TWO:The spring of 1720 was a period of remarkable national prosperity. But "the grand money schemes projected of late," which appeared to the Jacobite Atterbury and others calculated to cement the royal peace and strengthen the foundation[46] of the Government and nation, were destined to produce a very different effect. For the South Sea Bubble was about to burst. In 1711, Harley, being at his wits' end to maintain the public credit, established a fund to provide for the National Debt, which amounted to ten millions of pounds. To defray the interest he made permanent the duties on wine, vinegar, and tobacco, etc. To induce the purchase of the Government stock, he gave to the shareholders the exclusive privilege of trading to the Spanish settlements in South America, and procured them an Act of Parliament and a royal charter, under the name of the South Sea Company. The idea, hollow and groundless as it was, seized on the imagination of the most staid and experienced traders. All the dreams of boundless gold which haunted the heads of the followers of Drake and Raleigh were revived. The mania spread through the nation, and was industriously encouraged by the partisans of Harley. But this stupendous dream of wealth was based on the promises of Ministers, who at the Peace of Utrecht were to secure from the Government of Spain this right to trade to its colonies. The right was never granted by that haughty and jealous Power, further than for the settlement of some few factories, and the sending of one small ship annually of less than five hundred tons. This, and the Assiento, or privilege of supplying those colonies with African slaves, were the sole advantages obtained, and these were soon disturbed by the war with Spain, which broke out under Alberoni. The South Sea Company, however, from its general resources, remained a flourishing corporation, and was deemed the rival of the Bank of England.[See larger version]
- 水処理薬品
- 簡易?小型貫流ボイラ?貫流ボイラ向けに開発した純正ボイラ薬品。
TWO:The events on land were very different. Abercrombie, like General Braddock, advanced with all the careless presumption of a second-rate general. The grand object was to reduce Fort Ticonderoga, built on a neck of land between Lakes George and Champlain. At the landing, Lord Howe, one of the best officers, was killed, but they drove back the French, and advanced on the fort, which was of great strength, defended by a garrison of four thousand men, commanded by the Marquis de Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief of the Canadians, himself. Montcalm had raised a breastwork eight feet high, and made in front of it a barricade of felled trees with their branches outwards. Abercrombie, with a foolish confidence, advanced right upon this barricade, without waiting for the coming up of his artillery, which was detained by the badness of the roads. With a reckless disregard of the lives of his men, he commanded them to attempt to storm these defences, and after fighting with the usual courage of Englishmen for several hours, and two thousand of them being slaughtered, it was found that their efforts were useless, and they were ordered to retire. Brigadier Forbes, who had been sent against Fort Dupuesne, an attempt so disastrous to both Washington and Braddock, executed his task with the utmost promptitude and success. Forbes took possession of it on the 25th of November, and, in compliment to the great Minister under whose auspices they fought, named it Fort Pitt, since grown from a solitary fort into Pittsburg.Holland rose in exultation on the news of the overthrow of Buonaparte at Leipsic. His dominion over that country had been a bitter thraldom. Its sons had been dragged yearly, by conscription, to his great slaughter-houses called battle-fields in distant regions. Their trade had been crushed by his Continental system; their colonies seized by Great Britain; their mercantile sources thus dried upin fact, he had squeezed the wealth and the life out of Holland as out of a sponge, and hordes of French officials maintained an insolent dominance all over the country. At news of the Russian disasters, the Dutch had risen to throw off this hateful and ruinous yoke; but the French forces in Holland had then been sufficient to put them down, and to severely punish them for the attempt. But the necessities in Germany had nearly drained Holland of French troops, and they now rose once more joyfully at Amsterdam, on the 15th of November, and at the Hague on the 16th. They received the most prompt assurances of assistance from Great Britain. A man-of-war was immediately put at the service of the Prince of Orange, and after a nineteen years' exile he embarked on the 25th, and entered Amsterdam on the 1st of December as King of Holland, amid the most enthusiastic acclamations. An army of twenty-five thousand men was soon enrolled; the Allies were at hand; the French authorities fled, after laying hands on all the booty they could carry off; and with the exception of the fortress of[73] Bergen-op-Zoom, the country was speedily cleared of them.
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