ONE:The English Government, instead of treating Wilkes with a dignified indifference, was weak enough to show how deeply it was touched by him, dismissed him from his commission of Colonel of the Buckinghamshire Militia, and treated Lord Temple as an abettor of his, by depriving him of the Lord-Lieutenancy of the same county, and striking his name from the list of Privy Councillors, giving the Lord-Lieutenancy to Dashwood, now Lord Le Despencer.From the Painting by J. S. Copley, R.A., at the National Gallery.
TWO:Scarcely had Lord Cornwallis commenced his march into the interior of North Carolina, and scarcely had he dispatched Major Ferguson with a corps of American Royalists, to advance through the country towards the frontiers of Virginia, when this corps received another proof of the wisdom of keeping out of the woods and hills. Major Ferguson was attacked near the pass of King's Mountain by swarms of riflemen, many of them mounted, from Virginia, Kentucky, and the Alleghanies who shot down and exterminated his followers almost to a man, the major falling amongst the rest. The victors gave a prompt proof of their apt adoption of Lord Cornwallis's teaching, by hanging ten of the prisoners. Lord Cornwallis was harassed by similar hordes of flying and creeping skirmishers. Hearing the news of the slaughter of Ferguson's force, he returned to Charlotte, retracing his march through most rainy weather, terrible roads, and almost totally destitute of provisions. Cornwallis fell ill on the road, and Lord Rawdon had to assume the command. It was not till the 29th of October that the army resumed its original position near Camden; and General Leslie, who had been also dispatched to co-operate with Cornwallis in Virginia, was recalled, but was obliged to return by sea.[593]
THREE:The triumph of the mob had consummated the triumph of Jacobinism. The Republic was at length established, but not to the benefit of the Girondists. The ruin of royalty, for which they had so zealously laboured, was in reality their own ruin. The Jacobins, and at their head the sanguinary Robespierre, were left without a rival, except in that mob by which they worked, and which was destined to destroy them too. Danton appeared before the Assembly on the morning of the 10th, at the head of a deputation of the Commune, to state what had been done, and said plainly, "The people who send us to you have charged us to declare that they think you worthy of their confidence, but that they recognise no other judge of the extraordinary measures to which necessity has forced them to recur than the French nationour sovereign and yoursconvoked in primary Assemblies." This was announcing without disguise that the Clubs were the supreme authorities. The Assembly felt its weakness and professed to approve of everything. Next, the new Ministers were chosen; Roland, as Minister of the Interior; Servan, as War Minister; and Clavire as Minister of Finance. But to these were added Danton as Minister of Justice, Mong as Minister of the Marine, and Le Brun as Minister of Foreign Affairs. They were to receive instructions, not from Louis, but from the Assembly. And now came into full light the mortal antagonism of the Assembly and the Clubs, and the real ascendency of the latter. The Assembly voted for the education of the Dauphin; the Clubs called for the utter removal of royalty. The Assembly recommended an active campaign against Foreign Powers, but mercy to the vanquished; the Clubs called for instant and universal vengeance on all supporters of royalty, who, they said, had intended to massacre the people and bring in the Prussians. They declared that there was no need of electoral bodies to form a new Assembly, but that every man, and some said every woman, was entitled to vote; and they insisted that the people ought to come in arms to manifest their wishes to the legislative body. This was plainly-avowed mob rule. Marat argued loudly for this and for purging France, as he called it, by cutting off every man, woman, and child that was not for mob rule; and Robespierre demanded the removal of the Assembly as effete and the summoning of a Convention. His advice was adopted, and the National Democratic Convention was convoked for the 21st of September. In the interval the Royalists were murdered in the prisons, and the Revolutionary Commune established at Paris. News of the most alarming character arrived from the frontier, Lafayette had gone over to the enemy, and the Prussians had taken Longwy.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, Toryismor what is called High Churchismprevailed coincidently in the Establishment. True, the[159] 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.
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