FORE:On the 19th Collingwood signalled Nelson that the French fleet was coming out of Cadiz. On the morning of the 21st, when the British fleet lay about seven leagues north-west of Cape Trafalgar, the hostile fleet was discovered about seven miles to the eastward. Nelson ordered the fleet to bear down on the enemy. As Villeneuve approached, he veered so as to bring Cadiz under his lee, and thus secure a retreat into it. This compelled Nelson to shift his course a little more northward. Villeneuve had preconcerted a plan of action which he boasted would prevent Nelson from cutting his line, as was his custom. He determined to advance in two lines, with each alternate ship about a cable's length to the windward of her second ahead and astern, so that his fleet would represent the chequers of a draft-board. This plan, however, did not succeed. Nelson found now the shoals of San Pedro and Trafalgar under the lee of both fleets, and, dreading that he might be carried upon them at the end of the battle, he signalled, from the Victory, for the fleet to anchor at the close of the day. He then told Blackwood that he should not be satisfied unless he took twenty of the enemy's ships, and asked him whether he thought a general signal of action were not wanting. Blackwood replied that he thought the fleet all understood what they were about. But Nelson hoisted on his mizen top-mast his last signal"England expects every Man to do his Duty." It was seen, and responded to with loud hurrahs.
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FORE:On the 21st of March a Committee which had been appointed early in the Session to inquire into the public income and expenditure, and to suggest what might in future be calculated on as the clear revenue, presented its report through Mr. Grenville, their chairman. On the 29th, Pitt, in a Committee of the whole House, entered upon the subject, and detailed the particulars of a plan to diminish progressively and steadily the further debt. It appeared from the report of the select Committee that there was, at present, a clear surplus revenue of nine hundred thousand pounds sterling, and that this surplus could, without any great additional burthen to the public, be made a million per annum. This he declared to be an unexpected state of financial vigour after so long and unfortunate a war. The plan which he proposed was to pay two hundred and fifty thousand pounds quarterly into the hands of Commissioners appointed for the purpose to purchase stock to that amount, which was under par, or to pay stock above par, and thus cancel so much debt. In addition to this, the annuities for lives, or for limited terms, would gradually cancel another portion. All dividends arising from such purchases were to be similarly applied. Pitt calculated that by this process, and by the compound interest on the savings to the revenue by it, in twenty-eight years no less than four millions sterling per annum of surplus revenue would be similarly applied, or employed for the exigencies of the State. By this halcyon process he contemplated the eventual extinction of that enormous debt, to pay the mere interest of which every nerve had been stretched, and every resource nearly exhausted. In a delightful state of self-gratulation, Pitt declared that he was happy to say that all this was readily accomplishable; that we had nothing to fear, except one thingthe possibility of any Minister in need violating this fund. Had the original Sinking Fund, he said, been kept sacred, we should have had now very little debt. To prevent the recurrence of this fatal facility of Ministers laying their hands on this Fund, he proposed to place it in the hands of Commissioners, and he declared that "no Minister could ever have the confidence to come down to that House and desire the repeal of so beneficial a law, which tended so directly to relieve the people from their burthens." He added that he felt that he had by this measure "raised a firm column, upon which he was proud to flatter himself that his name might be inscribed." He said not a word about the name of Dr. Price being inscribed there, to whom the whole merit of the scheme belonged; he never once mentioned his name at all. On his own part, Dr. Price complained not of this, but that he had submitted three schemes to Pitt, and that he had chosen the worst.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, Buonapartewho professed to be greatly insulted by the demandimmediately 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 Austriathe 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 Abb 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."
FORE:[500]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,[593] 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.
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