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ONE: TWO:BY THOMAS DAVIDSON.[See larger version]
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ONE:The weary night at length passed. The dull sun of a December day (the 22nd) rose upon the ghastly scenes of that gory battlefield. The soldiers, many of whom were without food from the morning of the previous day, were again marshalled in order of battle. The artillery commenced the work, but with little effect. "But why waste time and ammunition thus?" said Gough. "We must try the bayonet once more." Then was made a tremendous charge for life. At first, part of the line reeled under the storm from the enemy's guns; but still the whole army pressed on with desperate shouts, the two wings closing in upon the village, driving everything before them, and still pressing onward till they captured the whole of the enemy's guns on the works. The two generals, waving the captured banners, rode in triumph before the victorious army, and were hailed with enthusiastic applause. The whole of the enemy's military stores and camp furniture, with seventy-three guns and seventeen standards, remained in possession of the British. One Sikh army was now defeated; but there was another to come on, 30,000 strong, most of whom were perfectly fresh. The spirit of the Commander-in-Chief seemed now to fail him, and he so despaired of the issue that he confessed in a letter to his friend, that for a moment he felt regret as each passing shot left him still on horseback. Most of our cavalry were hardly able to move from the exhaustion of the horses; our ammunition was nearly spent, while the fire from the enemy's guns was rapid. At this critical moment, owing to a misconception of orders, our cavalry and artillery moved off from the flanks, which they protected, taking the road towards Ferozepore. It was a blunder that seemed ordered by Providence to save our army from annihilation; for the Sikhsnot knowing our weakness, and conceiving that the design was to take possession of the fords, and prevent their crossing the riverimmediately began to retreat. Our infantry pursued; and such was the consternation and confusion of the enemy, that they never stopped running till they got to the other side of the Sutlej. In these terrible battles the British lost, in killed and wounded, 2,415 men, being a sixth of the whole number engaged. Among the killed were Major Broadfoot, political agent in the North-West Provinces, Colonel Wallace, and Major Somerset.THE JUMMA MUSJID, DELHI. (From a Photograph by Frith & Co.) TWO:The new Premier, however, was resolute, and persevered with his arrangements. He found an excellent successor to Lord Eldon, as Chancellor, in Sir John Copley, the Master of the Rolls, who was created Lord Lyndhurst. Mr. Peel, as Home Secretary, was succeeded by Mr. Sturges Bourne, who retired after a few weeks to make way for the Marquis of Lansdowne. He represented a section of the Whigs, prominent among whom were Brougham, Tierney and Burdett, who gave[259] their support to the Ministry. The Duke of Clarence succeeded Lord Melville as First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Marquis of Anglesey the Duke of Wellington as Master-General of the Ordnance. Viscount Palmerston was appointed the Secretary at War, with which office he commenced his long, brilliant, and popular career as a Cabinet Minister. The new Master of the Rolls was Sir John Leech, the Attorney-General Sir James Scarlett, and the Solicitor-General Sir N. Tindal. Mr. Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne, succeeded Mr. Goulburn as Chief Secretary of Ireland.
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ONE:This noble independence was in bright contrast to that of Scottish juries. In this very autumn, fresh trials of accused seditionists had taken place at Edinburgh, in which the conduct of Government and the servility of the Scottish juries were equally reprehensible. One Robert Watt, a ruined tradesman of that city, was put upon his trial, on the 14th of August, charged with eighteen overt acts of high treasonin exciting many individuals to arm themselves, and to meet in convention to concoct plans for the overthrow of the Government. But it appeared on the trial that Watt had long been a Government spy, employed to instigate people to these courses, by direct orders from Mr. Secretary Dundas and the Lord Advocate of Scotland. Letters from these gentlemen containing these orders, and proofs of Watt being in the pay of Government for these purposes, were produced by Mr. Henry Erskine, the prisoner's counsel. It was shown unanswerably that he had been encouraged to have arms made and distributed, and to tempt soldiers in Edinburgh. He had been thus employed to mislead and ensnare unsuspecting persons from August, 1792, to October, 1793more than twelve months; and it was shown that after this the Government had abandoned him, and that he had then joined the Reformers in earnest. Notwithstanding this display of the infamous conduct of the Government, Watt was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.The strong sense, lively fancy, and smart style of his satires, distinguished also Pope's prose, as in his "Treatise of the Bathos; or, the Art of Sinking in Poetry;" his "Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish"in ridicule of Burnet's "Own Times"his Letters, etc. In some of the last he describes the country and country seats, and the life there of his friends; which shows that, in an age more percipient of the charm of such things, he would have probably approached nearer to the heart of Nature, and given us something more genial and delightful than anything that he has left us. TWO:The distress was greatly aggravated, and spread over the whole country, by the extraordinary drought which prevailed in the summer of 1826. The richest meadows were burnt up. The stunted grain crops were only a few inches in height. The cattle, and even the deer in noblemen's parks, died from thirst. The people sat up all night to watch the springs, waiting for their turn to be[245] supplied. Water was retailed in small quantities, and sold like beer. Those who occupied the more favoured districts sent jars of fresh water to their friends in other places, as most acceptable presents. In the midst of all this scarcity and suffering the Corn Laws stopped the supplies of provisions from abroad, which were ready to be poured in in any quantities. Bills had been passed with great difficulty through Parliament, to enable Government to relax the restrictions of the Corn Laws, in order to meet the emergency. But so clogged were those enactments with conditions, that in autumn Ministers were obliged to anticipate their operation by opening the ports, trusting to the legislature for an indemnity. It is melancholy to reflect upon the perplexities and miseries in which the country was involved through the mistaken views of the landed interest, then predominant in Parliament.
