The remainder of the parliamentary session was occupied with royal marriages and settlements. George III. and his queen, though pious and decorous in their own lives, had the misfortune to have amongst their sons some of the most dissolute and debauched men that ever figured in the corrupt atmosphere of courts. The Prince of Wales was become a very byword for his profligacy and extravagance. The Duke of York was but little better, so far as his means allowed him; and the Duke of Sussex, wishing to marry a woman to whom he was really attached, found the Royal Marriage Act standing in his way.
ONE:The foreign relations of England at this period were, on the whole, satisfactoryas 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 Dardanellesnay, 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[412] 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."
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TWO:The tumult in Ireland was succeeded by one in Scotland. The people of that country, though they were, by the provisions of the Act of union, to bear their proportion of the malt tax, had always refused compliance, and in 1713 had issued a violent resolution against it. They had never yet complied with the law, and Walpole, seeing the sturdy nature of the opposition, was willing to give up the point quietly. But during the Parliamentary Session of this year, Mr. Brodrick proposed that a duty of sixpence on every barrel of ale should be paid in lieu of it. Walpole was reluctant to go into the question, but the House was bent on it, and he therefore complied so far as to consent to a duty of threepence per barrel, or half the amount. There were promptly riots in Glasgow, and at Edinburgh the brewers refused to brew. Walpole sent down the Earl of Islay, the brother of the Duke of Argyll, and a zealous adherent of his own, to pacify the country. Islay behaved with equal prudence and firmness. He found the powerful combination of brewers essaying to make a stand against and then attempting to make terms with him. But he let them know that nothing but unconditional surrender to the laws would be accepted, and they at length held a meeting, where the chairman put the question, "To brew, or not to brew?" The members were to vote seriatim; but neither the man on his right nor the one on his left would venture to begin. In the long pause that ensued, one Gray declared that he thought there was nothing for them to do but to return to their trades; that he would not be bound by the majority, but would vote independently, and he voted to brew. The meeting broke up, and that night a number of breweries were set to work, and the next day, at noon, about forty brew-houses were in full action in Edinburgh, and ten in Leith.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-G?rschen. 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[65] 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 Scharnhorstan 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.
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TWO:The Parliamentary Session of 1791 was opened, after the Christmas recess, by Sir Philip Francis denouncing the war against Tippoo Sahib in India, and eulogising that prince. He moved thirteen resolutions condemnatory of the war; but they were all rejected, and Dundas, as head of the Board of Control, moved three counter-resolutions declaring that Tippoo had voluntarily broken the treaty made with him in 1784, and that faith must be kept with the Rajah of Travancore, whom he had attacked, as well as with the Nizam and the Mahrattas, and these resolutions were carried without a division.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 Fouch, he endeavoured to persuade Louis to declare himself attached to the Revolutionto 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 Fouch 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 Fouch 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 Fouch entered heart and soul into the plots of the Jacobins for the restoration of Napoleon.
FORE: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."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.
FORE:It met on the 29th of November. The king, in his speech, alluded to the determined resistance to the imperial authority of the American colonists, and pre-eminently of those of Massachusetts Bay. He called upon Parliament to support him in his endeavours to restore order. There was strong opposition to the addresses in both Houses, demands being made for a full production of all papers and correspondence on this great subject, but the battle did not begin until January, 1775, when Chatham moved the repeal of the legislation of the previous year, and the withdrawal of the troops from Boston.
FORE:The temper of Townshend was warm, though his nature was upright; and in this mood, a discussion taking place on foreign affairs at the house of Colonel Selwyn, the dispute became so heated that Walpole declared that he did not believe what Townshend was saying. The indignant Townshend seized Walpole by the collar, and they both grasped their swords. Mrs. Selwyn shrieked for assistance, and the incensed relatives were parted; but they never could be reconciled, and, after making another effort to obtain the dismissal of Newcastle, and to maintain his own position against the overbearing Walpole, Townshend resigned on the 16th of May. He retired to Reynham, and passed the remainder of his life in rural pursuits. One of the greatest benefits which he conferred on this country he conferred after his retirementthat of introducing the turnip from Germany.
