their guns till they
were cut down by their fierce assailants. In this attack they lost six
regimental standards. The 2nd Native Infantry also acted bravely on
this occasion. The 39th Queen's also made an impetuous attack, and the
result was that the enemy were driven from all their entrenchments in
utter confusion, with the loss of nine standards and sixty-four guns.
Seven of our officers were killed on the spot or wounded mortally. Our
total loss was 106 killed, and 684 wounded. The Commander-in-Chief
wrote in his despatch:--"I regret to say that our loss has been very
severe--infinitely beyond what I calculated upon. Indeed, I did not
do justice to the gallantry of my opponents." It was a loss certainly
almost unprecedented in Indian warfare, and it is remarkable that this
misfortune repeatedly occurred while Lord Gough was Commander-in-Chief.
Lord Ellenborough, with his suite, was rash enough to be under fire
during part of the engagement. The loss of the enemy was estimated at
3,000. Major-General Gray, with only 2,000 men, on the same day won
a victory over 12,000 of the Mahrattas, in the fortified village of
Mangor, about twelve miles from Gwalior. Here, too, the loss of the
victors was very heavy, more than a tenth of the little army having
fallen.

After these victories an armistice was agreed upon, as a preliminary to
negotiations. The result was submission on the part of the Mahrattas,
and the occupation of Gwalior by British troops. The Governor-General
then imposed the terms of peace, which did not include the seizure of
any territory, but consisted solely in the usurpation of sovereignty.
The Mahrattas were compelled to disband their army and abolish their
government. The supreme authority was lodged in a Council of men
devoted to the East India Company, whose President was to receive his
instructions from the British Resident. A new army was organised as a
contingent, which was to be at the service of the Indian Government
when required. Until the majority of the reigning Prince, the
administrators of the Government were to act on the British Resident's
advice, not only generally or in important points, but in all matters
wherein such advice should be offered.

The career of Lord Ellenborough as Governor-General of India was one
of the most remarkable in its annals. He went out for the purpose of
inaugurating a policy of peace, conciliation, and non-intervention.
His course from that day was one of constant aggression and war.
The conquests of Scinde and Gwalior were planned and prepared for
deliberately and in good time; and when the Governments to be subdued
were goaded into hostilities, he was ready to pounce upon them with
overwhelming force. His friends defended this policy on the ground
that, though it was aggressive it was self-defensive; to guard against
a possible, but very remote contingency--an invasion of the Sikhs
to drive the British out of India. The Governor-General, however,
had become entirely too warlike; and since he had smelt powder and
tasted blood at Gwalior, the Board of Control, who had already
formally censured his Scinde policy, became so alarmed at his martial
propensities that they determined on his immediate recall, and sent out
Sir Henry Hardinge to rule in his stead.

Sir Henry Hardinge, the new Governor-General of India, whom Sir Robert
Peel recommended to the Board of Control, had been in the army since
he was thirteen years of age. He had followed Wellington through
all the battles of the Peninsular war, and had won all the military
glory that could be desired, so that he was not likely to follow the
example of Lord Ellenborough in opening fresh fields for the gathering
of laurels in India. The Chairman of the East India Company, giving
him instructions on his departure, cautioned him against following
the example of Lord Ellenborough in appointing military officers as
administrators in preference to the civil servants of the Crown. He
reminded him that the members of the Civil Service were educated with a
special view to the important duties of civil administration, upon the
upright and intelligent performance of which so much of the happiness
of the people depended. He expressed a hope that he would appreciate
justly the eminent qualities of the civil servants of India; and that
he would act towards the Sepoys with every degree of consideration and
indulgence, compatible with the maintenance of order and obedience. He
urged that his policy should be essentially pacific, and should tend
to the development of the internal resources of the country, while
endeavouring to improve the condition of the finances.

[Illustration: THACKWELL AT SOBRAON. (_See p._ 599.)]

Sir Henry arrived at Calcutta in September, 1844. He found that
tranquillity prevailed throughout the empire, and applied his energies
to the formation of railways. But he had soon to encounter the
exigencies of war. Notwithstanding the stringent injunctions he had
received to cultivate the most amicable spirit with the Sikhs, he was
obliged to tax the resources of the empire in maintaining with them
one of the most desperate conflicts recorded in Indian history. The
Sikhs were a warlike race, distinguished not less by fanaticism than
bravery. They were bound together and inspired by the most powerful
religious convictions--a tall, muscular, and athletic race of men,
full of patriotic ardour, elevated by an ancient faith. They were
confederated in various provinces, to the number of about 7,000,000.
They were accustomed to ride upon fleet horses, and had organised an
effective cavalry, while their infantry had been disciplined by French
and Italian officers. They could, if necessary, bring into the field
260,000 fighting men; but their regular army now consisted of 73,000
men with 200 pieces of artillery. Settled chiefly in the Punjab, a
country of extraordinary fertility, they also abounded in Mooltan,
Afghanistan, and Cashmere, celebrated from the most ancient times as
the favoured abode of manufacturing industry, social order, wealth,
and happiness. This warlike race had been governed by Runjeet Singh,
a chief of extraordinary ability, energy, and determination. He had
but one eye; he was deeply marked with the small-pox; his aspect was
repulsive, and his manner rude; yet was he looked up to by this great
people with respectful homage, and obeyed with implicit trust. While
he lived he maintained an alliance with the British Government; but
after his death the Sikhs were divided into two factions--one headed
by Gholab Singh, and professing to be favourable to the British; the
other by the Ranee, who yielded to the clamours of the unpaid soldiers
to be led against the English. Accordingly the military forces of
the Sikhs were ordered to march down to the Sutlej. But their intended
attack was prevented by the astrologers, who declared that the
auspicious day for marching had not yet arrived. Sir Henry Hardinge,
however, in common with the most experienced officers of the Indian
Government, did not think the Sikh army would cross the Sutlej with its
infantry and artillery, or that they would have recourse to offensive
operations on a large scale. Up to this period it had committed no
act of aggression. In 1843 and 1844 it had moved down the river from
Lahore, and after remaining there encamped a few weeks, had returned
to the capital. These reasons, and, above all, his extreme anxiety
to avoid hostilities, induced him not to make any hasty movement
with his army, which, when the two armies came into each other's
presence, might bring about a collision. This moderation, however, was
misconstrued by the Sikhs. They supposed that the British were afraid
to encounter them. Accordingly, on the night of the 9th of December,
1845, a portion of the Sikh army appeared within three miles of the
Sutlej; and information was received by our garrison at Ferozepore
that preparations were making on a large scale for the movement of
infantry, artillery, and stores from the Sikh capital, Lahore. On the
12th of December the Sikh army crossed the Sutlej, and concentrated in
great force on the British side of the river. The British reserves,
meanwhile, were advancing to meet this formidable enemy; but they
were still far off, and Ferozepore had but a garrison of 9,500 men to
withstand an army of 60,000 with 100 guns! Sir Charles Napier wrote in
his "Memoirs" that he did not think history would let off Sir Henry
Hardinge for allowing such an army to cross the river unmolested, and
entrench itself on the other side. It is quite certain that Sir Charles
would not have given them such an advantage. But their generals did
not know how to use it. Sir Henry Hardinge had hastened in person to
assist General Gough in conducting the operations against the enemy,
and both putting themselves at the head of the advanced guard, they
were followed by the reserves, marching at the rate of twenty-six miles
a day, full of excitement at the prospect of more fighting.

At length the Sikhs moved on to meet the British on the 18th of
December. When they came in sight, the British bugles sounded, and the
wearied soldiers, who had been lying on the ground, started up and
stood to their arms. The Governor-General and the Commander-in-Chief
rode from regiment to regiment, cheering the spirits of their men,
and rousing them to the needful pitch of valour by encouraging
exhortations. About two miles from Moodkee, Gough, at the head of the
advanced guard, found the enemy encamped behind sandy hillocks and
jungle, 20,000 strong, with forty guns, which immediately opened fire
as he approached. The battlefield was a sandy plain, on which the view
was obstructed by small hills, which prevented the belligerents from
seeing one another till they were quite near. For some time the contest
was maintained on both sides by the artillery. Then General Gough
ordered the advance of a column of cavalry--the 3rd Light Dragoons,
the 5th Light Cavalry, and the 4th Lancers. The column was launched
like an immense thunderbolt against a mass of Sikh cavalry, and proved
so irresistible in its terrific onset that it broke them up into
fragments, scattered them about, and swept along the whole line of the
enemy, cutting down the gunners, and suspending for a time the roar of
their artillery. Soon afterwards the infantry came into action, led on
by Sir Harry Smith, General Gilbert, and Sir John M'Caskill. The Sikhs
fought bravely and obstinately at every point; but when the steady
incessant fire of the artillery had done its work, a general charge was
made, with loud, exultant cheers, and the enemy were driven from their
ground with tremendous loss. The day had closed upon the battlefield,
but the routed enemy were pursued for a mile and a half by the light of
the stars.

The British losses in the battle of Moodkee were very heavy--215
killed; among whom were Sir Robert Sale, Sir John M'Caskill, and a
number of young officers who had greatly distinguished themselves. The
wounded amounted to 657. Meanwhile, the enemy, having left seventeen
guns upon the field, retired in tolerably good order, within their
entrenched camp, which they had formed at Ferozeshah, on the banks
of the Sutlej, near Ferozepore. For two days both armies remained
inactive, but ready to renew the conflict. The losses of the British
had been made up by the arrival of the 29th Queen's and the 1st Bengal
Light Infantry. A memorable event in the history of British warfare in
India, was that Sir Henry Hardinge, the veteran commander, the hero of
so many battles, the Governor-General of India, offered his services
to Sir Hugh Gough as second in command. The offer was accepted, and
the army marched forth to attack the enemy's camp. They started at
daybreak on the 21st, and about midday a junction was effected with
General Littler's division, which had marched out from Ferozepore,
according to orders sent the night before. The British army was now
raised to 19,000 effective men. The enemy were double that number,
strongly entrenched, well provisioned, and fresh after two days' rest;
while our troops were ill provided with food, and had marched ten miles
that morning. To attack the Sikhs without waiting for some expected
reinforcements was hazardous; to postpone the attack for another day
seemed still more so--as there was a second Sikh army of equal force,
which would then have reached the scene of action. An immediate attack
was therefore determined upon--Gough leading the right wing, and
Hardinge the left. The Sikh artillery was heavier than the British.
The guns were protected behind embrasures, the gunners were sure in
their aim; and so terrible was the effect that the 62nd Regiment, which
led on the attack, was nearly cut away, and several Sepoy regiments
broke and fled. The whole of the left wing, though led on gallantly
by the Governor-General, were driven back, after carrying part of the
works. The right wing, under General Gough, succeeded better, and held
possession of several of the ramparts. But the Sikhs were still in
possession of the fortified village of Ferozeshah, and remained so till
night closed upon the scene; when the smoke and dust subsided, and the
silence was broken only by an occasional shot from the guns, responded
to in the darkness--the gunners seeing no enemy, but aiming at the
flash of light.

