The magistrates, now summoned by the Lord Provost to a meeting in the Goldsmiths' Hall, resolved to send a deputation to the prince, desiring that he would cease hostilities till they had had time to decide what they should do. Scarcely had the deputies set out, when news came that the transports, with Cope's army on board, were seen off Dunbar, the wind being unfavourable for making Leith, and that his troops would soon be landed, and in full march for the city. It was now determined to recall the deputation, but that was found to be too late, and General Guest was applied to to return the muskets, bayonets, and cartridge boxes which had been given up to him. Guest very properly regarded men who had thrown up their arms in a panic as unfit to be trusted with them again, and advised that the dragoons should be ordered to unite with Cope's infantry, and advance on the city with all possible speed. About ten o'clock at night the deputation returned, having met the prince at Gray's Mill, only two miles from the city, who gave them a letter to the authorities, declaring that they had a sufficient security in his father's declarations and his own manifesto; and he only gave them till two o'clock in the morning to consider his terms. The deputation returned in the utmost dejection, little deeming that the prince had taken such measures as should render them the means of surrendering the city. But Charles had despatched Lochiel and Murray of Broughton, with eight hundred Camerons, to watch every opportunity of surprising the town, carrying with them a barrel of gunpowder to blow up one of the gates. This detachment had arrived, and hidden themselves in ambush near the Netherbow Port. The deputation passed in with their coach by another gate, and the ambush lay still till the coachman came out at the Netherbow Port to take his carriage and horses to the stables in the suburbs. The ambush rushed upon the gate before it could be closed, secured the sentinels, ran forward to the other gate, and secured its keepers also. When the inhabitants rose in the morning they were astonished to find the city in possession of the Highlanders. On the 17th of September Charles occupied Holyrood. Amidst wild enthusiasm, the Old Pretender was proclaimed as King James VIII. at the Cross, Murray of Broughton's beautiful wife sitting on horseback, with a drawn sword in her right hand, while with her left she distributed white favours to the crowd.
Thus was another glorious chance for the utter dispersion of the American army thrown away by this most incompetent commander; and, as Washington saw that he had nothing to fear during the winter, except from the elements, he determined to encamp himself, so as to keep the British in constant anxiety about him. He selected a strong piece of ground at a place called Valley Forge, covered with wood. He set his soldiers to fell trees and make log-huts, the interstices of which they stopped with moss, and daubed up with clay. As they had plenty of fuel, they could thus pass the winter in some degree of comfort. A great number of his men were on the verge of the expiration of their term, and were impatient to return home; but he persuaded many to remain, and he employed them in throwing up entrenchments on the right of his camp, which was open towards the plain. His left was defended by the Schuylkill, and his rear by a steep precipice[240] descending to the Valley Creek. He began two redoubts, but he soon saw that there was no fear of Howe moving so long as the winter lasted, and he left them unfinished. And thus the winter went over, Howe lying snugly at Philadelphia, enjoying his wine and his cards, and apparently forgetful that there was any such place as Valley Forge within five-and-twenty miles of him.
ONE: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.
Jeffs working with his wife, we think, volunteered Larry. Anyhow a woman slipped in and led us out of the hangar and started away in a motor boat, and then she must have come back, because yonders the boatAre there people as crazy as that? And going around, loose?In this Session the first step was taken in one of the greatest achievements of humanity which adorn the name of Britain. It was the grand preliminary towards annihilating the slave trade. The spirit of revolt against this odious trade had been gaining rapidly in the British mind. One of the earliest stabs given to it was by the pathetic story of Inkle and Yarico, in the "History of Barbadoes," by Lygon, which was taken up and amplified in the Spectator, and afterwards elaborated into an effective drama by Colman. Defoe, Dr. Johnson, Warburton in his "Divine Legation of Moses," and in his sermons so early as 1766, Voltaire, and other writers, had diffused a strong and sound feeling on the subject. It had been early attempted to establish the legal maxim, that a slave becomes a freed man in England; but in 1729 this had been positively pronounced against by Talbot and Yorke, then the highest legal authorities. But a more successful essay was made by Granville Sharp in 1772, in the case of James Somerset, and the principle was established, that the moment a slave set his foot on English ground he became free. In 1782 the Friends presented a petition to Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade. In 1785 Thomas Clarkson, then a student at the University of Cambridge, competed for and won the first prize for an essay on "The Slavery and Commerce in the Human Species," and this, which was undertaken as an academical exercise, led him to devote himself to the great work of the utter extinction of this evil. Mr. Ramsay, a clergyman of Kent, who had lived in St. Kitts, published a pamphlet on the same subject. The friends of Ramsay, Lady Middleton and Mrs. Bouverie, became zealous advocates of the cause, and finally Wilberforce resolved to make it the great object of his life. A society was now established in London, consisting only originally of twelve individuals, including the benevolent Mr. Thornton, and having Granville Sharp for its chairman. The members, however, were opulent merchants and bankers, and they set agents to work to collect information on the subject. The feeling rapidly spread; committees were formed in Manchester and other provincial towns for co-operation.
路见不平Eason吼
