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ONE:The war of faction still went on furiously. In the Lords there was a violent debate on an address, recommended by Wharton, Cowper, Halifax, and others, on the old subject of removing the Pretender from Lorraine; and they went so far as to recommend that a reward should be offered to any person who should bring the Pretender, dead or alive, to her Majesty. This was so atrocious, considering the relation of the Pretender to the queen, that it was negatived, and another clause, substituting a reward for bringing him to justice should he attempt to land in Great Britain or Ireland. Though in the Commons, as well as in the Lords, it was decided that the Protestant succession was in no danger, an address insisting on the removal of the Pretender from Lorraine was carried. Anne received these addresses in anything but a gratified humour. She observed, in reply, that "it really would be a strengthening to the succession of the House of Hanover, if an end were put to these groundless fears and jealousies which had been so industriously promoted. I do not," she said, "at this time see any necessity for such a proclamation. Whenever I judge it necessary, I shall give my orders to have it issued."Having thus arranged with the natives, Clive came to the far more arduous business of compelling the Europeans to conform to the orders of the Company, that no more presents should be received. In his letters home he recommended that to put an end to the examples of corruption in high places, it was necessary that the Governor of Bengal should have a larger salary; that he and others of the higher officers should be prohibited from being concerned in trade; that the chief seat of government should be at Calcutta; and the Governor-General should have the authority, in cases of emergency, to decide independently of the Council. These were all sound views, but to carry them out required the highest exercise of his authority. He exacted a written pledge from the civil servants of the Company that they would receive no more presents from the native princes. To this there was considerable objection, and some resigned; but he carried this through, nominally at least. To sweeten the prohibition of civil servants engaging in trade, he gave them a share in the enormous emoluments of the salt monopolytwo hundred per cent. being laid on the introduction of salt, one of the requisites of life to the natives, from the adjoining state of Madras into that of Bengal. TWO:The world looked on in astonishmentdiplomatists in dread of more secret and momentous compacts, and that not without cause. In the heat of this hastily-formed alliance, it was proposed to marry the young Archduchess, the heiress of the Austrian States, to one of the Infants of Spaina contract, if carried out, which would probably have overthrown all that had been done at such cost of life and wealth for the establishment of the balance of power. This dangerous project was frustrated by other events, but serious engagements were entered into for compelling England to surrender Gibraltar and Minorca to Spain, and for placing the Pretender on the throne of Great Britain.Mackintosh, who was a young lawyer of excellent education, but yet entirely unknown, this year published his "Vindici? Gallic?," in reply to Burke; but he did it with the behaviour of a gentleman, and evident admiration of the genius and political services of the great man whom he opposed. His book was immensely admired, and at once lifted him into notice. But it was not long before he began to see the correctness of Burke's views and prophecies as to the French Revolution, and he did not shrink from avowing the change of his sentiments in the Monthly Review and in conversation. His talents and this alteration of his views recommended him to the Ministers, and he was appointed by Pitt and Loughborough a professor of Lincoln's Inn, where, in a course of lectures on the Constitution of England, he exhibited himself as an uncompromising censor of the doctrines he had approved in his "Vindici? Gallic?." For this he was classed, by the vehement worshippers of French ideas, with Burke, as a venal turncoat. Mackintosh did not content himself with recanting his opinions on this topic from the platform and the press; he wrote directly to Burke, who was now fast sinking under his labours and his disappointments, and expressed his undisguised admiration of his sagacity as a politician, and of his general principles and political philosophy. Burke invited him down to Beaconsfield, where a closer view of the philosopher and orator greatly increased his esteem and admiration of the man.