The weary night at length passed. The dull sun of a December day
(the 22nd) rose upon the ghastly scenes of that gory battlefield.
The soldiers, many of whom were without food from the morning of the
previous day, were again marshalled in order of battle. The artillery
commenced the work, but with little effect. "But why waste time and
ammunition thus?" said Gough. "We must try the bayonet once more."
Then was made a tremendous charge for life. At first, part of the line
reeled under the storm from the enemy's guns; but still the whole army
pressed on with desperate shouts, the two wings closing in upon the
village, driving everything before them, and still pressing onward
till they captured the whole of the enemy's guns on the works. The
two generals, waving the captured banners, rode in triumph before the
victorious army, and were hailed with enthusiastic applause. The whole
of the enemy's military stores and camp furniture, with seventy-three
guns and seventeen standards, remained in possession of the British.
One Sikh army was now defeated; but there was another to come on,
30,000 strong, most of whom were perfectly fresh. The spirit of the
Commander-in-Chief seemed now to fail him, and he so despaired of the
issue that he confessed in a letter to his friend, that for a moment he
felt regret as each passing shot left him still on horseback. Most of
our cavalry were hardly able to move from the exhaustion of the horses;
our ammunition was nearly spent, while the fire from the enemy's
guns was rapid. At this critical moment, owing to a misconception of
orders, our cavalry and artillery moved off from the flanks, which they
protected, taking the road towards Ferozepore. It was a blunder that
seemed ordered by Providence to save our army from annihilation; for
the Sikhs--not knowing our weakness, and conceiving that the design
was to take possession of the fords, and prevent their crossing the
river--immediately began to retreat. Our infantry pursued; and such
was the consternation and confusion of the enemy, that they never
stopped running till they got to the other side of the Sutlej. In
these terrible battles the British lost, in killed and wounded, 2,415
men, being a sixth of the whole number engaged. Among the killed were
Major Broadfoot, political agent in the North-West Provinces, Colonel
Wallace, and Major Somerset.

It was apprehended that the enemy would return next day in greater
force to renew the contest; but as they did not, the Commander-in-Chief
seized the opportunity to summon the troops to join him in public
thanksgiving to God for the victory. The year 1846 dawned upon the
still undecided contest. The British gained most by the delay. The
Governor-General had ordered up fresh troops from Meerut, Cawnpore,
Delhi, and Agra. By the end of January Sir Hugh Gough had under his
command 30,000 men of all arms. On every road leading to the scene of
action, from Britain's Indian possessions, convoys were seen bearing
provisions and stores of all sorts to the army; while reinforcements
were pressing onward rapidly that they might share the glory by
confronting the greatest danger. That danger was still grave. The
Sikhs also were bringing up reinforcements, and strengthening their
entrenched camp at the British side of the Sutlej, having constructed
a bridge of boats for the conveyance of their troops and stores
across the river. The enemy had established a considerable magazine
at a fortified village some miles from the camp, and Sir Harry Smith
proceeded at the head of a detachment to attack it. But Sirdar Runjeet
Singh intercepted him, cut off and captured all his baggage; but being
reinforced, he met the enemy again at a place on the Sutlej, called
Aliwal. The Sikh army, which seemed in the best possible order and
discipline, were drawn up in imposing array, 20,000 strong with 70
guns, while the British were 9,000 with 32. After a series of splendid
charges the enemy were driven successively from every position, and
fled in confusion across the river. Several of the British horsemen
followed the guns into the river, and spiked them there. The loss of
the Sikhs is said to have been 3,000, while that of the British was
only 673 killed and wounded. The moral effect of this victory over such
unequal forces was of the utmost advantage to the rest of the army
(January 28th, 1846).

On the 8th of February was fought the great and decisive battle of
Sobraon, the name of the _tête du pont_, at the entrenched camp of the
Sikhs, where all the forces of the enemy were now concentrated. The
camps extended along both sides of the river, and were defended by 130
pieces of artillery, of which nearly half were of heavy calibre, and
which were all served by excellent gunners. The British troops formed
a vast semicircle, each end of which touched the river, the village of
Sobraon being in the centre, where the enemy were defended by a triple
line of works, one within another, flanked by the most formidable
redoubts. The battle commenced by the discharge of artillery on both
sides, which played with terrific force for three hours. After this
the British guns went up at a gallop till they came within 300 yards
of the works, where it was intended the assault should be delivered.
Halting there, they poured a concentrated fire upon the position for
some time. After this the assault was made by the infantry, running.
The regiment which led the way was the 10th, supported by the 53rd
Queen's and the 43rd and 59th Native Infantry. They were repulsed with
dreadful slaughter. The post of honour and of danger was now taken
by the Ghoorkas. A desperate struggle with the bayonet ensued; the
Sikhs were overpowered by the brigades of Stacey and Wilkinson; but,
as the fire of the enemy was now concentrated upon this point, the
brave assailants were in danger of being overwhelmed and destroyed.
The British Commander-in-Chief seeing this, sent forward the brigades
of Ashburnham, as well as Smith's division, against the right of the
enemy, while his artillery played furiously upon their whole line. The
Sikhs fought with no less valour and determination than the British.
Not one of their gunners flinched till he was struck down at his post.
Into every gap opened by the artillery they rushed with desperate
resolution, repelling the assaulting columns of the British. At length
the cavalry, which has so often decided the fate of the day in great
battles, were instrumental in achieving the victory. The Sappers and
Miners having succeeded in opening a passage through which the horses
could enter in single file, the 3rd Queen's Dragoons, under Sir Joseph
Thackwell, got inside the works, quickly formed, and galloping along
in the rear of the batteries, cut down the gunners as they passed.
General Gough promptly followed up this advantage by ordering forward
the whole three divisions of the centre and the right. It was then that
the fighting may be said to have commenced in earnest. The struggle
was long, bloody, and relentless. No quarter was given or asked; the
Sikhs fighting like men for whom death had no terrors, and for whom
death in battle was the happiest as well as the most glorious exit
from life. But they encountered men with hearts as stout and stronger
muscle, and they were at length gradually forced back upon the river by
the irresistible British bayonet. The bridge at length gave way under
the enormous weight, and thousands were precipitated into the water
and drowned. But even in the midst of this catastrophe the drowning
fanatics would accept no mercy from the Feringhees. Our losses amounted
to 320 killed and 2,063 wounded. Of the European officers, thirteen
were killed and 101 wounded. The loss of the Sikhs in the battle of
Sobraon was estimated at from 10,000 to 13,000 men, the greater number
being shot down or drowned in the attempt to cross the bridge. They
left in the hands of the victors sixty-seven guns, 200 camel swivels,
nineteen standards, and a great quantity of ammunition.

The whole army now crossed the river at leisure, and marched towards
Lahore. Lord Hardinge issued a proclamation, in which he stated that
the war was the result of the wanton and unprovoked incursion of the
Sikhs; that the British Government wanted no acquisition of territory,
but only security for the future, indemnity for the expenses of the
war, and the establishment of a government at Lahore, which should
afford a guarantee against such aggressions in the time to come. The
Ranee and her durbar, or council, now saw the necessity of prompt
submission, which was tendered by plenipotentiaries sent to the British
camp, who threw the whole blame of the war on the uncontrollable
troops. They were well received by the Governor-General, and a
treaty was without difficulty concluded on the 15th of February at a
place called Kussoor. By the terms of the treaty, all the territory
lying between the river Beas and the Sutlej was ceded to the British
Government. The sum of one million sterling was to be paid for the
expenses of the war; but the sum was found too heavy, and instead
Gholab Singh was rewarded for his fidelity to the British by the grant
of a large tract of territory between the Beas and the Indus. Peace
having been thus concluded, the young Maharajah, Dhuleep Singh, was
received by the Governor-General at his camp with Oriental pomp; and on
the 22nd of February Sir Henry Hardinge entered Lahore at the head of
his victorious army, taking possession of the gates, the citadel, and
the Royal palace.

These great victories, so hardly won with such heavy sacrifices of
human life, and accompanied by such heroic achievements, excited
the admiration of the British public. The principal actors were
munificently rewarded. The Governor-General was created Viscount
Hardinge of Lahore, the title being accompanied by a shower of honours
from his Sovereign, and a large pension from the East India Company.
Sir Hugh Gough was also raised to the peerage, and received from
the Company an annual pension of £2,000, with the same amount from
Parliament, for three lives. Many of the officers engaged in the Sikh
war received promotion and military orders, and a gratuity of twelve
months' pay was given to all the soldiers without exception engaged in
the campaign.

But the conquered Sikhs did not very easily acquiesce in the terms
proposed by the conquerors, in spite of the wise administration of the
great brothers John and Henry Lawrence, who organised a thoroughly
efficient government in the new territories. Gholab Singh was chased
from the territory the British had given him, and it became necessary
that British arms should reinstate him, and that a British force
should permanently garrison Lahore, at a cost to the Sikh Government
of £220,000 a year. The intriguing and restless Ranee was sent off
from the capital to Sharpoora, where she was kept under surveillance.
Sir Charles Napier was obliged to resign his government in Scinde from
ill-health, and he returned home in 1847. The Governor-General, after
making a progress through various parts of the empire, in order to
inaugurate and encourage works of social improvement, was also obliged
to retire from his post, in consequence of the failure of his health
owing to the fatigues and hardships he had endured in the campaign,
and Henry Lawrence accompanied him. On his return home Hardinge was
made Master-General of the Ordnance and Commander-in-Chief, being
succeeded in India by Lord Dalhousie, who arrived there on the 10th of
January, 1848. He, too, found disturbances to be quelled and treachery
to be punished among our allies and tributaries. Troubles occurred at
Lahore, where the hostility of the inhabitants to the British broke
out with terrible effect. Mr. Vans Agnew, the British Resident, and
Lieutenant Anderson were treacherously murdered at Mooltan, apparently
by the orders of Moolraj, who had been ordered to pay a large sum as
succession duty to the Sikh Government. Their death was avenged by
Lieutenant Edwardes and General Courtland, who, at the head of a small
force, attacked and defeated the revolted Sikhs, 3,000 strong. At
length 26,000 troops under General Whish invested the place. But his
troops went over to the enemy, and he was compelled to raise the siege
and retire. At the same time an insurrection broke out in the Punjab,
headed by the governor of the North-West Provinces; in fact, there was
a general revolt of the Sikhs against British rule.

On the 20th of October, 1848, Chuttur Singh and his son, Shere Singh,
raised the standard of revolt in the Punjab, and soon appeared at
the head of 30,000 men. In November Lord Gough encountered them with
20,000. At Ramnuggur, in attacking the position of the enemy, his men
were led into an ambuscade, and were repulsed with tremendous loss.
The contest was again renewed on the 13th of January, 1849, when the
Sikhs were also very strongly posted in a jungle with 40,000 men
and sixty-two guns. Near the village of Chillianwallah a desperate
battle was fought, and had lasted for some time when the 14th Light
Dragoons, on being ordered to charge, turned and fled through our Horse
Artillery, upsetting several guns, and causing such confusion that the
Sikh cavalry, promptly availing themselves of the advantage, made a
charge, and cut down seventy of our gunners, capturing six guns and
five colours. The result was a drawn battle, but the loss on our side
was fearful--twenty-seven officers and 731 men killed, and sixty-six
officers and 1,446 men wounded. This terrible reverse produced a
profound sensation at home. It was ascribed to bad generalship, and
there were loud cries for the recall of Lord Gough. The Duke of
Wellington felt that the case was so desperate that he called upon Sir
Charles Napier to go out and take the command, though suffering under
a mortal disease, using the memorable expression, "If you don't go, I
must." Sir Charles went immediately. But before he arrived, Lord Gough,
on the 21st of February, had retrieved his reputation, and covered
the British arms with fresh glory by winning, in magnificent style,
the great battle of Goojerat, with the loss of only ninety-two killed
and 682 wounded. Mooltan had been besieged again in December. During
the bombardment the principal magazine was blown up. It contained
16,000 lbs. of powder: 800 persons were killed or wounded by the
explosion, and many buildings destroyed. But Moolraj, though he saw
ruined in a moment a work which it cost him five years to construct,
still held out. On the 2nd of January the city was stormed, but the
citadel remained. Though of immense strength, it yielded to artillery,
and Moolraj, with his garrison of nearly 4,000 men, surrendered at
discretion.