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ONE:The very Dames des Halles, the market women, took up the word against them. They sang a song with much vivacity, "Donnez-nous notre paire de gants,"equivalent in pronunciation to notre pre de Ghent, that is, Louis, who was then residing at Ghent. None but the very lowest of the population retained the old illusions respecting him. In such circumstances, not even his new Constitution could satisfy anybody. It was very much the same as Louis XVIII. had sworn to in 1814. It granted free election of the House of Representatives, which was to be renewed every five years; the members were to be paid; land and other taxes were to be voted once a year; ministers were to be responsible; juries, right of petition, freedom of worship, inviolability of property, were all established. But Buonaparte destroyed the value of these concessions by publishing this, not as[93] a new Constitution, but as "an additional Act" to his former Constitution. The word "additional" meant everything, for it proclaimed that all the despotic decrees preceding this fresh declaration were still in force, and thus it neutralised or reduced these concessions to a mere burlesque.In electricity great strides were made. Between the years 1705 and 1711 Francis Hawksbee published in the Transactions of the Royal Society several experiments, in which he had, for the first time, discovered the production of the electric spark by friction, and electrical attraction and repulsion. In 1720 Stephen Gray, a pensioner of the Charterhouse, published the result of his experiments on this subject, with a list of the substances which showed electricity under friction; and in 1732 he discovered the conducting property of non-electrical bodies. Before 1739, Dufray, keeper of the King's Garden at Paris, discovered the repellent power of two similarly-electrified bodies, and the attraction of these positively and negatively electrifiedor, as he termed it, possessing the vitreous and the resinous electricity. Cuneus and Lallemand discovered the mode of accumulating the electric fluid in what was called the Leyden jar in 1745. This discovery gave a new impetus to inquiry, and Nollet, in France, and Watson, in England, conceived the hypothesis of the jar being overcharged on one side and undercharged on the other. This growing perception of the positive and negative conditions of the electric fluid received confirmation from the experiments of Benjamin Franklin, in America. Franklin soon improved the Leyden jar into an electrical battery; and, in 1752, he proved the identity of electricity and lightning by his grand experiment of the kite. On this he recommended lightning conductors, which, however, were not used in England till ten years afterwards. TWO:WILLIAM IV.Mr. Canning had been offered the Governor-Generalship of India. Before his departure, he was resolved, if possible, to make a breach in the system of Parliamentary exclusiveness. On the 29th of March he gave notice of a motion to bring in a Bill for the admission of Roman Catholic peers to seats in Parliament, and on the following day supported it by a speech of great power of argument and brilliant eloquence, illustrating his position very happily from the case of the Duke of Norfolk, and his official connection with the ceremonial of the coronation. He asked, "Did it ever occur to the representatives of Europe, when contemplating this animating spectacledid it occur to the ambassadors of Catholic Austria, of Catholic France, or of states more bigoted in matters of religionthat the moment this ceremony was over the Duke of Norfolk would become disseized of the exercise of his privileges amongst his fellow peers?that his robes of ceremony were to be laid aside and hung up until the distant (be it a very distant!) day when the coronation of a successor to his present most gracious Sovereign might again call him forth to assist at a similar solemnisation?that, after being thus exhibited to the eyes of the peers and people of England, and to the representatives of the princes and nations of the world, the Duke of Norfolkhighest in rank amongst the peersthe Lord Clifford, and others like him, representing a long line of illustrious ancestry, as if called forth and furnished for the occasion, like the lustres and banners that flamed and glittered in the scene, were to be, like them, thrown by as useless and trumpery formalities?that they might bend the knee and kiss the hand, that they might bear the train or rear the canopy, might discharge the offices assigned by Roman pride to their barbarian ancestors
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ONE:The year 1799 opened by the discussion of this new scheme of revenue. It was a mode of making every man tax himself by stating the amount of his income, on which he was to be charged ten per cent., with the exception only of such persons whose incomes were less than two hundred pounds per annum, who were to be charged less than ten per cent. It was to include all who had more than sixty pounds a-year. Pitt calculated the income of the nation at a hundred and two million pounds, which would thus produce a revenue of ten million pounds. To make this excellent device the more palatable, the increase in the assessed taxes made in the preceding Session was to be repealed. To such a degree did the nation trust the great Minister, that this tax was carried through both Houses with comparatively little difficulty. TWO:SIR ROWLAND HILL, 1847.
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