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ONE:Meanwhile the Convention determined to proceed to the abolition of the Constitution of '93, and to the establishment of one more accordant[448] with their own tendencies. In 1793 the Revolutionists were as violent against aristocracy as against monarchy, and had allowed only one legislative body. The precipitate acts of the last three years had now persuaded them that at least a second, if not an aristocratic, chamber might be useful, as a balance against legislation under violent impulses. They proposed, then, to have two chambersone called the Council of Five Hundred, composed of that number of members of at least thirty years of age, having exclusively the right of proposing laws, of whom one-third should be renewed every year; the second, called the Council of the Ancients, to consist of two hundred and fifty members, of at least forty years of age, all either widowers or married, having the sanctioning of the law, and also to be annually renewed by one-third. No sooner were these decrees passed than there was a violent outburst of discontent. On April 1st, and again on May 20th, the Parisian mob rose in insurrection, but were completely suppressed. This was the death-blow of the Democratic party. Then came the turn of the Royalists. A meeting took place in the Odon theatre, on the 3rd of October, under protection of some battalions of National Guard. The Duke of Nivernois presided. The Committees of Public Safety and Welfare gave the alarm to the Convention, and the Convention sent a force to disperse the meeting, but it had already dissolved itself. The Sections had committed the mistake of refusing to allow the ultra-Jacobins to vote, and the Convention now embodied and armed one thousand eight hundred of these, ready, in their indignation, to do anything. On the 4th, the Section Lepelletier beat to arms, and the committee held its meeting in the convent of Filles St. Thomas, in the Rue Vivienne. General Menou was summoned from the camp at Sablons, and ordered to disperse the meeting. He proceeded to the convent, found the committee of the Section armed, and, instead of dispersing them, agreed to retire on a promise that they would withdraw of themselves. The Convention immediately arrested Menou as a traitor, and deprived him of his command. They forthwith appointed Barras general of the interior in the place of Menou, and ordered him to clear the streets, and place troops in a position to insure the safety of the Convention. Barras was a general of brigade, but he was not too fond of exposing himself and, fortunately for him and for another, he had his eye on one who would execute the orders of the Convention without shrinking. This was Napoleon Buonaparte. The Convention had about five thousand troops; but the decision of the conflict must depend on the cannon. These were in the camp at Sablons. Buonaparte instantly dispatched Murat to secure them, and received the insurrectionists with such a shower of grape that after a short resistance they were completely defeated. TWO:The Lord High Commissioner immediately proceeded on his great mission, and after a tedious voyage landed at Quebec on the 29th of May. He took with him, as his private secretary, Mr. Charles Buller, a man of singular ability, an ardent friend of free institutions, gifted with a large mind and generous sympathies, and a spirit that rose superior to all party considerations. A more suitable man could scarcely have been found for such a work. But he also took out with him Mr. Turton and Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, men of ability but hopelessly damaged in character. He promptly proceeded to dismiss his Council and to select another of five who had no acquaintance with Canadian politics. He found on his arrival 116 state prisoners, whose trial had been postponed, awaiting his instructions. On the 28th of June the Lord High Commissioner published an ordinance, in which it was stated that Wolfred Nelson, and seven other persons therein named, had acknowledged their guilt, and submitted themselves to her Majesty's pleasure; that Papineau, with fifteen others, had absconded. The former were sentenced to be transported to Bermuda during pleasure, there to be submitted to such restraints as might be thought fit; the latter, if they should return to Canada, were to be put to death without further trial. In each of these cases an unfortunate error was committed. The Lord High Commissioner had no legal authority out of Canada, and could not order the detention of any one at Bermuda; and to doom men to be put to death without further trial, was denounced in Parliament, by Lord Brougham and others, as unconstitutional. Lord Brougham described it as "an appalling fact." Such a proceeding, he said, was "contrary to every principle of justice, and was opposed to the genius and spirit of English law, which humanely supposed every accused party to be innocent until he was proved to be guilty." His reasons for the course he had adopted were given by Lord Durham, in a despatch to the Home Secretary, dated June 29th. The British party, he said, did not require sanguinary punishment; but they desired security for the future, and the certainty that the returning tranquillity of the province would not be arrested by the machinations of the ringleaders of rebellion, either there or in the United States. He said: "I did not think it right to transport these persons to a convict colony, for two reasons; first, because it was affixing a character of moral infamy on their acts, which public opinion did not sanction; and, secondly, because I hold it to be impolitic to force on the colony itself persons who would be looked on in the light of political martyrs, and thus acquire perhaps a degree of influence which might be applied to evil uses in a community composed of such dangerous elements."[320]
Donec sodales eros sed efficitur mattis. Integer tincidunt, felis a placerat maximus, eros nulla dapibus dui, at facilisis enim odio at velit. Aenean dictum eleifend mi sit amet luctus. Maecenas suscipit imperdiet nisi ac hendrerit. congue felis ac massa rutrum pulvinar.