[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF THE MAHARAJAH DHULEEP SINGH AT THE BRITISH
CAMP. (_See p._ 600.)]

No small curiosity was experienced to see the man that had maintained
a defence, obstinate and protracted beyond any related in the annals
of modern war. Gorgeously attired in silks and splendid arms, he rode
a magnificent Arab steed, with a rich saddle-cloth of scarlet. He but
little exceeded the middle size, was powerfully but elegantly formed;
his keen, dark, piercing, restless eyes surveyed at a glance everything
around. He neither wore the face of defiance nor dejection; but moved
along under the general gaze as one conscious of having bravely done
his duty.

The result of these victories was that the Punjab was annexed to
our Indian Empire, the reasons for this step being explained by the
Governor-General in a proclamation, which announced favourable terms
for the conquered people. Henry Lawrence, as is well known, was against
the annexation, but his arguments were overridden by the strenuous
Governor-General, and he became chief of the Commission, with his
brother John as a member, for the administration of the Punjab. Moolraj
was subsequently tried for the murder of Mr. Agnew and Mr. Anderson,
and being found guilty, he was sentenced to death. The sentence was
afterwards commuted to imprisonment for life.




CHAPTER XXII.

REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).

    Events in England--The Budgets of 1848--Repeal of the Navigation
    Act--The Jewish Disabilities Bill--Election of Baron Rothschild by
    the City of London--He is refused the Oath--Election of Alderman
    Salomons--He takes his Seat in Spite of the Speaker--Action in
    the Court of the Exchequer--The Bill finally passed--Colonial
    Self-Government--Lord Palmerston's Foreign Policy censured by
    the House of Lords--The Don Pacifico Debate--Testimonial to Lord
    Palmerston--Peel's last Speech--His Death--Testimony as to his
    Worth--Honours to his Memory.


While stirring events were in progress on the Continent, public
attention was naturally distracted from home politics; nor were these
in themselves of a nature to command enthusiasm. The Russell Government
was weak, but the Opposition was weaker. Sir Robert Peel with his
little band gave, on the whole, his support to the Ministry, and Mr.
Disraeli, on the retirement of Lord George Bentinck, had only just
begun to rally the Conservatives, who had been utterly dispirited and
crushed by the carrying of Free Trade. Finance was always a weak point
with the Whigs, and that of 1848 was no exception to the rule. Urged by
the Duke of Wellington's letter to Sir John Burgoyne on the state of
the defences, the Chancellor of the Exchequer determined on increasing
the naval and military establishments. The result was a deficit of
three millions, and no less than three withdrawals and alterations of
the Budget had to be made before his proposals could be so shaped as
to be acceptable to the House. The next Session was mainly devoted to
Irish affairs, the Rate in Aid producing a collision between the two
Houses, which was decided in favour of the Lords. In the same year,
however, the most important measure of the Russell Ministry became
law; the repeal, namely, of the Navigation Act, by which the carrying
monopoly was abolished after the retaliation of foreign nations had
reduced the principle of reciprocity, upon which Mr. Huskisson's Act
had been framed, to a dead letter. Supported by the Canadian demand
for liberation from the restrictions of the Navigation Act, Ministers
courageously faced the clamour raised by the Protectionists, and
carried their Bill through the Commons by large majorities. In the
Upper House, however, they snatched a bare majority of ten through the
circumstance that they had more proxies than their opponents.

An effort was made to decide the long-agitated question of the
emancipation of the Jews in the Session of 1849. On the 19th of
February Lord John Russell moved that the House of Commons should go
into committee for the purpose of considering the oaths taken by
members of Parliament, excepting the Roman Catholic oath, settled in
1829. The oath of allegiance, he said, became a mockery when Cardinal
York died, there being no descendants of James II. in existence; he
therefore proposed to abolish it. The oath of abjuration, which was
aimed against Papal aggression, had now no practical effect but to
exclude the Jews from Parliament, which it did by the words "on the
true faith of a Christian," which were never meant to exclude Jews, but
only to give greater solemnity to the oath. He proposed, therefore,
to omit these words when the oath was tendered to a Jew, and this he
thought would complete the measure of religious liberty. The House
resolved by a large majority--214 to 111--to go into committee on the
subject. He then moved a resolution that it was expedient to alter
the Parliamentary oaths so as "to make provision in respect of the
said oaths for the relief of her Majesty's subjects professing the
Jewish religion." A Bill founded on this resolution was brought in
by Lord John Russell. The second reading was carried by a majority
of 278 to 185. The third reading, after an important debate, was
carried by a majority of 66. In the House of Lords the second
reading was moved on the 26th of July, by the Earl of Carlisle, in
an able speech, in which he observed that the Jews, though admitted
to municipal privileges, were the only religious community debarred
from political rights; but there was not, as far as he could see, a
single valid objection upon which they could be refused. The Earl of
Eglinton objected to their admission on religious grounds; so also
did the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Exeter. The former
argued that our national Christianity, to which we owed our greatness,
would be grievously disparaged by the measure. The latter condemned
it as a violation of the distinct contract between the Sovereign
and the nation--that the Crown should maintain "to the utmost the
laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel." The Archbishop
of Dublin (Whately), always the powerful champion of religious
freedom, contended on the other hand that it was inconsistent with
the principles and repugnant to the genius of Christianity that civil
disqualifications and penalties should be imposed on those who did not
conform to it. Their lordships must either retrace their steps, and
exclude from office all who did not belong to the Established Church,
or they must, in consistency, consent to the abrogation of this last
restriction. The Bill was rejected by a majority of 25--the numbers
being, for the second reading, 70; against it, 95.

Before another attempt was made to open the portals of the Legislature
the question was brought to a practical issue by an event similar to
the Clare election, by which O'Connell forced on the decision with
regard to Catholic Emancipation. The City of London had returned
Baron Rothschild as one of its members; and at the morning sitting
on the 26th of July, 1850, he presented himself at the table to take
the oaths. When the clerk presented the New Testament, he said, "I
desire to be sworn on the Old Testament." Sir Robert Inglis, in a
voice tremulous with emotion, exclaimed--"I protest against that." The
Speaker then ordered Baron Rothschild to withdraw. An animated debate
followed as to whether the Baron could be sworn in that way, although
he declared that that was the form of oath most binding upon his
conscience. He presented himself a second time, when there was another
long debate. Ultimately, on the 6th of August, to which the matter was
adjourned, the Attorney-General moved two resolutions--first, that
Baron Rothschild was not entitled to vote in the House till he took the
oath in the form prescribed by law; and, second, that the House would
take the earliest opportunity in the next Session to consider the oath
of abjuration, with a view to the relief of the Jews. These resolutions
were carried--the first, by a majority of 92 to 66; the second, by 142
to 106.

In pursuance of this resolution, Lord John Russell, soon after the
meeting of Parliament in 1851, introduced his Jewish Emancipation Bill
once more. The usual arguments were reiterated on both sides, and
the second reading was carried by the reduced majority of 25. In the
House of Lords the second reading was moved by the Lord Chancellor, on
the 17th of July, when it was thrown out by a majority of 36. In the
meantime Alderman Salomons had been returned as member for Greenwich,
and, following the example of Baron Rothschild, he appeared at the
bar, and offered to take the oath on the Old Testament, omitting the
phrase, "on the true faith of a Christian." The Speaker then desired
him to withdraw; but he took a seat, notwithstanding. The order of the
Speaker was repeated in a more peremptory tone, and the honourable
member retired to a bench behind the bar. The question of his right to
sit was then debated. Sir Benjamin Hall asked the Ministers whether
they were disposed to prosecute Mr. Salomons, if he persisted in taking
his seat, in order to test his legal right. Lord John Russell having
answered in the negative, Mr. Salomons entered the House, amidst
loud cries of "Order!" "Chair!" the Speaker's imperative command,
"Withdraw!" ringing above all. The Speaker then appealed to the House
to enforce his order. Lord John Russell then moved a resolution that
Mr. Salomons should withdraw. Mr. Bernal Osborne moved an amendment.
The House became a scene of confusion; and in the midst of a storm
of angry cries and counter-cries, Mr. Anstey moved the adjournment
of the debate. The House divided and Mr. Salomons voted with the
minority. The House again divided on Mr. Bernal Osborne's amendment,
that the honourable gentleman was entitled to take his seat, which
was negatived by 229 against 81. In defiance of this decision, Mr.
Salomons again entered and took his seat. He then addressed the House,
stating that it was far from his desire to do anything that might
appear contumacious or presumptuous. Returned by a large constituency,
he appeared in defence of their rights and privileges as well as his
own; but whatever might be the decision of the House, he would not
abide by it, unless there was just sufficient force used to make him
feel that he was acting under coercion. Lord John Russell called upon
the House to support the authority of the Speaker and its own dignity.
Two divisions followed--one on a motion for adjourning the debate, and
another on the right of Mr. Salomons to sit, in both of which he voted.
The latter was carried by a large majority; when the Speaker renewed
his order to withdraw, and the honourable gentleman not complying,
the Serjeant-at-Arms touched him lightly on the shoulder, and led him
below the bar. Another long debate ensued on the legal question; and
the House divided on two motions, which had no result. The discussion
of the question was adjourned to the 28th of July, when petitions
from London and Greenwich, demanding the admission of their excluded
representatives, came under consideration. The Speaker announced
that he had received a letter from Alderman Salomons, stating that
several notices of actions for penalties had been served upon him in
consequence of his having sat and voted in the House. A motion that
the petitioners should be heard at the bar of the House was rejected;
and Lord John Russell's resolution, denying the right of Mr. Salomons
to sit without taking the oath in the usual form, was carried by a
majority of 55. And so the vexed question was placed in abeyance for
another year so far as Parliament was concerned. But an action was
brought in the Court of Exchequer, against Alderman Salomons, to
recover the penalty of £500, for sitting and voting without taking
the oath. The question was elaborately argued by the ablest counsel.
Judgment was given for the plaintiff. There was an appeal from this
judgment, by a writ of error, when the Lord Chief Justice Campbell,
with Justices Coleridge, Cresswell, Wightman, Williams, and Crompton,
heard the case again argued at great length. The Court unanimously
decided that the words, "on the true faith of a Christian," formed an
essential part of the oath; and that, according to the existing law,
the Jews were excluded from sitting in either House of Parliament. This
judgment was given in the sittings after Hilary Term, in 1852.

[Illustration: BENJAMIN DISRAELI.

(_After the Portrait by A. E. Challon, R.A._)]

The history of this question of Jewish Emancipation gives proof,
as striking as any upon record, of the obstinacy and tenacity of
prejudice established by law, although no possible danger could arise
to the British Constitution from the admission of the Jews; although
Mr. Salomons had been elected Sheriff of London in 1835, and a Bill
was passed to enable him to act; although the year after, Mr. Moses
Montefiore was likewise elected Sheriff of London, and knighted by the
Queen; although in 1846 Jews elected to municipal offices were relieved
by Parliament from taking the oaths; although Baron Rothschild and
Alderman Salomons had been repeatedly elected by immense majorities;
although Bills for emancipating the Jews, the only class of her
Majesty's subjects still labouring under political disabilities on
account of their religion, were passed year after year by the House
of Commons, but were indignantly rejected by the House of Lords. At
length, in 1858, the Commons were obliged to admit the Jews by a
resolution of their own House, but it was not till 1860 that an Act was
passed permitting Jewish members of Parliament to omit from the oath
the words "on the true faith of a Christian."

