But the matter was not to be thus peacefully ended. Before Lord Exmouth had cleared out of the Mediterranean, the Algerinesnot in any concert with their Government but in an impulse of pure fanaticismhad rushed down from their castle at Bona on the Christian inhabitants of the town, where a coral fishery was carried on chiefly by Italians and Sicilians, under protection of a treaty made by Britain, and under that of her flag, and committed a brutal massacre on the fishermen, and also pulled down and trampled on the British flag, and pillaged the house of the British vice-consul.
Whilst these contentions were going on, Wren had entered fairly on his profession of architect. He built the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, begun in 1663, and completed in 1669; and the fine library of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the beautiful square, Neville's Court, to the same college. He also built the chapels of Pembroke and Emmanuel Colleges, in the same university. In the erection of these, he suffered, from the conceit and conflicting opinions of parties concerned, a foretaste of the squabbles and contradictions which rendered the whole period of the building of St. Paul's miserable. In 1665 he found leisure to visit Paris, and study the magnificent palaces and churches with which Louis XIV. was embellishing his capital. There he got a glimpse of the design for the Louvre, which Bernini, the architect, showed him, but only for a moment; and he was in communication with Mansard, Le Vau, and Le Pautre.Buonaparte, in his bulletin of June 21st, found a reason for this utter defeat in a panic fear that suddenly seized the army, through some evil-disposed person raising the cry of "Sauve qui peut!" But Ney denied, in his letter to the Duke of Otranto, that any such cry was raised. Another statement made very confidently in Paris was, that the Old Guard, being summoned to surrender, replied, "The Guard dies, but never surrenders!"a circumstance which never took place, though the Guards fought with the utmost bravery.
THREE:
FORE:The growth of material wealth during this reign had in no degree improved the condition of the working class in any proportion to that of other classes. Landlords had greatly raised their rents, and farmers, by the high price of corn and other provisions, had grown comparatively rich, many very rich. The merchants and master manufacturers had shared liberally in the benefits of a vastly increased commerce, and the wonderful spread of manufactures; but the working manufacturers, between the high price of corn and meat, and the lowness of their wages, were in a miserable condition, and frequently, as we have seen, were driven to riot and insurrection. The handloom weavers were swamped by machinery, and those working the machinery were living in wretched houses, and in a most neglected and insanitary condition. Before the first Sir Robert Peel introduced his Bill for reforming the hours and other regulations of cotton mills, many of these worked night and day, one gang, as it was called, succeeding another at the spinning-jenny, in hot, ill-ventilated rooms. Apprentices were purchased of parishes, either children of paupers, or orphans of such, and these were kept by mill-owners, and worked long hours, one gang having to quit their beds in the morning for another gang of these poor unfortunates to turn into them. The agricultural labourers were little better off. Their habitations were of the worst description, though squires' kennels on the same estates were equal, in all sanitary conditions, to tolerable mansions. Their wages remained only some eight or ten shillings a weekwhen the wheat which they had raised was one hundred and thirty shillings per quarter, and a stone of flour of fourteen pounds cost a gold seven-shilling piece. This drove them in shoals to the workhouse, and produced a state of things that is hardly credible. Their mental and moral condition was equally deplorable. Education, either in town or country, was scarcely known. There was not a school in all the swarming region[158] of Whitechapel, and many another equally poor and populous region of London, much less in country towns and agricultural parishes. It was a settled maxim amongst the landed gentry, that education, even of the most elementary kind, would totally destroy the supply of servants; and it was gravely stated in Parliament that the plot of Thistlewood was owing to the working classes being able to read.The Jacobites were in ecstasies at this new phase of their old enterprise. By Charles's adhesion, their scheme was stripped of all those prejudices which had insured its ruin with the English. It had no longer the unpopular aspect of a French invasion; it was no longer headed by a Popish but a Protestant leader; it was no longer consigned to an untried or doubtful general, but to one of the most victorious monarchs living, who came as a Protestant to call on a Protestant nation to receive their rightful king. Money was not wanting. Spain remitted to Baron Spaar a million of livres for the expedition, and the Court of the Pretender offered sixty thousand pounds.
At the end of the reign of Anne the shipping employed in commerce amounted to 448,000 tons, of which only 26,573 tons were foreign; so that the English mercantile shipping had increased, in little more than twelve years, 127,800 tons. At the end of the reign of George I. our mercantile shipping was only 456,000 tons, the foreign being 23,651 tons; so that the increase for the time was but slight. The royal navy had greatly decreased under George I. At the end of the reign of George II., the total amount of our commercial shipping was 573,978 tons, including 112,737 foreign. Thus, whilst the total shipping at the commencement of this period (in 1688) was only 244,788 tons, at the end of it (in 1760) the total was 573,978 tons, or a nett increase, in seventy-two years, of 329,190 tons: the increase being much larger than the total amount of tonnage possessed at the commencement of the period, the amount of foreign shipping remaining very nearly the samein fact, only 12,000 tons more. The royal navy, which, at the commencement of the period, was reckoned at 101,892 tons, at the end of it was 321,104 tons, showing an increase of 219,212 tons; and, at the rate of men employed at the commencement, the number now employed in both our commercial and our national navy could not be fewer than 160,000 men.Vol. V CHAPTER I. REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).Buonaparte landed at Cannes on the 1st of March. His advanced guard presented themselves before Antibes, and were made prisoners by the garrison. This did not discourage Buonaparte; he advanced by forced marches with his now less than one thousand men, and leaving behind him his train of artillery. Till he reached Dauphin, however, he received very little encouragement from any party. All the authorities, proprietors, and clergy, stood aloof; only a few peasantry occasionally cried "Vive l'Empereur!" but did not join him. He began to be very uneasy. But on the 7th of March, as he approached Grenoble, Colonel Labdoyre, who had been gained over before, came out with an eagle in his hand, and at the gates distributed tricolour cockades, which had been concealed in a drum. Buonaparte advanced alone towards the troops, and called on any one who wished to kill his Emperor to do his pleasure. All cried "Vive l'Empereur!" and crowded round him. General Marchand endeavoured to recall the soldiers to their duty, but in vain.On the 20th of March Sir Henry Hardinge brought forward the Ministerial plan for the settlement of the tithe question. It was proposed that in future tithes should be recoverable only from the head landlord, and that the owner should be entitled to recover only 75 per cent. of the amount, 25 per cent. being allowed for the cost of collection and the risk and liability which the landlord assumed. He might redeem it, if he wished, at twenty years' purchase, calculated upon[383] the diminished rate. The purchase-money was to be invested in land or otherwise for the benefit of the rectors and other tithe-owners. The arrears of 1834 were to be paid out of the residue of the million advanced from the Consolidated Fund, and the repayments of the clergy for the loans they had received were to be remitted. There was a good deal of discussion on this plan, Lord John Russell contending that it was the same in substance as the one brought forward last Session by the late Government. There was, however, some difference between the two measures. In the former, the landlords were to get two-fifths, or 40, out of every 100, securing to the clergy 77? per cent., and involving an annual charge of 17? per cent. on the Consolidated Fund. This was the shape the measure had assumed as the result of amendments carried in committee. The Ministerial resolution was carried by a majority of 213 to 198.[See larger version]
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