Charles Stanhope, though clearly guilty, escaped, after examination in the House, by a majority of three, out of respect for the memory of his deceased relative, the upright Lord Stanhope. Aislabie's case came next, and was so palpably bad that he was committed to the Tower and expelled the House, amid the ringing of bells, bonfires, and other signs of rejoicing in the City of London. The bulk of his property, moreover, was seized. This was some compensation to the public, which had murmured loudly at the acquittal of Stanhope. Sunderland's case was the next, and he escaped by the evidence against him being chiefly second-hand. He was acquitted by a majority of two hundred and thirty-three against one hundred and seventy-two. As to the king's mistresses, their sins were passed over out of a too conceding loyalty; but no favour was shown to the directors, though some of them were found to be much poorer when the scheme broke up than they were when it began. Amongst them was Mr. Gibbon, the grandfather of the historian, who afterwards exposed the injustice of many of these proceedings, though at the time they were considered as only too merited. The directors were disabled from ever again holding any place, or sitting in Parliament; and their estates, amounting to upwards of two millions, were confiscated for the relief of the sufferers by the scheme.The Spaniards had so crowded their ships with soldiers, and made such wretched provision for their accommodation, that the most destructive and contagious fever was raging amongst them. This was quickly communicated to the French vessels; the mortality was more than that of a great battle, and the combined fleet hastened to Martinique, where they landed their soldiers and part of their seamen to recruit. They remained at Fort Royal till the 5th of July, only to disagree and quarrel more and more. Proceeding thence to St. Domingo, they parted, De Guichen returning to Europe, as convoy of the French homebound merchantmen; and Solano sailing to Havana, to co-operate with his countrymen in their designs on Florida.
ONE:Trautmansdorff declared that, if necessary, forty thousand troops should be marched into the country; but this was an empty boast, for Joseph had so completely engaged his army against Turkey, that he could only send a thousand men into the Netherlands. On the contrary, the French Revolutionists offered the oppressed Netherlands speedy aid, and the Duke d'Aremberg, the Archbishop of Malines, and other nobles and dignitaries of the Church, met at Breda on the 14th of September, and proclaimed themselves the legitimate Assembly of the States of Brabant. They sent the plainest remonstrances to the Emperor, declaring that unless he immediately repealed his arbitrary edicts, and restored their Great Charter, they would assert their rights by the sword. In proof that these were no empty vaunts, the militia and volunteers again flew to arms. Scarcely a month had passed after the repeal of the Joyeuse Entre before a number of collisions had taken place between these citizen soldiers and the Imperial troops. In Tirlemont, Louvain, Antwerp, and Mons blood was shed. At Diest, the patriots, led on by the monks, drove out the troops and the magistrates. Dalton and Trautmansdorff, instead of fulfilling their menace, appeared paralysed.
TWO:When the subsidy to Hesse-Cassel was sent home to receive the signatures of the Cabinet, it was found to amount to an annual payment by England of one hundred and fifty thousand crowns, besides eighty crowns to every horseman, and thirty crowns to every foot soldier, when they were really called out to service. That to Russia was immensely greater; then came in prospective that to Saxony, to Bavaria, etc. These latter States had been fed all through the last few years for doing nothing, and now demanded vastly higher terms. Yet when the Hessian Treaty was laid on the Council table by the compliant Newcastle, Ministers signed it without reading it. Pitt and Fox, however, protested against it; and when the Treasury warrants for carrying the treaty into execution were sent down to Legge, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he refused to sign them.