[Illustration: ARREST OF BRITISH SAILORS BY GREEK SOLDIERS. (_See p._
606.)]

The Session of 1850 was creditably distinguished by the establishment
of a policy of self-government for our colonies. They had become so
numerous and so large as to be utterly unmanageable by the centralised
system of the Colonial Office; while the liberal spirit that pervaded
the Home Government, leading to the abolition of great monopolies,
naturally reacted upon our fellow-subjects settled abroad, and made
them discontented without constitutional rights. It was now felt
that the time was come for a comprehensive measure of constitutional
government for our American and Australian Colonies; and on the 8th
of February, Lord John Russell, then Prime Minister, brought the
subject before the House of Commons. It was very fully discussed,
Sir William Molesworth, Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Labouchere, and others who
had taken an active part in colonial affairs, being the principal
speakers. With regard to Canada, great progress had already been
made in constitutional government. The same might be said of Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick, in which the practice of administration
approximated to that observed in Great Britain. It was determined
to introduce representative institutions of a similar kind in Cape
Colony. In Australia it was proposed that there should be but one
Council, two-thirds elected by the people and one-third nominated by
the Governor. Mr. Roebuck objected strongly to the Government measure,
because it left the colonists free, to a great extent, to gratify the
strong desire almost universally felt among them to have power to
choose a Constitution for themselves, instead of having a Constitution
sent out to them, cut and dry. He wanted the House to plant at once
liberal institutions there, which would spare the colonists the agony
of working out a scheme of government for themselves. He declared
that "of all the abortions of an incompetent Administration, this was
the greatest." A ready-made Constitution had been sent out by the
Government to South Africa; why, then, could not Parliament send out a
ready-made Constitution to Australia? Lord John Russell replied to Mr.
Roebuck's arguments, and after a lengthened debate the Bill was read
a second time. There was a strong division of opinion in committee as
to whether there should be two Chambers or one. Sir William Molesworth
moved an amendment to the effect that there should be two, which was
rejected by a majority of 218 against 150. The Bill passed the House
of Commons on the 18th of May, and on the 31st was brought into the
Lords, where also it was subjected to lengthened discussions and
various amendments, which caused it to be sent back to the Commons for
consideration on the 1st of August. On the motion of Lord John Russell
the amendments were agreed to, and the Bill was passed. This was the
principal legislative work of the Session and possessed undoubted
merits.

The most interesting of all the debates that occurred in the House of
Commons during the Session of 1850 was that which took place on the
foreign policy of Great Britain, particularly with reference to Greece.
The House of Lords had passed a vote of censure upon the Government,
by a majority of thirty-seven, on a motion brought forward by Lord
Stanley, and folk were anxious to see how the House of Commons would
deal with that fact. On the 20th of June Lord John Russell read the
resolution, and said, "We are not going in any respect to alter the
course of conduct we have thought it right to pursue in respect of
foreign Powers, in consequence of that resolution." He concluded his
speech with the following bold defiance, which elicited general and
protracted cheering:--"So long as we continue the Government of this
country, I can answer for my noble friend [Lord Palmerston] that he
will act not as a Minister of Austria, or of Russia, or of France, or
of any other country, but as the Minister of England. The honour of
England and the interests of England--such are the matters that are
within our keeping; and it is to that honour and to those interests
that our conduct will in future be, as it has hitherto been, directed."

Mr. Roebuck, the next day, moved a counter-resolution in the following
terms:--"That the principles which have hitherto regulated the foreign
policy of her Majesty's Government are such as were required to
preserve untarnished the honour and dignity of this country, and, in
times of unexampled difficulty, the best calculated to maintain peace
between England and the various nations of the world." He supported
this position in an able and lengthened speech. The chief ground of
dispute was the demand of Palmerston for compensation to a person named
Don Pacifico, a Jew, and by birth a British subject, who resided at
Athens, and whose house had been attacked on a Sunday, his property
destroyed, and his family beaten by a mob headed by young noblemen.
The Greek Government refused him reparation, and he sought protection
from England. There was also the case of Mr. Finlay, whose land was
seized in order that it might be converted into a garden for the King
of Greece, the owner being refused payment; Lord Aberdeen, when Foreign
Secretary, having applied in vain for redress. There was also the case
of H.M.S. _Fantôme_, whose boat's crew had been arrested by Greek
soldiers; also other outrages equally serious. Lord Palmerston defended
his policy with his wonted spirit and ability, and with triumphant
success in a speech which, said Mr. Gladstone, lasted "from the dusk of
one day to the dawn of another." Mr. Gladstone arraigned the conduct
of the first Minister in sitting down contentedly under the censure
of the House of Lords, by sheltering himself under precedents which
were in fact no precedents at all. He charged Lord Palmerston with
violating international law, by making reprisals upon Greek property
to the extent of £80,000 to satisfy the exorbitant demands of Don
Pacifico; the fruit of this policy being humiliation, in regard to
France, and a lesson received without reply from the autocrat of all
the Russia's. Mr. Cobden also assailed the policy of Lord Palmerston,
and asked if there was no other way of settling such trifling matters
than by sending fifteen ships of war into Greek waters, which had
seized several gunboats, and more than forty merchantmen. Lord John
Russell defended the policy of the Government, and concluded by
declaring that by the verdict of that House and the people of England
he was prepared to abide, fully convinced that the Government had
preserved at the same time the honour of the country and the blessings
of peace. Mr. Disraeli, on the other hand, maintained that the House
of Lords had exercised a solemn duty in pronouncing a censure upon
the policy which had led to such terrible results. This debate will
be rendered for ever memorable in our annals by the speech of Sir
Robert Peel. It was one of the best speeches he ever delivered in that
House, and it was his last. He argued strongly against intermeddling
with the affairs of foreign nations in order to procure for them free
institutions, and concluded with the expression of his belief that the
cause of constitutional liberty would only be encumbered by our help;
whilst by intruding it we should involve Great Britain in incalculable
difficulties. When the hour for the division came the House was very
full--Ayes--310; Noes, 264; giving the Government a majority of 46.

On the day after this division a deputation of nearly ninety members
of the House of Commons, headed by Lord James Stuart, waited upon
Lady Palmerston, and presented her with a full-length portrait of her
husband, representing him in evening dress and wearing the ribbon of
the Order of the Bath. They requested her Ladyship to accept of that
testimony of their high sense of Viscount Palmerston's public and
private character, and of the independent policy by which he maintained
the honour and interests of the country. What made this presentation
singularly opportune was the fact that on the same day a telegraphic
despatch had been received from Paris, announcing the settlement of the
Greek question. The Government was undoubtedly strengthened by Lord
Palmerston's display, at a moment when its fall seemed inevitable.

Only a week after Sir Robert Peel delivered his memorable speech on
the foreign policy of the country, his career was suddenly terminated.
On the 22nd of June her Majesty's third son, Arthur William Patrick
Albert, had been baptised with the usual ceremonial pomp at Buckingham
Palace, and on the 29th Sir Robert Peel had called there and entered
his name in her Majesty's visiting-book. Proceeding thence up
Constitution Hill, he had arrived nearly opposite the wicket gate
leading into the Green Park, when he met Miss Ellis, one of Lady
Dover's daughters, on horseback, attended by a groom. Sir Robert had
scarcely exchanged salutes with this young lady when his horse became
restive, swerved towards the railing of the Green Park, and threw him
sideways on his left shoulder. He became unconscious, and remained so
till he was placed in a carriage, when he revived and said, "I feel
better." On being lifted out of the carriage at Whitehall Gardens,
he walked with assistance into the house. The effect of meeting his
family, however, caused a reaction. He swooned in the arms of Dr.
Foucart, and was placed upon a sofa in the nearest apartment, the
dining-room, from which he was never removed till his death. Sir
Benjamin Brodie, Mr. Cæsar Hawkins, Dr. Seymour, and Mr. Hodgson held
a consultation, and attempted to reduce the visible injury, but this
caused such agony that, at the patient's earnest request, the attempt
was abandoned. He passed a restless night on Saturday, and continued
in a very precarious state on Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday morning he
fell into a sound sleep, after which he felt easier, his mind being
quite composed. But at two o'clock on that day symptoms appeared which
caused the physicians to abandon all hope. The last rites of the
Church were administered by the Bishop of Gibraltar, Dr. Tomlinson,
a very old friend. Lady Peel and the members of the family joined in
this melancholy communion, Sir Robert being scarcely able to recognise
them. Lord Hardinge and Sir James Graham also joined the group of
mourners; but the painfully excited feelings of Lady Peel rendered it
absolutely necessary to remove her from the apartment. He ceased to
breathe about midnight, his great spirit departing peacefully from the
earthly tabernacle that had been so suddenly crushed (July 2, 1850). A
post-mortem examination showed that the cause of death was a broken rib
on the left side pressing upon the lung.

The death of no English statesman had ever produced a deeper feeling of
grief throughout the nation, or more general expressions of lamentation
at the irreparable loss which the country had sustained. Mr. Hume had
a motion on the paper for the day following his death; but instead of
proceeding with it, he moved the adjournment of the House, which was
agreed to unanimously. Mr. Gladstone paid an eloquent and touching
tribute to his memory, concluding with the lines--

    "Now is the stately column broke,
    The beacon light is quenched in smoke,
    The trumpet's silvery sound is still,
    The warder silent on the hill."

The House of Lords did not sit on that day; but on the following day
the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Stanley, Lord Brougham, and the Duke of
Wellington gave earnest expression to the feelings of their lordships
upon the subject of this national bereavement. The Duke of Wellington
in particular, as might be expected, was deeply moved while expressing
his great gratification at what had been said as to the character of
Sir Robert Peel. He added his testimony as to what he believed to be
its strongest feature--his truthfulness. "In all the course of my
acquaintance with Sir Robert Peel," said the Duke, "I never knew a
man in whose truth and justice I had a more lively confidence; or in
whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service.
In the whole course of my communication with him, I never knew an
instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth;
and I never saw in the whole course of my life the smallest reason for
suspecting that he stated anything which he did not firmly believe to
be the fact." Lord John Russell, who had been absent on the previous
day, spoke in the warmest terms of admiration of the late statesman,
and avowed his conviction that the harmony which had prevailed for
the last two years, and the safety which Great Britain had enjoyed
during a period when other nations were visited by the calamity of
revolution, had been owing to the course which Sir Robert Peel had
thought it his duty to adopt. He concluded by offering, in the name of
the Crown, funeral honours similar to those accorded on the death of
Pitt or Grattan. But Mr. Goulburn stated that Sir Robert had recorded
his desire to be interred in a vault in the parish church of Drayton
Bassett without funeral pomp. On the 12th of July, pursuant to a motion
made by the Prime Minister, the House of Commons went into committee
for the purpose of adopting an address to the Queen, praying her
Majesty to order the erection of a monument in Westminster Abbey to
the memory of Sir Robert Peel, which was unanimously voted. He stated
that the Queen, anxious to show the sense which she entertained of the
services rendered to the Crown, had directed him to inform Lady Peel
that she desired to bestow upon her the same rank that was bestowed
upon the widow of Mr. Canning. Lady Peel answered that her wish was
to bear no other name than that by which her husband was known to the
world.




INDEX.


    Aberdeen, Lord, as Foreign Secretary, 524,
      condemns Palmerston's foreign policy, 588.

    Abolition of slavery in West Indies, 366-368.