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ONE:A quarrel took place between Massena and Ney on the subject of attacking the British and Portuguese who invested Almeida, where was a French garrison, and Ney threw up his command, and retired to Salamanca. Massena was daily expecting the junction of Soult, who had taken Badajoz; but Wellington did not give time for this junction. He attacked Massena at Sabugal on the 3rd of April, and defeated him with heavy loss. Massena then continued his retreat for the frontier of Spain, and crossed the Agueda into that country on the 6th. Wellington then placed his army in cantonments between the Coa and the Agueda, and made more rigorous the blockade of Almeida. TWO:It would seem that the law officers of the Crown despaired of proceeding in the old way, but they, or the Ministers themselves, hit on a new and more daring one. On the 27th of March the Secretary of State addressed a circular letter to the lords-lieutenant of counties, informing them that the Law Officers were of opinion that a justice of the peace may issue warrants to apprehend persons charged with the publication of political libels, and compel them to give bail; and he required the lords-lieutenant to communicate this opinion to the ensuing Quarter Sessions, that all magistrates might act upon it. This was the most daring attack on the liberty of the subject which had been made in England since the days of the Stuarts. Lord Grey, on the 12th of May, made a most zealous and able speech in the House of Lords against this proceeding, denouncing the investment of justices of the peace with the power to decide beforehand questions which might puzzle the acutest juries, and to arrest and imprison for what might turn out to be no offence at all. He said:"If such be the power of the magistrate, and if this be the law, where, I ask, are all the boasted securities of our independence and freedom?" But it appears from the correspondence of Lord Sidmouth, that he was at this moment glorying in this expedient and triumphing in its imagined success. He said the charge of having put such power into the hands of magistrates, he would do his best and most constant endeavour to deserve; and that already the activity of the dealers in libellous matter was much diminished. He had, in truth, struck a deadly terror to the hearts of the stoutest patriots, who saw no prospect but ruin and incarceration if they dared to speak the truth. Cobbett then fled, and got over to America. In taking leave of his readers, in his Register of March 28th, he gave his reasons for escaping from the storm:"Lord Sidmouth was 'sorry to say' that I had not written anything that the Law Officers could prosecute with any chance of success. I do not remove," he continued, "for the purpose of writing libels, but for the purpose of being able to write what is not libellous. I do not retire from the combat with the Attorney-General, but from a combat with a dungeon, deprived of pen, ink, and paper. A combat with the Attorney-General is quite unequal enough; that, however, I would have encountered. I know too well what a trial by special jury is; yet that, or any sort of trial, I would stand to face. So that I could be sure of a trial of whatever sort, I would have run the risk; but against the absolute power of imprisonment, without even a hearing, for time unlimited, in any gaol in the kingdom, without the use of pen, ink, and paper, and without communication with any soul but the keepersagainst such a power it would have been worse than madness to attempt to strive."
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ONE:Disappointed in this quarter, the odious race of incendiary spies of Government tried their arts, and succeeded in duping some individuals in Yorkshire, and many more in Derbyshire. That the principal Government spy, Oliver, was busily engaged in this work of stirring up the ignorant and suffering population to open insurrection from the 17th of April to the 7th of June, when such an outbreak took place in Derbyshire, we have the most complete evidence. It then came out, from a servant of Sir John Byng, commander of the forces in that district, that Oliver had previously[126] been in communication with Sir John, and no doubt obtained his immediate liberation from him on the safe netting of his nine victims. In fact, in a letter from this Sir John Byng (then Lord Strafford), in 1846, to the Dean of Norwich, he candidly admits that he had received orders from Lord Sidmouth to assist the operations of Oliver, who was, his lordship said, going down into that part of the country where meetings were being frequently held, and that Oliver, who carried a letter to Sir John, was to give him all the information that he could, so that he might prevent such meetings. Here, as well as from other sources, we are assured that Oliver only received authority to collect information of the proceedings of the conspirators, and by no means to incite them to illegal acts. We have also the assurance of Mr. Louis Allsop, a distinguished solicitor of Nottingham, that Oliver was in communication with him on the 7th of June, immediately on his return from Yorkshire, and informed him that a meeting was the same evening to take place in Nottingham, and he and another gentleman strongly urged him to attend it, which Oliver did. Mr. Allsop says that Oliver had no instructions to incite, but only to collect information. All this has been industriously put forward to excuse Ministers. But what are the facts? We find Oliver not onlyaccording to evidence which came out on the trials of the unfortunate dupes at Derbydirectly stimulating the simple people to insurrection, but joining in deluding them into the persuasion that all London was ready to rise, and that one hundred and fifty thousand from the east and west of the capital only waited for them. We find him not only disseminating these ideas throughout these districts from the 17th of April to the 27th of May, but also to have concerted a simultaneous rising in Yorkshire, at Nottingham, and in Derbyshire, on the 6th of June. Thornhill-lees, in Yorkshire, was on the verge of action, and ten delegates, including Oliver, were arrested. In Derbyshire the insurrection actually took place.3 TWO:It might have been imagined that this magnificent and destructive repulse would have convinced the allies that the siege was hopeless, but they were pretty well informed that General Elliot had well nigh exhausted his ammunition in this prodigal death-shower, and they had still their great combined fleet, snug in the narrow bay, with scouts in the Strait to prevent the carrying in of supplies. But on the 24th of September news arrived at Madrid that the fleet of Lord Howe was under weigh for Gibraltar. Howe's fleet of thirty-four sail-of-the-line, six frigates, and three fire-ships, though in the neighbourhood of one of fifty sail-of-the-line, besides a number of frigates and smaller vessels, managed to get into the bay of Gibraltar all safe, amid the wildest acclamations of soldiers and inhabitants. By the 18th of October all the store-ships had discharged their cargoes, and had passed through the Strait, and on the 19th Lord Howe followed them with his fleet. The enemy's fleet then came out after him, and the next day they were in the open ocean, and Howe proceeded to their leeward to receive them. Some of their vessels had suffered[296] in the late gales, but they had still at least forty-four sail to Howe's thirty-four, and, having the weather-gauge, had every advantage. But after a partial firing, in which they received great damage from Howe, they hauled off and got into Cadiz bay. Howe, then dispatching part of his fleet to the West Indies and a second squadron to the Irish coast, returned home himself. The news of the grand defence of Gibraltar produced a wonderful rejoicing in England; thanks were voted by Parliament to the officers and privates of the brave garrison; General Elliot was invested with the Order of the Bath on the king's bastion in sight of the works which he had preserved, and on his return, in 1787, at the age of seventy, he was created a Peer as Lord Heathfield of Gibraltar.