THREE:In this utter desertion, the king prevailed on Lord North, who was already Chancellor of the Exchequer, to accept Grafton's post of First Lord of the Treasury, with the Premiership. Lord North, eldest son of the Earl of Guildford, was a man of a remarkably mild and pleasant temper, of sound sense, and highly honourable character. He was ungainly in his person and plain of countenance, but he was well versed in the business of Parliament, and particularly dexterous in tagging to motions of the Opposition some paragraph or other which neutralised the whole, or turned it even against them. He was exceedingly near-sighted, so much so, that he once carried off the wig of the old Secretary of the Navy, who sat near him in the House. For the rest, he was of so somnolent a nature that he was frequently seen nodding in the House when Opposition members were pouring out all the vials of their wrath on his head. He thought himself a Whig, but if we are to class him by his principles and his acts of administration, we must pronounce him a Tory.The employment of pit-coal had not reached perfection, and in 1785 the Society of Arts offered a premium for the making of fine bar iron with pit-coal. This object was accomplished by Mr. Cort, an iron-founder of Gloucestershire, by exposing the pig iron on the hearth of a reverberatory furnace to the flame of pit-coal. This process was improved into what was called puddling, in puddling or reverberatory furnaces. Cort also introduced the drawing out of iron between cylindrical rollers; but he became ruined in his experiments, and other iron-masters of more capital came in to reap the profit. Many years passed before a pension was conferred on some of his children for his services. In 1755 the whole population of Carron was only one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four; in 1795 the workmen alone employed in the works were one thousand, the population four thousand, when the foundry had five blast furnaces, sixteen air furnaces, three cupola furnaces, and consumed one hundred and thirty-six tons of coals daily. It supplied to the Government eleven thousand tons annually of cannon, mortars, shot, shells, etc.; to the East India Company six thousand tons; and to all customers together twenty-six thousand tons. The growth of the iron trade in Great Britain, through these improvements, may be seen from the fact that in 1802 there were one hundred and sixty-eight blast furnaces, producing two hundred and twenty thousand tons of iron; in 1820 the annual production of iron was four hundred thousand tons; in 1845 the production was calculated at twice that amountthat is, in twenty-five years the production had doubled itself. In 1771 the use of wire ropes, instead of hempen ones, was suggested by M. Bougainville, and this was made a fact by Captain Brown, in 1811. Before this, in 1800, Mr. Mushet, of Glasgow, discovered the art of converting malleable iron, or iron ore, into cast steel; and in 1804 Samuel Lucas, of Sheffield, further extended the benefit by the discovery of a mode[198] of converting any castings from pig iron at once into malleable iron, or cast steel, so that knives, forks, snuffers, scythes, and all kinds of articles, were converted into steel, "without any alterative process whatever between the blast furnace and the melting-pot." In 1815 it was calculated that two hundred thousand persons were employed in manufacturing articles of iron, the annual value of which was ten million pounds.
THREE:The war in America, amid the absorbing momentousness of the gigantic conflict in Europe, went on with little attention from Ministers at home, and, consequently, with the results which seem destined to attend Britain's campaigns in that quarter. In Canada, which the Americans were particularly anxious to obtain, there was a most meagre and inadequate British force; and, what was much worse, the Ministry still continued there the incompetent governor, Sir George Prevost. The only circumstances to which Britain owed the preservation of those provinces were the loyalty of the people and the sterling bravery of the handful of soldiers. Early in the year 1813 the American general, Dearborn, suddenly approached York, on Lake Ontario, and attacked it, supported by the flotilla under command of Commodore Chauncey. The British had about seven hundred men there, partly regulars, partly militia, with some few Indians. General Sheaffe drew off the main part of his force, and left the rest to capitulate, abandoning a considerable quantity of military and other stores, which were most desirable for the Americans. The British Government ought to have taken care to have had a fleet on the lakes, but this had been neglected, so that the Americans could not be prevented from bearing down on any point of the lake frontiers. Dearborn, having a strong flotilla, embarked the stores he won at York and sailed for Niagara, where he landed at Fort George, with six thousand infantry, two hundred and fifty cavalry, and a good train of artillery. The British there, under Vincent, were not a fourth of the enemy. Vincent, therefore, after some gallant fighting, retired up the strait to Burlington Bay, about fifty miles from Fort George, and, collecting the little garrisons from Fort Erie and other points, found himself at the head of about one thousand six hundred men, and resolved to make a stand. Dearborn, rendered confident by his great superiority of numbers, marched after him, and, on the 4th of June, was seen approaching the British position. He encamped about five miles from Vincent, with three thousand five hundred men and nine pieces of artillery. He intended to attack the next morning, but in this he was forestalled; for Colonel Harvey[106] reconnoitred his camp, and advised General Vincent to assault it at midnight with fixed bayonets. This was done, and though the attacking party numbered only seven hundred and four men, the Americans fled in all directions, leaving two generals, one hundred prisoners, and four pieces of artillery in their hands. Colonel Harvey, who had headed the charge, returned to the British camp loaded with booty. It was expected that, in the morning, when Dearborn ascertained the inferior force of British, he would renew the fight; but after destroying provisions and stores, to facilitate his flight, he decamped, and only halted eleven miles off, where he met with strong reinforcements.THE ROYAL FAMILY OF FRANCE ON THEIR WAY TO THE ASSEMBLY. (See p. 403.)