    Abuses, Poor-law, 361-363.

    Acts, Railway, number passed, _temp._ William IV., 420.

    Adelaide, Queen of William IV., 312;
      unpopularity during Reform agitation, 350, 351.

    Afghanistan, War in, 493.

    Aggressive policy of Russia, Debate on the, 411.

    Agrarian outrages in England, 325; in Ireland, 560-563.

    Agricultural distress in England, 120, 224;
      in Ireland, 403-406;
      labourers and parish relief, 363.

    Agriculture, State of, _temp._ George III., 187;
      state of, in Ireland, 535.

    Aix-la-Chapelle, Congress of, 138.

    Albert Amadeus I. chosen king of Sicily, 583.

    Albert, Prince, 467, 468.

    Albuera, Battle of, 16.

    Alexander, Mr., libel prosecution, 310.

    Alexander of Russia and Bernadotte, 39;
      treaty with Prussia, 63.

    Algiers, Storming of, 122.

    Alien Act, The, 136.

    Aliwal, Battle of, 599.

    Allies, The, muster against Buonaparte, 67;
      preparations to crush him, 70;
      severe fighting, 78-82;
      enter Paris, 82;
      treaty of Paris, 85;
      treaty of Vienna, 87;
      new treaty of alliance, 89.

    Almack's, 439.

    Ameers of Scinde. (_See_ Scinde.)

    Amelia, Princess, Death of, 8.

    America (U.S.), hostility to Britain, 32, 55;
      preparations for war, 34;
      invasion of Canada, 35, 105-110;
      naval victories, 37;
      British expedition against, 110-113;
      contributions from, for relief of Irish famine, 547.

    Anglesey, Marquis of, Viceroy of Ireland, 268;
      on the Catholic question, 268-270;
      on the state of Ireland, 278-280, 290, 291;
      resignation, 292;
      second term of office, 326.

    Anti-Corn Law League, 481, 508, 509, 514;
      literature, 483;
      banquet, 484.

    Annuities and pensions, Vansittart's proposals, 224.

    Apprenticeship, Negro, in the West Indies, 367.

    Architecture, State of, _temp._ George III., 199-201;
      temp. William IV., 433.

    Arms Bill (Ireland), passed, 527.

    Army, Dress of, _temp._ George III., 203.

    Art, Works of, captured by Buonaparte, restored, 118.

    Arts and sciences, _temp._ George III., 199;
      _temp._ William IV., 430.

    Articles, the Thirty-nine, Dissenters relieved from subscription
      to, 159-160.

    Ashburton treaty, The, 492.

    Ashley, Lord, and factory children, 454;
      on the Corn Laws, 519.

    Astronomy, _temp._ George III., 198;
      _temp._ William IV., 430.

    Auckland, Lord, Governor-General of India, 497.

    Australia, Scheme for government of, 605.

    Austria declares war against Buonaparte, 67;
      revolution in, and in her dominions, 578-582;
      flight of Metternich, 578;
      emperor abdicates, 579;
      Russia intervenes, 580;
      the Italians revolt, 582;
      quells the revolution in Italy, 585-587.


    Babbage's calculating machines, 431.

    Badajoz, Storming of, 226.

    Bagration, Prince, command the Cossacks against Buonaparte, 42, 43.

    Ballingarry, Battle of, 568.

    Bank Charter Act, 524.

    Bank notes, Circulation of, 238, 242, 244.

    Bank of England, Run on, during passage of Reform Bill, 351.

    Barclay de Tolly, opposed to Buonaparte in campaign of 1812, 41-46.

    Batavia, Reduction of, 19.

    Batthyány, Count, 580.

    Bautzen, Battle of, 66.

    Bean's attempt on Queen Victoria's life, 491.

    Bedchamber question, The, 461.

    Belfast, Queen's visit to, 573.

    Belgium revolts from France, 319, 320.

    Beloochistan, Napier's march across the desert of, 591.

    Bentinck, Lord George, proposals for Irish relief, 543.

    Bequests, Charitable, on behalf of education, 158.

    Beresford, General, in the Peninsular Campaign, 15-18.

    Beresina, Passage of the, 52.

    Bernadotte elected Crown Prince of Sweden, 6;
      opposes Buonaparte, 38;
      plans the campaign against Buonaparte, 39.

    Birmingham Political Union, 327.

    Blanketeers, The, 124-127.

    Blucher, Marshal, opposes Buonaparte, 63, 65, 69, 78-82;
      in London, 86;
      at Ligny, 95;
      at Waterloo, 100.

    Bogue forts, Capture of, 474.

    Bologna, Bombardment of, 586.

    Bonner's Fields, Chartists at, 558.

    Borodino, Battle of, 46.

    Bottle riot, The, 247, 248.

    Bounties on various industries, Abolition of, 240.

    Bourbons return to France, 83;
      flight of Charles X., 318.

    Bridge building, _temp._ George III., 192.

    Brienne, Battle of, 78.

    Bright, John, and Corn Laws, 482;
      eulogy on Sir Robert Peel, 523.

    Bristol, Reform riots at, 340-342.

    Britain, Great, subsidies to foreign Powers against Buonaparte,
       62, 74, 89, 91;
      restores her conquests, 86.

    Brougham, Lord, defends Queen Caroline, wife of George IV., 211;
      on the regency, 312-314;
      on the slavery question, 314;
      on the French Revolution, 318;
      becomes Lord Chancellor, 324;
      condemns Palmerston's foreign policy, 588.

    Brunel, Sir Mark Isambard, 431.

    Brunswick Clubs in Ireland, 283.

    Budget, A popular, 238;
      Peel's Free Trade, 515.

    Buonaparte, Joseph, King of Spain, flies from Madrid, 28;
      defeat at Vittoria, and flight, 58;
      appointed lieutenant of Paris, 76;
      flight from Paris, 82.

    Buonaparte, Louis, Abdication of, 4.

    Buonaparte, Napoleon, divorces Josephine, 2;
      marries Maria Louisa of Austria, 3;
      quarrels with his family, 4;
      birth of a son, 20;
      instability of his empire, 21;
      quarrels with the Church, 22;
      war preparations, 38;
      peace overtures to Britain, 40;
      the Russian campaign of 1812, 41-54;
      second campaign against Russia, 63;
      battles of Lützen and Bautzen, 65, 66;
      battles and flight from Leipsic, 68-71;
      returns to Paris, 72;
      subject kingdoms revolt, 72, 73;
      liberates the Pope, 73;
      Ferdinand of Spain, 75;
      the Allies, 76;
      battles at Brienne and La Rothière, 78;
      Chatillon conference, 79;
      surrender of Paris, 81;
      abdicates, 83;
      banished to Elba, 84;
      escapes, 87;
      reception in France, 89, 91;
      collects a fresh army, 92;
      battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, 94;
      battle of Waterloo, 98-102;
      banished to St. Helena, death, 104.

    Burdett, Sir Francis, presents a Catholic petition, 251;
      his motion on Catholic
      emancipation, 270;
      attack on Wellington, 308.

    Burghs, Scottish, Reforms of, 146.

    Burns, Robert, 185.

    Butt, Mr., opposes O'Connell's Repeal motion, 525.


    Cabul, Retreat from, 495;
      sack of, 503.

    Calculating machines, Babbage's, 431.

    Canada, Invasion of, by United States, 35, 105-110;
      disaffection in, 396-400;
      rebellion in Lower, 445-448.

    Canals, Construction of, _temp._ George III., 190, 191.

    Canning, Mr., on Catholic Emancipation, 223;
      becomes Foreign Secretary, 230;
      and the Spanish colonies, 236;
      Prime Minister, 257;
      death, 260.

    Capital Punishment, Parliamentary inquiry, 145;
      abolition of for various offences, 426.

    Captives, English, Rescue of, by Sale, 502.

    Carlowitz bombarded, 578.

    _Caroline_, Capture of the, 446.

    Caroline, Queen, 205;
      arrival in England, 206;
      charges against, 207;
      inquiry ordered, 208;
      Brougham's defence, 211;
      claims to be crowned, 214, 215;
      illness and death, 216;
      funeral procession, 217, 218.

    Cash payments, Resumption of, 143;
      and currency troubles, 237.

    Castlereagh's Coercion Bill, 25.

    Catholic Association, 248-251;
      effect on the elections, 252;
      as a military organisation, 283.

    Catholic Emancipation, 12, 248, 251;
      Grattan's motions, 146, 166;
      efforts for, _temp._ George III., 165;
      Canning on, 223, 252;
      Anglesey on, 268, 270, 290;
      Burdett's motion, 270;
      Wellington's memorandum, 281;
      and letter, 290;
      excitement in Ireland, 283, 284;
      agitation in England, 288;
      opposed by king and bishops, 293;
      Peel's Bill and debate, 295-297;
      becomes law, 299.

    Catholic Powers, Agreement between, for defence of Papal
      territory, 587.

    Catholics, Number of, in Britain, 299;
      eminent, in Ireland, 428.

    Cato Street conspiracy, 154, 155.

    Census Commissioners of 1841, Report of the, 416.

    Champions and opponents of Reform, 135.

    Charitable bequests on behalf of education, 158.

    Charles X. of France provokes a revolution, 315;
      the revolution of 1830, 316-318;
      flight of the king, 318.

    Charlotte, Princess, death of, 131.

    Chartists, Rise of, 455;
      riots, 457, 458;
      the monster petition, 555;
      the great demonstration, 557;
      the petition presented, 558;
      trials, 559.

    Chatillon, Conference of, 79.

    Cheetoo marauders in India, 138.

    Chillianwallah, Battle of, 600.

    China, War with, 472-475.

    Cholera ravages in India, 139;
      appearance of in England, 344.

    Church, State of, _temp._ George III., 158-164;
      in Scotland, 167;
      Wales, 170;
      Ireland, 171;
      cess, 355, 359;
      Temporalities Act (Ireland), 359-361;
      reform in England, 407;
      rates, 414;
      _temp._ William IV., 428.

    Churches and Chapels, Statistics of, 42.

    Ciudad Rodrigo, Capture of, 26.

    Civil List, the Regent's, debate on, 22;
      George IV.'s, 205;
      Victoria's, 444.

    Civil war or the Reform Bill, 351.

    Clare election, The, 271-278, 303

    Clarendon, Lord, Viceroy of Ireland, 562, 566.

    Clocks and watches, Improvements in the manufacture of, 198.

    Coal-gas, Utilisation of, for lighting streets, etc., 198.

    Coal mines, Development of, _temp._ George III., 196;
      produce of, _temp._ William IV., 419;
      operatives in, 490.

    Coasting Trade, _temp._ William IV., 422.

    Cobbett's _Political Register_ and the Reform Bill, 121;
      flight of, 128.

    Cobden, Richard, 482;
      scene with Peel, 506, 507;
      agitation against Corn Laws, 509, 510;
      Peel's tribute to, 523.

    Coercion Bill, Irish, 373, 375.

    Coinage, Improvement of, 198, 202.

    Colonial self-government, 600.

    Combination Acts (capital and labour), The, 242.

    Commerce, _temp._ George III., 157;
      _temp._ William IV., 417.

    Commons, House of, privileges, 468-470.

    Conscience, Liberty of, various efforts for, 158-169.

    Constables, Special, and Chartist riots, 556, 558.

    Constitution, The New Prussian, 577.

    Cookery, _temp._ William IV., 441.

    Corn Law of 1815, 119.

    Corn Laws, Agitation against, 147, 479-488;
      relaxed, 245;
      free trade in corn debates, 513-519;
      _Times_ announcement, Peel's resolve, 519;
      debates on, 521-523;
      Corn Importation Bill becomes law, 523.

