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THREE:"And now," said the Reverend Taylor, fingering the lock of hair over the little Reverend's right ear,[Pg 263] as that wise little owl considered with uncertain approval a whistle rattle Cairness had bought for him, "and now what are you going to do?"The year 1800 opened in the British Parliament by a debate on an Address to the king, approving of the reply to an overture for peace by Buonaparte, as First Consul of France. The letter addressed directly to the king was a grave breach of diplomatic etiquette, and was answered by Lord Grenville, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in a caustic but dignified tone. A correspondence ensued between Lord Grenville and M. Talleyrand, as French Minister for Foreign Affairs; but it ended in nothing, as the British Minister distinctly declined to treat. If Buonaparte had been sincerely desirous of peace, he must have withdrawn the French army from Egypt, as it was there with the open declaration of an intention to make that country a stepping-stone to India. But, so far from this, Buonaparte was, at the same moment, preparing to make fresh and still more overwhelming invasions of Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, and the proposal was simply made to gain time.

THREE:On the 11th of March, 1768, the Parliament, having nearly lived its term of seven years, was dissolved, and the most unprecedented corruption, bribery, and buying and selling of the people's right to their own House, came into play. The system originated by Walpole was now grown gigantic, and the sale and purchase of rotten boroughs was carried on in the most unblushing manner by candidates for Parliament, particularly aristocrats, who had managed to secure the old boroughs as their property, or to control them by their property. The Mayor and Aldermen of Oxford wrote to their members, long before the dissolution, to offer them the renewal of their seats for the sum of seven thousand five hundred pounds, which they meant to apply to the discharge of the debts of the corporation. The House arrested the Mayor and Aldermen, and clapped them in Newgate for five days; but on their humbly begging pardon at the bar of the House, they released them again to continue their base contract. Nay, whilst in prison, these corporation officials had sold their borough to the Duke of Marlborough and the Earl of Abingdon. Well might Chatham say this rotten part of the constitution wanted amputating. Where the people of corporations had votes, they were corrupted beyond all hope of resistance by the lavish bribes of the wealthy. The Earl Spencer spent seventy thousand pounds to secure the borough of Northampton for his nominee. There were attorneys acting then as now for such boroughs and such corrupt constituents, and they went about offering them to the highest bidders. One Hickey was notorious amongst this tribe; and above all, the borough of Shoreham distinguished itself by its venality, which assumed an aspect almost of blasphemy. The burgesses united in a club to share the proceeds of bribery equally amongst themselves, and styled themselves "the Christian Club," in imitation of the first Christians, who had all things in common! In the train of all this unprincipled corruption followed riots and tumults amongst the people, who were at once starving from the scarcity and dearness of bread, and infuriated with the drink with which they had been plied to serve the views of these base candidates. From the centre of this unholy chaos again rose the figure of John Wilkes, as the reputed champion of liberty.At the period at which we have now arrived France was in a state of the wildest and most awful convulsion. A revolution had broken out, more terrible and furious than had ever yet appeared in the history of nations. The French people, so long trodden down by their princes, their aristocracy, and their clergy, and reduced to a condition of wretchedness and of ignorant brutality, almost unparalleled, seizing the opportunity of the distresses of the impoverished Government, and encouraged by a new race of philosophers who preached up the equality of the human race, had broken through their ancient subserviency, and were pulling down all the old constituted powers, ranks, and distinctions, with a rapidity which electrified the whole world.