ONE: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.
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ONE:There only needed now one thing to render the expedition triumphant, and place the Hudson from Albany to New York in the absolute power of the British armythat General Howe should have been prepared to keep the appointment[242] there with a proper fleet and armed force. But Howe was engaged in the campaign of Philadelphia, and seems to have been utterly incapable of conducting two such operations as watching Washington and supporting Burgoyne. As soon as Burgoyne discovered this fatal want of co-operation on the part of Howe, he ought to have retreated to the lakes, but he still determined to advance; and before doing so, he only awaited the coming up of the artillery and baggage under General Philips, and of Colonel St. Leger, who had been dispatched by the course of the Oswego, the Oneida Lake, and Wood Creek, and thence by the Mohawk river, which falls into the Hudson between Saratoga and Albany. St. Leger had two hundred regularsSir John Johnson's Royal Queen's and Canadian Rangerswith him, and a body of Indians under Brandt. St. Leger, on his way, had laid siege to Fort Schuyler, late Fort Stanwix, near the head of the Mohawk. General Herkimer raised the militia of Tryon county, and advanced to the relief of the place.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-halfpennya suitable accompaniment to the reduction of the stamp on newspapers, already noticedand 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.
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ONE:FIVE-SHILLING PIECE OF GEORGE III.
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ONE:During the winter of 1812 and the spring of[63] 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 Russiaan 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 himBernadotte 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.
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ONE: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[418] 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.
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