    Coronation of George IV., 214-216;
      of William IV., 343;
      of Victoria, 451.

    Corporations, Irish, Bill for the regulation of, 390.

    Corporations, Municipal, inquiry into state of, 388.

    Cotton spinners, Strike of, 138.

    Court of George IV., Life at, 220.

    Cracow, State of, annexed by Russia, 412.

    Crime, Effect of Education on, 427.

    Crime in Ireland, 560-562.

    Criminal Laws, Amelioration of, 426.

    Croatians invade Hungary, 578, 579.

    Cumberland, Duke of, Grand Master of the Orange Societies, 394;
      proposal to prosecute, 395;
      becomes King of Hanover, 443.

    Currency difficulties, 11;
      paper, and scarcity of gold, 237;
      bimetallic, 409.

    Curtis, Dr., correspondence with Wellington on Catholic Emancipation,
      289-290.

    Customs duties, Effect on trade of abolition of, 522.

    Custozza, Radetzky's victory at, 585.


    Davoust's atrocities in Hamburg, 66.

    Dead weight annuity, 224.

    Defences of the country, Measures for improving the, 602.

    Dennewitz, Ney defeated at, 70.

    Disraeli, O'Connell's attack on, 387;
      attack on Peel's Government, 511, 514, 516, 522;
      leads the Conservative party, 602.

    Dissenters, Restrictions on, 159, 160, 164;
      eminent, _temp._ George III., 169, 170;
      grievances and relief of, 264-267;
      statistics of, _temp._ William IV., 427.

    Distress, Agricultural, 120, 224, 403-406;
      trade, 307, 308, 310.

    Doyle, Dr., and Catholic Emancipation, 303.

    Dramatists, _temp._ George III., 179-182;
      _temp._ William IV., 439.

    Dresden, Buonaparte meets his vassal monarchs at, 40.

    Dress and fashion, _temp._ George III., 203;
      _temp._ William IV., 442.

    Drought, The, of 1826, 244.

    Drummond, Mr., Assassination of, 506.

    Dublin Custom House, Burning of, 376.

    Dublin, Queen's visit to, 572.

    Duffy, Gavan, Trial of, 570.

    Dukes, Royal, Marriages of, 136.

    Durham, Lord, mission to Canada, 447.


    Earthquake at Jelalabad, The, 499.

    Eastern question, 476.

    Ecclesiastical Commissioners, Establishment of, 408.

    Education, Charitable bequests on behalf of, 158;
      Brougham's speech on, 205;
      national (Ireland), 356, 359;
      _temp._ William IV., statistics, 424;
      effect on crime, 427;
      Government scheme for, 463.

    Egypt, Affairs in, 475.

    Elba, Buonaparte at, 83, 84;
      escapes from, 87.

    Eldon, Lord, on Marriage Act, 226;
      on O'Connell, 270;
      on Clare election, 275;
      interview with George IV. on Catholic question, 299.

    Ellenborough, Lord, Governor-General of India, the Somnauth
        proclamation, 504;
      annexes Scinde, 591;
      and Gwalior, 594;
      recalled, 595.

    Elliott, Ebenezer, and Corn Laws, 483.

    Emancipation Bill, Catholic, Peel introduces, 295.
      (_See_ Catholic Emancipation.)

    Emaum-Ghur, Destruction of the fortress of, 591.

    Emigration to America, 245.

    Encumbered Estates Act (Ireland), 570.

    Engineering, _temp._ George III., 188-195.

    England, Municipal relief in, 387-389.

    Engraving, _temp._ George III., 202.

    Episcopalians, Scottish, Relief of, 168.

    Etruria, Queen of, Buonaparte's treatment of, 21.

    Exmouth, Lord, bombards Algiers, 122.

    Expenditure, royal, Debate on, 142.

    Exports, _temp._ William IV., 418.


    Factories, Employment of children in, 454.

    Famine, The Irish, 536-547.

    Fashions in dress, _temp._ George III., 203.

    Ferdinand of Austria abdicates, 579.

    Ferdinand VII. of Spain restored, 86.

    Ferozeshah, Battle of, 597.

    Fiction, _temp._ George III., 171-174;
      _temp._ William IV., 439.

    Financial reforms, 224, 308.

    Fire at Dublin Custom House, 376;
      at Houses of Parliament, 376.

    Foreign Enlistment Act, 146.

    Forty-shilling freeholders, 254;
      disfranchised, 301;
      increase of, 510.

    Fouché's intrigues, 85;
      joins Buonaparte, 90.

    Foundation schools in Ireland, Wyse's Report, 357.

    France, relations with Spain, 232;
      annexes Society Islands, 524;
      interferes in Italian revolution, 586.
      (_See_ Buonaparte, French Revolution.)

    Francis attempts the Queen's life, 490, 491.

    Francis Joseph appointed viceroy of Bohemia, 578;
      becomes Emperor of Austria, 579.

    Frankfort Parliament offers the imperial crown of Germany the
      king of Prussia, 577.

    Free Trade, effect on the imports, 423;
      enunciation of in the Royal Speech, 478;
      progress of, 507;
      literature, 508;
      principles triumph, 523.

    French revolution of 1830, 315-318;
      effect in England, 318;
      of 1848, 550;
      effect in Britain, 554;
      in Ireland, 564;
      in Austria, 578.

    Friends, Society of, and abolition of slavery, 366;
      and Irish famine, 538.

    Fuentes d'Onoro, Battle of, 15.

    Furniture, Household, _temp._ George III., 203.


    Game Laws, Bill to amend, rejected, 305.

    Garibaldi, General, and Italian revolution, 583;
      defeats Neapolitans, defence of Rome, 587.

    Gas for street lighting, Introduction of, 198.

    George III., Insanity of, 8, 22;
      jubilee, Regent appointed, 8;
      children of, 135;
      Duke of York, his guardian, 142;
      death of, 156;
      progress of the nation during his reign, 157-203.

    George IV., Accession of, 202;
      treatment of Queen, 206;
      coronation, 214-216;
      visits Ireland, 216, 218-220;
      visits Scotland, 227-230;
      opposes Catholic Emancipation, 292;
      agrees to Peel's proposals, 294;
      alarm at Peel's Bill, 298;
      assents to the Bill, 299;
      illness, death, character, 310, 311.
      (_See_ Regent.)

    Germany, Revolution in, 575.

    Gladstone, Mr., attacks Palmerston's foreign policy, 606.

    Glasgow, Chartists in, 555, 558.

    Glass manufacture, _temp._ George III., 196.

    Goito, Radetzky defeated at, 584.

    Goojerat, Battle of, 601.

    Görgei, Hungarian patriot, 580, 597.

    Gough, Sir Hugh, in India, 594.

    Grattan, Henry, motions on Catholic Emancipation, 146, 166;
      death of, 205;
      his opinion of O'Connell, 271.

    Greece, struggles for independence, 262;
      high-handed proceedings of, debate, 606.

    Grey, Earl, 324;
      retires from public life, 373;
      character, 374.

    Grey, Sir George, on state of Ireland, 560.

    Guardians, Poor Law, 365.

    _Guerrière_ and _Constitution_, Naval battle between, 36.

    Gwalior, Annexation of, 594.


    Habeas Corpus Act suspended, 127.

    Hampden Clubs, 120.

    Hanover, Separation of, from England, Duke of Cumberland becomes
      king of, 443.

    Hardinge, Sir Henry, Governor-General of India, 595, 597.

    Haynau, General, 589.

    Hill, Sir Rowland, and postal reform, 470.

    Historians, _temp._ George III., 175-178;
      _temp._ William IV., 435.

    Holland, The French driven from, 72.

    Holy Alliance and Congress of Verona, 231-236.

    Hone satirises the Government, 128, 152;
      trial of, 128-130.

    Hôtel de Ville, Paris, Revolutionary attack on, 317.

    Hume, Mr., his resolution on the Orange Societies, 394.

    Hundred Days, the beginning, 87;
      end, 104;
      cost, 118.

    Hungary, Revolution in, Kossuth appointed dictator, 579;
      Russian intervention, 580;
      debate on, 588.

    Hunt, "Orator," 121, 147;
      trial of, 156.

    Huskisson, Mr., at Board of Trade, 239;
      reforms, 239-242;
      resigns, 264;
      death, 319.

    Hyde Park, _temp._ William IV., 441.

    Hyderabad, Surrender of, 592.


    Illegitimate children, Maintenance of, 364.

    Imports, _temp._ William IV., 422.

    Incendiarism in southern counties, 320.

    India, Disturbances in, 138, 139;
      consolidation of empire, 141;
      affairs in Scinde, 589;
      Ellenborough's policy, 590;
      Napier's conquests, 590-594;
      affairs in the Punjab, 594, 601;
      Gwalior captured, 595;
      the Sikh war, 595-600.

    Industrial progress, _temp._ William IV., 416, 417.

    Industries, Manufacturing, _temp._ George III., 195-198.

    Inhabited houses in Great Britain, _temp._ William IV., 424.

    Ireland, George IV.'s visit to, 218-220;
      discontent and disturbances in, 222, 307;
      Lord Wellesley, Viceroy, 222, 246;
      social condition, 246, 535;
      Marquis of Anglesey, Viceroy, 268, 278-280, 326;
      the peasantry arming, 283;
      distress in, 326, 403-406, 484;
      Reform Bill for, 352, 353;
      tithe riots, 355;
      Clergy Relief Bill, 356;
      national education, 356, 359;
      church reform, 359, 372;
      O'Connell's repeal agitation, 370;
      tithe question, 371, 383;
      municipal reforms, 390;
      workhouse system, 405;
      registration of voters (Stanley's Bill), 476;
      threatened famine, 517;
      the Arms Bill, 529;
      the famine in, 536-547;
      after the famine, 560;
      rebellion in, 563-570;
      the Queen's visit to, 571-573.

    Irish Church, Mr. Ward's motion, 372.

    Irish Confederation, 564.

    Irish corporations, Bill for the regulation of, 390.

    Irish famine, The, 535-547.

    Irish Parliament, O'Connell's proposal to restore, 530.

    Irish Poor, Bill for the relief of, 448.

    Iron, Improvements in manufacture of, 196-198;
      mines, 419.

    Isas-zeg, Battle of, 580.

    Italy, Revolution in, 582-586;
      debate on, 587.


    Jamaica Bill, The, 460.

    Jelalabad, Defence of, 498;
      relief of, 499.

    Jellacic, Ban of Croatia, and Austrian revolution, 578;
      invades Hungary, 579

    Jewish Emancipation Bill, 603-605.

    Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 174.

    Joseph Buonaparte. (_See_ Buonaparte, Joseph.)

    Jubilee of George III., 8.

    Junot, Marshal, at Valoutina, 44.


    Kennington Common, Chartist meeting on, 555.

    Kent, Agricultural outrages in, 325.

    Kent, Duke of, The marriage of, 136;
      the death of, 156.

    Khan, Akbar, 495.

    Khyber Pass, 495, 497.

    Kossuth, Louis, appointed dictator of Hungary, 579;
      escapes to Turkey, 581;
      takes refuge in England, 583.

    Kutusoff, Russian general, opposes Buonaparte, 46-53.


    Labédoyère, Execution of, 115.

    Lamartine and French revolution, 553;
      and Irish rebellion, 566.

    Lamberg, Count, Assassination of, 579.

    Landed Estates Court (Ireland), 570.

    Lawless, Mr., a leader of the Irish rebellion, 283.

