TWO:Muir and Palmer, on the 19th of December, 1793, had been conveyed on board the hulks at Woolwich, before being shipped off to the Antipodes, and were put in irons; but before they were sent off, the matter was brought before Parliament. It was introduced by Mr. Adams, on the 14th of February, 1794, moving for leave to bring in a bill to alter the enactment for allowing appeals from the Scottish Court of Justiciary in matters of law. This was refused, and he then gave notice of a motion for the revision of the trials of Muir and Palmer. Sheridan, on the 24th, presented a petition from Palmer, complaining of his sentence as unwarranted by law. Pitt protested against the reception of the petition, and Dundas declared that all such motions were too late; the warrant for Palmer's transportation was already signed and issued. Wilberforce moved that Palmer's being sent off should be delayed till the case was reconsidered, but this was also rejected by a large majority. Such was the determined spirit of Pitt and his parliamentary majority against all Reform, or justice to Reformers. On the 10th of March Mr. Adams again moved for a revision of the trials of Muir and Palmer, declaring that "leasing-making" (verbal sedition), their crime by the law of Scotland, was punishable by fine, imprisonment, or banishment, but not by transportation, and that their sentence was illegal. Fox exposed the rancorous spirit with which the trials had been conducted, and to which the judges had most indecently lent themselves; that the Lord Justice Clerk, during Muir's trial, had said, "A government in every country should be just like a corporation; and, in this country, it is made up of the landed interest, which alone has a right to be represented. As for the rabble, who have nothing but personal property, what hold has the nation on them? They may pack up all their property on their backs, and leave the country in the twinkling of an eye!" Lord Swinton said, "If punishment adequate to the crime of sedition were to be sought for, it could not be found in our law, now that torture is happily abolished." The Lord Advocate was in his place to defend his conduct and doctrine, but Pitt and Dundas supported these odious opinions. The House also sanctioned them by a large majority, and Adams's motion was rejected. In the Upper House, similar motions, introduced by Lords Lansdowne and Stanhope, were similarly treated.Thus the whole country was torn by religious animosity; the nobles were insolent to the Crown, and the people were nothing. Such was the divided condition of Poland which led to its dismemberment. All nobility of mind was destroyed; pride and oppression were the inseparable consequences of such a system. There was no middle class, no popular class; it was a country of lords and slavesof one class domineering over the other. The Greek Catholics were the Dissidents, and the Dissidents sought aid from Russiawhich was also Greek in religionand, to insure this aid, condescended to the lowest arts of solicitation, to the practice of fawning, stooping, and cringing to the great barbarous power of Russia on one side, and to the equally barbarous power of Turkey on the other. The nobles could bring large bodies of cavalry into the field, as many, at times, as a hundred thousand; but as they had no free people, and dreaded to arm their slaves, they had little or no infantry, except such as they hired, and even this was in no condition to withstand the heavy masses of Russian infantry, much less such armies as Prussia or Austria might be tempted to bring against them.
FORE: Accession of George IV.Meeting of ParliamentGeneral ElectionOpening of the New SessionDulness of AffairsBrougham on EducationQueen CarolineOmission of her Name from the LiturgyShe rejects the King's Proposals, and arrives in EnglandAttempts at a CompromiseThe King orders an InquiryThe Secret CommitteeThe Bill of Pains and PenaltiesArrival of the Queen in the House of LordsDiscussions on the Form of ProcedureSpeeches of Denman and the Attorney-GeneralEvidence for the ProsecutionBrougham's SpeechAbandonment of the BillGeneral RejoicingsViolence of Party FeelingPopularity of the QueenHer Claim to be crowned refusedThe Queen's Attempt to enter the AbbeyIndiscretion of the ActThe Coronation and the BanquetThe subsequent ScrambleDeath of the QueenDeparture of her BodyThe King's Visit to IrelandA Royal Oration and its enthusiastic ReceptionThe King and Lady ConynghamChanges in the GovernmentDiscontent of EldonWellesley in IrelandAlarming State of the CountryCanning's Speech on Catholic EmancipationParliamentary ReformAgricultural Distress and FinanceEldon's Outbreak on the Marriage BillSuicide of Lord LondonderryScene at his FuneralVisit of George IV. to ScotlandLoyalty of Sir Walter ScottAccount of the FestivitiesPeel's Letter to ScottReturn of the KingCanning takes the Foreign Office and Leadership of the House of CommonsHuskisson joins the CabinetThe Duke of Wellington sent to VeronaHis InstructionsPrinciples of the Holy AllianceThe Spanish ColoniesFrench Intervention in SpainThe Duke's Remonstrances with the French KingHis Interview with the CzarThe Congress of VeronaFailure of Wellington to prevent Intervention in SpainVindication of Canning's Policy in the CommonsHe calls the New World into Existence.