FORE:But matters had greatly changed at Calcutta before this. Maclean did not present the letter of resignation till October, 1776; but, in September of that year, Colonel Monson had died, and, the members in the Council being now equal, the Governor-General's casting vote restored to him his lost majority. Hastings was not the man to defer for a moment the exercise of his authority. He began instantly to overturn, in spite of their most violent efforts, the measures of Francis and friends. He dismissed Goordas from the chief authority in Oude, and reinstated his "dear friend, Nat Middleton," as he familiarly termed him. He revived his land revenue system, and was planning new and powerful alliances with native princes, especially with the Nabob of Oude, and the Nizam of the Deccan, not omitting to cast a glance at the power of the Sikhs, whose dangerous ascendency he already foresaw. In the midst of these and other grand plans for the augmentation of British power in Indiaplans afterwards carried out by othershe was suddenly astounded by the arrival of a packet in June, 1777, containing the news of his resignation, and of its acceptance by the Directors. He at once protested that it was invalid, as he had countermanded the resignation before its presentation; but General Clavering, as next in succession, at once claimed the office of Governor-General, and Francis, in Council, administered the oath to him. Clavering immediately demanded the keys of the fort and the treasury from Hastings; but that gentleman refused to admit his own resignation, much less Clavering's election to his post. Here, then, were two would-be Governor-Generals, as Europe had formerly seen two conflicting Popes. To end the difficulty, Hastings proposed that the decision of the question should be referred to the Supreme Court. It is wonderful that Clavering and Francis should have consented to this, seeing that Impey, Hastings' friend, and the judge of Nuncomar, was at the head of that Court; but it was done, and the Court decided in Hastings' favour. No sooner was Hastings thus secured, than he charged Clavering with having forfeited both his place in the Council, and his post as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, by attempting to seize on the Governor-Generalship. Clavering and Francis were compelled to appeal once more to the Supreme Court, and this time, to his honour, Impey decided in favour of Clavering. Clavering, who had been deeply mortified by his defeat, died a few days after this occurred, in August, 1777. By this event the authority of Hastings in the government was sufficiently restored, notwithstanding that Wheler generally sided with Francis, for him to carry his own aims.
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FORE: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.
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FORE:Meanwhile the French generals, though they saw insurrections rising in every quarter, and though they themselves were located in different parts of the country, distant from each other, entertained no fear but that the steady discipline of their troops, and their own experience, would easily put them down. Murat had quitted Spain to proceed to his kingdom of Naples, which he had received on the 15th of July, and Savary was left at Madrid as Commander-in-Chief, and he found himself in a most arduous and embarrassing post, with so many points to watch and to strengthen for the suppression of the insurrection. The Spanish junta recommended their country, very prudently, to avoid regular engagements, with their yet raw forces, against the veteran armies of France, but to carry on a guerilla warfare, waylaying the enemy in mountains and defiles, cutting off their supplies, and harassing their rear, their outposts, and their foraging parties. The ardour and pride of the Spaniards only too much tempted the men to despise this advice, and whenever they did they severely paid for it. The relentless spirit of the people against the lawless invaders, on the other hand, incited the French to equal ferocity. They treated the Spaniards as rebels in arms against their king; the villages were given up to the plunder and licentiousness of the soldiers. This again fired the Spaniards to retaliation, and they put to death sick and wounded when they fell into their hands. The war thus commenced with features of peculiar horror. The character of the country rendered the conflict the more desperate to the invaders; the fertile regions were separated from each other[555] by vast desert heaths and barren mountains, so that Henry IV. had said truly, if a general invaded Spain with a small army he would be defeated; if with a large one, he would be starved. To collect provisions, the French had to disperse themselves over wide tracts, and thus exposed themselves to the ambuscades and surprises of the Spaniards, every peasant carrying his gun.At this news the Highlanders were filled with exuberant joy. They demanded permission to pursue and attack Cope's soldiers; but the chiefs saw too clearly the grand advantage offered them of descending suddenly into the Lowlands by the road thus left open. Whilst Sir John was making a forced march to Inverness, which he reached on the 29th of August, the Highlanders were descending like one of their own torrents southwards. In two days they traversed the mountains of Badenoch; on the third they reached the Vale of Athol.
TWO:Fox, on this occasion, also introduced the subject of the Prince of Wales's allowance, who, he contended, had far less than had been granted to a Prince of Wales since the accession of the House of Hanover, that allowance being one hundred thousand pounds a-year; and the present parsimony towards the prince being grossly aggravated by the royal Civil List having been raised, in this reign, from six hundred thousand pounds to nine hundred thousand pounds, and the Privy Purse from six thousand pounds to sixty thousand pounds. Fox's remarks were rendered all the more telling because, when the House went into committee on the finances, Pitt had made a most flourishing statement of the condition of the Exchequer. He took off the taxes which pressed most on the poorer portion of the populationnamely, on servants, the late augmentations on malt, on waggons, on inhabited houses, etc.,to the amount of two hundred thousand pounds and appropriated four hundred thousand pounds towards the reduction of the National Debt. Still blind to the storm rising across the strait of Dover, he declared that these were mere trifles compared with what he should be able to do shortly, for never was there a time when a more durable peace might be expected!
TWO:The Government of England saw the necessity of coming to some conclusion on the subject of Irish commerce, which should remove the distress, and, as a consequence, the disorder. The Irish Government, at the instigation of the English Administration, sent over Commissioners to consult with the Board of Trade in London, and certain terms being agreed upon, these were introduced by Mr. Orde, the Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, to the Irish House of Commons, on the 7th of February. These were, that all articles not of the growth of Great Britain or Ireland should be imported into each country from the other, under the same regulations and duties as were imposed on direct importation, and with the same drawbacks; that all prohibitions in either country against the importation of articles grown, produced, or manufactured in the other should be rescinded, and the duties equalised. There were some other resolutions relating to internal taxation, to facilitate the corn trade, and some details in foreign and international commerce. These, after some debate, were passed on the 11th, and, being agreed to by the Lords, were transmitted to England.(After the Portrait by Dance, in Greenwich Hospital.)
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 formnamely, 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.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."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[380] 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 members23, 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.
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