    Lawrence, John and Henry, 600, 601.

    Leinster declaration, The, 288.

    Leipsic, Battle of, 71.

    Liberators, The Order of, 286.

    Lichfield House compact, 380.

    Ligny, Battle of, 94, 95.

    Literature, _temp._ George III., 171-187;
      _temp._ William IV., 434-439;
      of Anti-Corn Law League, 508;
      Free Trade, 508.

    Liverpool, Lord, death and character, 256.

    Locomotive steam-engine, The, 194.

    London, Anti-Corn Law agitation in, 484;
      Chartist riots in, 558.

    Londonderry, Lord, 227, 382.

    Lords, House of, Petition for reform of, 392.

    Louis XVIII. restored to France, 83;
      flight of, 90;
      returns, 104.

    Louis-Philippe, King of France, 318;
      the Spanish marriages, 548;
      outbreak of the revolution, 550;
      abdication, flight, death, 551.

    Luddite riots, 25.

    Lützen, Battle of, 65.


    Machinery destroyed by rioters, 25, 244.

    Macnaghten, Sir William, Assassination of, 495.

    Madison, President (U.S.), attempt on Canada, 35, 105;
      at capture of Washington, 110;
      anxiety for peace, 114.

    Madrid, Wellington enters, 28.

    Mabrattas, Power of the, broken, 141;
      conquest of Gwalior, 594, 595.

    Malt Tax, Proposed abolition, 381, 382.

    Manchester, Reform meetings at, 147-151;
      opening of railway, 319;
      Corn Law agitation at, 481-484.

    Manin and the siege of Venice, 586.

    Manners and customs, temp. George III., 202;
      _temp._ William IV., 439, 440.

    Manufactures, _temp._ George III., 196-198;
      prosperous state of, 237;
      _temp._ William IV., 418.

    Manufacturing districts, Depression in, 147.

    Maria Louisa, of Austria, marries Buonaparte, 3;
      appointed regent, 64, 76;
      flies from Paris, 81.

    Marmont in the Peninsular campaign, 26.

    Marriage laws, Reforms in, 225;
      and Dissenters, 382;
      Act, 409.

    Marriage of Queen Victoria, 471.

    Massacre, The Peterloo, 151, 152.

    Massena in the Peninsular Campaign, 12-16.

    Mathematical Science, _temp._ William IV., 430.

    Mathew, Father, and temperance reform in Ireland, 526;
      and the Irish famine, 537, 546.

    Maynooth Grant, The, for educating Roman Catholic priests, 524.

    Mazzini and Italian revolution, 582;
      one of the triumvirate, 583.

    Meeanee, Battle of, 592.

    Meerpoor, Capture of, 592.

    Melbourne, Lord, Prime Minister, 373, 386, 444;
      and Queen Victoria, 478.

    Messina bombarded, 583.

    Metropolitan police, Establishment of, 323.

    Metternich, Prince, and Buonaparte, 67;
      and Austrian revolution, 578.

    Milan, Revolutionary fighting in, 582;
      Radetzky captures, 585.

    Ministry, The Reform, 323.
      (_See_ Reform Bill.)

    Miscellaneous writers and literature, _temp._ George III., 178;
      _temp._ William IV., 435.

    Monster meetings, O'Connell's, 526, 530.

    Moodkee, Battle of, 597.

    Moolraj, Defeat of, 60.

    Mooltan, Capture of, 601.

    Mortality during Irish famine, 541.

    Moscow, Russians evacuate, 46;
      burning of, 47;
      French retreat from, 48-54.

    Mulgrave, Lord, Viceroy of Ireland, 395.

    Municipal reform, 387-389;
      corporations, inquiry commission, 388;
      in Ireland, 390, 414, 450;
      in Scotland, 391;
      Reform Act, 444.

    Murat, Marshal, at Moscow, 48;
      deserts Buonaparte, 63;
      revolutionary attempt at Naples, 105, 117;
      execution, 117.

    Music and musicians, _temp._ George III., 199.


    Napier, Sir Charles, conquest of Scinde, 591-593.

    Napoleon, Louis, elected to National Assembly, 552;
      president of republic, 554;
      special constable in London during Chartist riots, 556.

    National Gallery, Inception of, 240.

    National wealth, Increase of, _temp._ William IV., 418.

    National workshops, French, Failure of the, 553.

    _Nation, The_, Irish Repeal newspaper, 563.

    Naval supremacy of Britain, 19;
      battles during American war, 35-38.

    Navarino, Battle of, 262.

    Navigation Laws, Changes in, 239;
      repealed, 602.

    Navy, State of the, 407.

    Neapolitans defeated by Garibaldi, 587.

    Negro slaves in the colonies, 366.

    Newspaper stamp duty, 401.

    Ney, Marshal, in the Russian campaign, 50, 51;
      deserts Louis Philippe, 90;
      at Waterloo, 99;
      Execution of, 115.

    Nonconformists and Marriage Laws, 382;
      statistics of, 427.

    Norbury, Lord, Assassination of, 458.

    Normanby, Lord, on crime and outrage in Ireland, 459.

    Northumberland, Duke of, Viceroy of Ireland, 292.

    Notes, bank, Circulation of, 238, 242, 244.

    Novara, Charles Albert defeated at, 586.

    Novelists, _temp._ George III., 171-174;
      _temp._ William IV., 439.


    Oaths, Parliamentary, Lord John Russell's Bill, 602, 603.

    O'Brien. (_See_ Smith O'Brien.)

    O'Connell, Daniel, and Catholic Association, 249;
      as barrister, 270, 271;
      Grattan's opinion of, 271;
      the Clare election, 271-275, 303;
      influence on the Irish peasantry, 286, 287;
      refuses to take the oaths, 302;
      arrested for sedition, 327;
      agitates for Repeal, 370, 459, 525, 526, 530;
      his quarrels, 385, 387;
      crusade against House of Lords, 392;
      desires to revive the Irish Parliament, 530;
      trial, etc., 531, 532;
      rejoicings on his liberation, 532;
      parliamentary debate on the trial, 534;
      Young Ireland party secede from, 534;
      death and character, 561, 562.

    O'Connor, Feargus, the Chartist, 455, 456, 482, 555.

    Oliver the spy, and the rioters, 125.

    Omerkote, Capture of, 592.

    Operas, _temp._ George III., 199.

    Opium war, The, 472-475.

    Orange, Prince of, becomes King of Holland, 72.

    Orange Societies in Ireland, 247;
      riots in Ireland, 307;
      lodges, 393, 394;
      Duke of Cumberland Grand Master of, 394;
      dissolution of the, 395.

    Oregon boundary settled, 524.

    Orleans dynasty, End of, 551.

    Orleans, New, Pakenham's failure at, 111.

    Orthez, Battle of, 75.

    Outrages in Ireland, 458;
      debate on, 459.

    Outram, General, 590.

    Overland route to India, 421.

    Over-trading and speculation, 410, 411.

    Oxford's attempt on Queen's life, 471.


    Pacifico, Don, Case of, 606.

    Painters and painting, _temp._ George III., 201;
      _temp._ William IV., 432.

    Palmerston, Lord, foreign policy, 374, 548;
      interference in Spain, 574;
      and Austrian revolution, 581;
      and Italian revolution, 585;
      debates on, 587, 589, 606;
      testimonial to, 607.

    Papal States, Revolution in, 583, 586;
      Catholic powers restore the Pope, 587.

    Paper, Reduction of duty on, 407.

    Paris, Capture of, by the Allies, 81, 82;
      treaties of, 89, 119;
      the Allies enter, 103;
      rioting in, 554.

    Parliament, changes made by Reform Bill in, 354;
      first reformed, 359;
      Houses of, burnt, 376;
      privilege of reports, 468-70.

    Parliamentary Reform, Motions on, 148, 223, 320;
      popular excitement, 322.
      (_See_ Reform Bill.)

    Peel, Sir Robert, on Catholic Emancipation, 249;
      Clare election, 275-278;
      Catholic
      Emancipation Bill, 294, 295;
      general election, 378, 380;
      Bedchamber question, 462;
      Corn Laws, the sliding scale, 487;
      on Free Trade, 489, 507, 513;
      scene with Cobden, 506;
      Cabinet memorandum, 518;
      on state of Ireland, 529;
      his last speech, death, 607;
      Wellington's testimony to, 608.
      (_See_ Anti-Corn Law League, Corn Laws.)

    Peers, Roman Catholic, Canning's motion for admission of, to
      Parliament, 222.

    Perceval, Mr., Assassination of, 23.

    Periodical literature, _temp._ George III., 179;
      _temp._ William IV., 435.

    Peterloo massacre, 151;
      debates, 152.

    Petition, The Chartist, 558.

    Picton, Sir Thomas, Death of, at Waterloo, 99.

    Pindarrees, The, and the Mahratta wars, 138-141.

    Pius IX., Pope, as reformer, 582;
      his reforms, flight, 583;
      restored by the Catholic powers, 587.

    Plays and dramatists, temp. George III., 180;
      _temp._ William IV., 439.

    Poets, _temp._ George III., 181-187;
      _temp._ William IV., 435.

    Poland, Buonaparte promises to restore the kingdom of, 40;
      enthusiasm of the Poles, 42.

    Police, Metropolitan, Establishment of, 323.

    Political parties, Changes in, 359.

    _Political Register_, Cobbett's, and the Reform Bill, 121.

    Political Union, The Birmingham, 327.

    Poniatowski, Fate of, 71.

    Poor, Irish, Relief of the, 403;
      inquiry into state of, 404;
      Bill for, 414.

    Poor Law abuses, 361-363;
      reform, 364-366;
      Irish, Bill, 448.

    Poor Law Act, Operation of the, 410.

    Population, Agricultural, State of, _temp._ George III., 158.

    Population, Increase of, in the United Kingdom, 416.

    Portugal, Revolution in, 306, 412, 549.

    Portuguese expedition, 255.

    Postage, Penny, Establishment of, 464.

    Potato crop, signs of failure, 516, 520;
      precarious nature of, 536;
      failure of, 536, 537.
      (_See_ Famine, The Irish.)

    Pottery, temp. George III., 195, 196.

    Pottinger, Eldred, 494, 495, 590.

    Press, Growing power of, 121;
      liberty of the, 128;
      influence on Reform Bill, 334.

    Prevost, Sir George, an incompetent commander, 105, 107, 108.

    Printing and allied arts, Improvements in, 198.

    Privileges of the House of Commons, 468-470.

    Progress of the nation, _temp._ George III., 157-203;
      _temp._ William IV., 416-442.

    Prosperity, Proofs of the national, _temp._ William IV., 418-424.

    Protective duties, Abolition of, debate, 521.

    Protestant schools in Ireland, 357.

    Prussia declares war against Buonaparte, 63;
      revolution in, 575.

    Punjab, Disturbances in, 593;
      annexation of, 601.

    Pyrenees, Battle of the, 59.


    Quadrilateral Alliance, 475.

    Quakers, efforts to procure relief for, 163.
      (_See_ Friends, Society of.)

    Quatre Bras, Battle of, 95.


    Radetzky, General, 579, 582, 586.

    Railways, Commencement of, 194;
      the first, 319;
      progress of, 420.

    Ramnuggur, British defeated at, 600.

    Rate in aid, Ireland, 570.

    Rebellion in Canada, 445-448;
      in Ireland, 563-568.

    Reciprocity Acts, 239.

    Reform, Demands for, 120;
      attempts at, 135.