FORE:The other measures of Parliament during this Session were these:In the House of Lords Lord Holland, and in the Commons Henry Brougham, moved for addresses to his Majesty, exhorting him to persevere in his efforts to induce the Governments of other nations to co-operate in the abolition of the slave trade, and to take measures for putting a stop to the clandestine practice of British subjects yet carrying on this trade in a fraudulent manner, as well as to adopt plans for preventing other evasions of Mr. Wilberforce's Act. Mr. Bankes introduced a motion for rendering perpetual his Bill to prevent the grant of offices in reversion, and such a Bill was passed in the Commons, but rejected in the Lords.In order to enable the revenue to furnish the required million surplus for the Sinking Fund, Pitt found it necessary to propose to extend the excise laws to foreign wine, which had hitherto been under the jurisdiction of the Custom House. He contended that, on a moderate calculation, the sum lost to the revenue by the frauds in the trade in wine amounted to upwards of two hundred and eighty thousand pounds per annum. To remedy this, and to prevent at once smuggling and the adulteration of wine, the excise officers were to have free access to the cellars of all who sold wine, but not into private ones. To abate that repugnance to the law which excise laws awaken in the public mind, Pitt stated that the change would not amount to more than thirteen thousand pounds a year, and that not more than one hundred and seventy additional officers would be required, who could add little to the influence of the Crown, as they were by law incapable of voting at elections. He carried his Bill with little difficulty through the Commons; but in the Lords, Lord Loughborough made a decided set against it, and pointed out one most shameful provision in itnamely, that in case of any suit against an exciseman for improper seizure, a jury was prohibited giving more damages than twopence, or any costs of suit, or inflicting a fine of more than one shilling if the exciseman could show a probable cause for such a seizure. Lord Loughborough declared justly that this was a total denial of justice to the complaint against illegal conduct on the part of excisemen, for nothing would be so easy as for the excise to plead false information as a probable cause. It was a disgraceful infringement of the powers of juries, and Lord Loughborough called on Lord Camden to defend the sacred right of juries as he had formerly done. Camden was compelled to confess that the clause was objectionable; but that to attempt an alteration would destroy the Bill for the present Session, and so it was suffered to pass with this monstrous provision.
FORE:In committee the Opposition endeavoured to introduce some modifying clause. They proposed that the Dissenters should have schools for their own persuasion; and, had the object of the Bill been to prevent them from endangering the Church by educating the children of Churchmen, this would have served the purpose. But this was not the real object; the motive of the Bill was the old tyrannic spirit of the Church, and this most reasonable clause was rejected. They allowed, however, dames or schoolmistresses to teach the children to read; and they removed the conviction of offenders from the justices of peace to the courts of law, and granted a right of appeal to a higher court. Finally, they exempted tutors in noblemen's families, noblemen being supposed incapable of countenancing any other than teachers of Court principles. Stanhope seized on this to extend the privilege to the members of the House of Commons, arguing that, as many members of the Commons were connected with noble families, they must have an equal claim for the education of their children in sound principles. This was an exquisite bit of satire, but it was unavailing. The Hanoverian Tories, headed by Lord Anglesey, moved that the Act should extend to Ireland, where, as the native population was almost wholly Catholic, and therefore schismatic in the eye of the Established Church, the Bill would have almost entirely extinguished education. The Bill was carried on the 10th of June by a majority only of seventy-seven against seventy-two, and would not have been carried at all except for the late creation of Tory peers.
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THREE:[See larger version]The evening of the 27th of January was fixed for the Minister's general statement upon the commercial policy of the Government. Sir Robert proposed the reduction of the duty on Russian tallow from 3s. 2d. to 1s. 6d.; the abolition of duty on the coarser fabrics of linen, cotton, and woollen, and the reduction on the finer from 20 to 10 per cent.; on French brandy and Geneva, a reduction from 22s. 10d. to 15s.; on foreign free-grown Muscovada sugar, a reduction from 9s. 4d. to 5s. 10d.; and on clayed 11s. 10d. to 8s.; the admission of Indian corn and buckwheat duty free; on butter, the duty to be reduced from 20s. to 10s.; and on cheese, from 10s. to 5s.; the duty on live animals, and fresh and salted meats, pork, and vegetables to be abolished. As to corn, in lieu of the then sliding scale, he proposed that when the average price of wheat was 48s., the duty should fall by 1s. with every 1s. of rise in price, till on reaching 53s. the duty should be a fixed one of 4s.; that this mitigated scale should last for three years, and, by a positive enactment, then disappear on the 1st of February, 1849, leaving for the future only a nominal rate of duty; and that all British colonial wheat and flour should be forthwith admitted at a nominal rate.
THREE:De Crillon, seeing that his bombardment from shore produced little effect, determined to make the attack also from the sea. Amongst the multiplicity of inventions which the offered rewards had produced, the Chevalier D'Arcon, a French engineer, had produced a scheme which excited the most confident expectations. The plan was to construct ten monster floating batteries of such capacity that they should carry the heaviest artillery, and so made and defended that they could be neither sunk nor burnt. Loud was the clangour of hammer and saw, and, as the secret could not be long preserved, equally busy was the garrison within, preparing furnaces, and laying ready huge piles of balls, to be discharged red-hot at these machines as soon as they arrived. To constitute the intended batteries, ten large ships of from six hundred to one thousand four hundred tons burden were cut down, and made bombproof on the top. They were to be prevented from sinking by the enormous thickness of the timber in their bottoms, and their sides, which were to be six or seven feet thick, bolted, and covered with raw hides. They were to be rendered more buoyant by thicknesses of cork, and the interstices were to be filled with wet sand to prevent combustion. There were to be plentiful supplies, by means of pumps, pipes, and cisterns, of water, everywhere, to put out fire, for they seem to have been aware of the burning balls that were being prepared for them.Next came the declaration of war by the King of Prussia, which Buonaparte styled a treachery; but, on the contrary, the King of Prussia had only preserved faith towards his oppressor and insulter too long. Not only all Prussia, but all Germany was on fire to throw off the detested yoke of the oppressor, and Frederick William would have been a traitor to his people and to common sense to have hesitated. Yet he proposed terms of a mutual settlement. To place himself in a position of independent treaty, he suddenly left Berlin on the 22nd of January, and made his way to Breslau, where he was out of the reach of French arms, and in certainty of the arrival, at no very distant date, of Russian ones. He invited, however, the French ambassador to follow him, and he there proposed an armistice, on the conditions that the French should evacuate Dantzic and all the other Prussian fortresses on the Oder, and retire behind the Elbe, on which the Czar had promised that he would stop the march of his army beyond the Vistula. But Buonaparte treated the proposition with contempt; he was determined to give up nothingto recover everything.
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