Integer suscipit imperdiet nisi ac hendrerit. Nam congue felis ac massa rutrum pulvinar. Donec sodales eros sed efficitur mattis. Maecenas tincidunt, felis a placerat maximus, eros nulla dapibus dui, at facilisis enim odio at velit. Aenean dictum eleifend mi sit amet luctus.
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ONE:The taste for Italian music was now every day increasing; singers of that nation appeared with great applause at most concerts. In 1703 Italian music was introduced into the theatres as intermezzi, or interludes, consisting of singing and dancing; then whole operas appeared, the music Italian, the words English; and, in 1707, Urbani, a male soprano, and two Italian women, sang their parts all in Italian, the other performers using English. Finally, in 1710, a complete Italian opera was performed at the Queen's Theatre, Haymarket, and from that time the Italian opera was regularly established in London. This led to the arrival of the greatest composer whom the world had yet seen. George Frederick Handel was born at Halle, in Germany, in 1685. He had displayed wonderful genius for music as a mere child, and having, at the age of seven years, astonished the Duke of Saxe Weissenfelsat whose court his brother-in-law was a valetwho found him playing the organ in the chapel, he was, by the Duke's recommendation, regularly educated for the profession of music. At the age of ten, Handel composed the church service for voices and instruments; and after acquiring a great reputation in Hamburgwhere, in 1705, he brought out his "Almira"he proceeded to Florence, where he produced the opera of "Rodrigo," and thence to Venice, Rome, and Naples. After remaining in Italy four years, he was induced to come to England in 1710, at the pressing entreaties of many of the English nobility, to superintend the opera. But, though he was enthusiastically received, the party spirit which raged at that period soon made it impossible to conduct the opera with any degree of self-respect and independence. He therefore abandoned the attempt, having sunk nearly all his fortune in it, and commenced the composition of his noble oratorios. Racine's "Esther," abridged and altered by Humphreys, was set by him, in 1720, for the chapel of the Duke of Chandos at Cannons. It was, however, only by slow degrees that the wonderful genius of Handel was appreciated, yet it won its way against all prejudices and difficulties. In 1731 his "Esther" was performed by the children of the chapel-royal at the house of Bernard Gates, their master, and the following year, at the king's command, at the royal theatre in the Haymarket. It was fortunate for Handel that the monarch was German too, or he might have quitted the country in disgust before his fame had triumphed over faction and ignorance. So far did these operate, that in 1742, when he produced his glorious "Messiah," it was so coldly received that it was treated as a failure. Handel, in deep discouragement, however, gave it another trial in Dublin, where the warm imaginations of the Irish caught all its sublimity, and gave it an enthusiastic reception. On its next presentation in London his audience reversed the former judgment, and the delighted composer then presented the manuscript to the Foundling Hospital, where it was performed annually for the benefit of that excellent institution, and added to its funds ten thousand three hundred pounds. It became the custom, from 1737, to perform oratorios[156] on the Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent. Handel, whose genius has never been surpassed for vigour, spirit, invention, and sublimity, became blind in his latter years. He continued to perform in public, and to compose, till within a week of his death, which took place on April 13, 1759.[See larger version] TWO:The indignation of all parties in England was unbounded. They were persuaded that Junot might have been compelled to surrender with all his army as prisoners of war; that his arms and booty ought to have been given up entirely, as[562] well as the Russian fleet; and the army prevented from taking any part in the after war, except upon a proper exchange. And no doubt this might have been the case had Wellesley been permitted to follow his own judgment. A court of inquiry was appointed to sit in the great hall of Chelsea College, which opened on the 14th of November and closed on the 27th of December. Yet matters were so managed that scarcely any blame was cast on Sir Harry Burrard, and all the generals were declared free from blame. Sir Harry was, indeed, included in the praise bestowed by the committeethat Sir Hew Dalrymple, Sir Harry himself, and Sir Arthur Wellesley, as well as the rest of the officers and men, had displayed an ardour and gallantry on every occasion during the expedition that reflected the highest lustre on his Majesty's troops. But the public was not at all mystified by this strange sentence.
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