    Reform Bill, The, Ministry, 324;
      preparing the Bill, 328;
      introduced to Parliament, 330;
      excitement in the country, 331, 334;
      dissolution of Parliament, 333;
      influence of the press, 333;
      the new Parliament, 335;
      the Bill re-introduced, 336-338;
      rejected by the Lords, 339;
      riots, 339, 340;
      negotiations, 345;
      passed by the Commons, 347;
      threatened rejection by the Lords, 350;
      finally passed, 352.

    Reform, Poor Law, 364, 365.

    Regency, Appointment of, 8, 10, 22;
      question of, on accession of William IV., 312-314.

    Regent, George, Prince of Wales appointed, 8;
      Brougham's philippic against the, 120;
      unpopularity of, 123;
      death of his daughter, Princess Charlotte, 131;
      royal expenditure, debates on, 142;
      succeeds as George IV., 204.

    Registration of births, marriages, and deaths, 410.

    Religion, Progress of, _temp._ George III., 158-171;
      _temp._ William IV., 427;
      in Ireland, 428.

    Religious freedom, Efforts for, 158-169.
      (_See_ Catholic emancipation.)

    Repeal of the Union, Mr. Butt opposes, 525;
      Queen's Speech denounces, 529.
      (_See_ O'Connell.)

    Republic established in France, 552.

    Retreat from Moscow, The French, 48-54.

    Retrenching official salaries, 308.

    Revenue and taxation, _temp._ William IV. 423, 424.

    Revolution in Portugal, 306, 412, 549;
      France, 315, 550;
      Spain, 412;
      Germany, Prussia, 575;
      Austria, 578;
      Hungary, 579;
      Italy, 582.

    Revolution of 1848, Palmerston on the causes of, 588.

    Riots, Chartist, 457.

    Roads, Construction of, _temp._ George III., 190;
      _temp._ William IV., 420.

    Roebuck, Mr., opposes Colonial Government Bill, 605;
      on the Government's foreign policy, 606.

    Rome, French capture, 587.

    Rossi, Count, Murder of, 583.

    Rothière, La, Battle of, 78.

    Rothschild, Baron, and the abjuration oath, 603.

    Runjeet Singh, 595.

    Russell, Lord John, motion on Parliamentary Reform, 223;
      obtains repeal of Test and Corporation Acts, 264;
      introduces Reform Bill, 330, 336;
      on the Tithe Question, 383;
      on the Marriage Bill, 400;
      on the Corn Laws, 519;
      on the Jewish Emancipation Bill, 602, 604;
      on the Colonial Government Bill, 605.

    Russia, war with France, 38, 40-48;
      heads the alliance against Buonaparte, 63;
      and the Eastern Question, 411;
      and the Hungarian revolution, 580, 583.


    Sackett's Harbour, Attack on, 108.

    Safety lamp, Miner's, 196.

    Salamanca, Battle of, 27.

    Sale, Sir Robert, rescues English captives, 502.

    Salomans, Alderman, and the abjuration oath, 603.

    San Sebastian, Storming of, 60.

    Savings banks, Depositors in, 417;
      as a proof of progress, 424.

    Saw-mills introduced into Great Britain, 198.

    Schools, _temp._ George III., 158;
      _temp._ William IV., 425, 426.

    Science, Progress of, _temp._ George III., 199;
      _temp._ William IV., 430.

    Scinde, Annexation of, 590-593.

    Scotland, Attempt at insurrection, 155;
      lay patronage in, 167;
      relief of Episcopalians in, 168;
      George IV.'s visit to, 227-230;
      Reform Bill for, 353;
      municipal relief in, 391;
      famine in the north of, 540.

    Scott, Sir Walter, 175, 436;
      and George IV.'s visit to Scotland, 227.

    Scottish burgh reforms, 146;
      Reform Bill, 353.

    Scottish Churches, eminent members of the, _temp._ William IV., 428.

    Sculpture, _temp._ George III., 202.

    Search, The right of, 33, 492.

    Self-government, Colonial, 600.

    Settlement, The Act of, 362;
      changes in the law of, 364.

    Shakespeare forgeries, The, 184.

    Shere Mahommed defeated by Sir Charles Napier, 592.

    Shipping, Progress of, _temp._ George III., 157;
      steam vessels, _temp._ William IV., 417, 421.

    Sicilian expedition to Spain, 29.

    Sicily, Revolution in, 583.

    Sikh War, The, 597-600.

    Silk duties, Reduction of the, 241;
      trade riots, 304;
      state of trade, _temp._ William IV., 418.

    Six Acts, The, 151, 152.

    Slavery in the Colonies, debate, 314;
      abolition of, in the West Indies, 366-368;
      and the right of search, 492.

    Sliding scale, Peel's (corn duties), 487.

    Smith O'Brien on the state of Ireland, 527;
      joins the Repeal Association, 533;
      the Irish rebellion, 564;
      capture of, 569;
      trial, 570.

    Smolensk, Storming of, 44.

    Sobraon, Battle of, 599.

    Social reforms, 145.

    Society Islands annexed by France, 524.

    Society of Friends and Irish famine, 474.

    Somnauth proclamation, Ellenborough, 504.

    Soult, Marshal, in the Peninsular Campaign, 12, 26, 30, 59, 75.

    Sovereigns, Allied in London, 86.

    Spain, Wellington's campaign in, 55-60, 75;
      and her revolted colonies, 231, 236;
      relations with France, 232;
      revolution in, 412;
      Palmerston's interference with, 574.

    Spanish legion, The, 452-454.

    Spanish marriages, The, 548.

    Speculation, over-trading, etc., 242-244, 410, 411;
      Parliamentary inquiry into, 254.

    Spencean philanthropists, The, 121.

    Stamp duty, Newspaper, 401;
      revision of the stamp duties, 401, 402.

    Stanhope, Earl, and religious freedom, 160-163.

    Stanley, Mr., secretary to Irish Viceroy, 332;
      his character, 354;
      plan for national education (Ireland), 356, 359;
      on abolition of slavery, 366;
      on the Corn Laws, 518.

    Steam, Application of, to travelling and to machinery, 194-196;
      applied to vessels, _temp._ William IV., 421.

    Steamboats, The first, in Great Britain, 195.

    Street fighting in Milan, 582.

    Subsidies to Continental Powers against Buonaparte, 62, 74, 89, 91.

    Sugar duties, The, 512.

    Sunday schools, _temp._ William IV., 424.

    "Surrender" banquet at Derry, The, 288.

    Suspension Act, Repeal of the, 132.

    Switzerland, The French driven from, 73.

    Syrian dispute, The, 475.


    Taxation and Revenue, _temp._ William IV., 423, 424.

    Taxes, Large reductions of, 488.

    Temperance reform in Ireland, 526;
      and the Repeal agitation, 527, 530;
      and the Irish famine, 537.

    Test and Corporation Acts, Lord John Russell's motion for repeal
      of, 264;
      debate on, 266;
      repeal of, celebrated, 267.
      (_See_ University.)

    Thames Tunnel, Construction of the, 431.

    Theological literature, _temp._ George III., 178.

    Thistlewood and the Cato Street conspiracy, 154.

    Tithe Commissioners, Establishment of, 409.

    Tithe Commutation Act, 248;
      riots in Ireland, 355;
      the tithe question, debates on, etc., 371, 382, 409;
      Bill (Irish), 450.

    Toulouse, Battle of, 75, 76.

    Trade, State of, 396;
      depression of, 455, 485.

    Trades unions and strikes, 368-370.

    Turner, J. M. W., 431.

    Tuscany, End of the revolution in, 586.


    Ulster, the Orangemen in, 396.

    Union of Great Britain and Ireland, Repeal of. (_See_ O'Connell.)

    Union of parishes for poor-law relief, 364, 365.

    _United Irishman, The_, advocates rebellion, 564.

    United States of America. (_See_ America.)

    University tests, debate in Parliament, 375, 382.

    Unlawful Societies in Ireland Bill, 250.


    Valoutina, Battle of, 44.

    Venice, Revolution in, 582;
      siege and capitulation of, 586.

    Verona, Congress of, 231-236.

    Vessels, Steam, _temp._ William IV., 421.

    Viceroy of Ireland, Qualifications necessary for a, 245.

    Victoria, Princess, Birth of, 156;
      youth of, 310.

    Victoria, Queen, Accession of, 443;
      Lord Melbourne her mentor, 444;
      the Civil List, her first Parliament, 444, 445;
      her coronation, 451-452;
      Melbourne Ministry resign, 459;
      the Bedchamber question, 461;
      disloyalty of the Tories, loyalty of O'Connell, 466;
      approaching marriage announced, 467;
      Bill for naturalising Prince Albert, debate, 467, 468;
      Prince Albert's income, 468;
      the marriage, 471;
      attempts on the Queen's life, 471, 490, 491;
      letter to the French queen on the Spanish marriages, 548;
      visit to Ireland, 571-573.

    Vienna, Congress at, 87, 117;
      the bombardment of, 579.

    Villiers, Mr., motions on the Corn Laws, 479, 484, 511, 523.

    Vittoria, Battle of, 58.


    Wales, Princess of, regent, 9.

    Washington, U.S., captured by British, 110.

    Waterloo, Field of, 96;
      battle of, 98-102.

    Wealth of the nation _temp._ George III., 157;
      _temp._ William IV., 418.

    Wedgwood, Josiah, and improvements in pottery, 196.

    Wellesley, Marquis of, Viceroy of Ireland, 222, 246.

    Wellington, Duke of, Peninsular campaign, 12-75;
      prepares for Buonaparte, 98;
      battle of Waterloo, 98-102;
      plenipotentiary at Verona congress, 231-236;
      Prime Minister, 262;
      on the Catholic question, 281;
      duel with Earl of Winchilsea, 300;
      financial reforms, 309;
      declares against Parliamentary Reform, 320, 321;
      his Ministry defeated, 324;
      on the state of Ireland, 527;
      his testimony to Peel's character, 608.

    West Indies, Abolition of slavery in, 366-368;
      and sugar duties, 512.

    Wetherell, Sir Charles, and the Bristol rioters, 340, 341.

    William III., his statue blown up, 396.

    William IV., Accession, 312;
      popularity, 312, 314;
      question of regency, 313;
      and the Reform Bill, 340;
      coronation, 343;
      unpopularity, 350;
      on the Irish Church, 372;
      death and character, 414, 415;
      progress of the nation during reign of, 416-442.

    William IV. of Prussia and the revolution, 576;
      a new constitution, 577;
      declines imperial crown of Germany, 578.

    Windischgrätz, General, 579.

    Wool, Reduction of duties on, 241;
      state of the trade, _temp._ William IV., 418.

    Workhouses in England, 362-365;
      in Ireland, 405.

    Working classes, _temp._ George III., 157.

    Wyse, Mr., Report on Foundation schools in Ireland, 357.


    York, Duke of, Commander-in-Chief, 111;
      becomes guardian of George III., 142;
      declares against Catholic Emancipation, 251;
      death, 254.

    Young Ireland party, 533;
      secede from O'Connell, 534;
      history of, 563.


PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.

       *       *       *       *       *

    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
    |                                                              |
    |                   Transcriber Notes:                         |
    |                                                              |
    | P. 79. 'Lichstenstein' changed to 'Liechtenstein' P. 107.    |
    | 'Ooracoke' changed to 'Ocracoke'. P. 610. 'Neaoplitans' in   |
    | index of Garibaldi changed to 'Neapolitans'. Fixed various   |
    | punctuation.                                                 |
    |                                                              |
    +--------------------------------------------------------------+





End of Project Gutenberg's Cassell's History of England,  Vol. V, by Unknown