These disorders appealed with irresistible force to the Government and the legislature to put an end to a system fraught with so much evil, and threatening the utter disruption of society in Ireland. In the first place, something must be done to meet the wants of the destitute clergy and their families. Accordingly, Mr. Stanley brought in a Bill in May, 1832, authorising the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland to advance 60,000 as a fund for the payment of the clergy, who were unable to collect their tithes for the year 1831. This measure was designed to meet the existing necessity, and was only a preliminary to the promised settlement of the tithe question. It was therefore passed quickly through both Houses, and became law on the 1st of June. But the money thus advanced was not placed on the Consolidated Fund. The Government took upon itself the collection of the arrears of tithes and to reimburse itself for its advances out of the sum that it succeeded in recovering. It was a maxim with Mr. Stanley that the people should be made to respect the law; that they should not be allowed to trample upon it with impunity. The odious task thus assumed produced a state of unparalleled excitement. The people were driven to frenzy, instead of being frightened by the Chief Secretary becoming tithe-collector-general, and the army employed in its collection. The first proceeding of the Government to recover the tithes under the Act of the 1st of June was, therefore, the signal for general war. Bonfires blazed upon the hills, the rallying sounds of horns were heard along the valleys, and the mustering tread of thousands upon the roads, hurrying to the scene of a seizure or an auction. It was a bloody campaign; there was considerable loss of life, and the Church and the Government thus became more obnoxious to the people than ever. Mr. Stanley being the commander-in-chief on one side, and O'Connell on the other, the contest was embittered by their personal antipathies. It was found that the amount of the arrears for the year 1831 was 104,285, and that the whole amount which the Government was able to levy, after putting forward its strength in every possible way, was 12,000, the cost of collection being 15,000, so that the Government was not able to raise as much money as would pay the expenses of the campaign. This was how Mr. Stanley illustrated his favourite sentiment that the people should be made to respect the law. But the Liberal party among the Protestants fully sympathised with the anti-tithe recusants.
Being conveyed to St. John's, Burgoyne there disembarked, and on the 16th of June he commenced his march for Crown Point, the shipping following him by the lake. On the 1st of July he appeared before Ticonderoga. The place required ten thousand troops effectually to defend it; but St. Clair who commanded them had only three thousand, very indifferently armed and equipped. St. Clair saw at once that he must retire, as the Americans had already done, at Crown Point; but he sought to do it unobserved. Accordingly, in the night of the 5th of July the flight took place; but St. Clair's orders were immediately disobeyed; the soldiers fired the house which had been occupied by General de Fermoy, and the British were at once apprised of the retreat. The sailors soon broke up the obstructions at the mouth of the river, and a fleet of gunboats was in instant pursuit. They overtook the Americans near the falls of Skenesborough, and quickly mastered the protecting galleys, and destroyed the vessels. General Burgoyne followed with other gunboats containing troops, and at the same time dispatched Generals Fraser and Reisedel by land after St. Clair.During the absence of Major-General Smith Lord Lake maintained the bombardment of the fortress of Bhurtpore. As Holkar continued to hover near with a large body of cavalry, Lord Lake went in quest of him, and coming up with him, now again joined by Meer Khan and some bands of Pindarrees, he gave him a most crushing defeat on the 2nd of April, and drove him across the Chumbul river. On this, the Rajah of Bhurtpore consented to treat; and, on the 2nd of April, he agreed to surrender the fort of Deeg to the British till such time as they were satisfied of his fidelity; to renounce all connection with the enemies of Britain; to pay by instalments twenty lacs of Ferruckabad rupees; to surrender a portion of his territory, and deliver one of his sons as a hostage for the fulfilment of his engagements. This was settled on the 10th of April, and on the 21st Lord Lake went in quest of Scindiah and Holkar, who had united their forces. At his approach they retreated towards Ajmere. As the rainy season was approaching, Lord Lake returned, and quartered his troops at Agra, Muttra, and neighbouring towns. Lord Wellesley was now superseded in the government of India by Lord Cornwallis, who was averse from the system of extensive annexation which Lord Wellesley had pursued. But his own health was failing, and as he ascended the country in order to confer with Lord Lake on his future policy, he died at Ghazee-pure, near Benares, having returned to India only three months. Sir George Barlow assumed the direction of affairs till the appointment of a new Governor General; and as Lord Lake was of opinion that there could be no security till Holkar and Scindiah were driven over the Indus, it was resolved to carry out that object. Scindiah, however, came in and made peace, and Holkar went northward, boasting that he would cross the Indus, and then return with a new avalanche of Sikhs and Afghans, and sweep away the British forces. But the Sikhs, who wished both him and us away, refused all aid to Holkar, except to mediate for him. Even then he hung back, and made great difficulties about the conditions; but Lord Lake at last informed him that unless the treaty were signed by a certain day, he would cross the Sutlej and advance to attack him. This brought him to, and on the 7th of January, 1806, the treaty was duly signed by him. By it Holkar renounced all claims on Poonah and Bundelcund, and, indeed, on any territory on the northern bank of the Chumbul, as well as all claims on the British Government and its allies. On her part, Britain agreed to restore to him, eighteen months after the treaty, Chandore, Galnauh, and other forts and districts south of the Taptee and Godavery, provided he fulfilled his engagements, remained peaceful, and did not molest the territories of the Company and its allies. By the treaty with Scindiah, which was completed on the 23rd of November, that of Surjee Anjengaum, made by General Wellesley, was confirmed: to restore to him Gwalior and Gohud, with the right to resume them in case he violated the treaty. The river Chumbul was made his boundary. In exchange for certain jaghires, amounting to fifteen lacs of rupees annually, which had been granted to some of his officers by the former treaty, he received an annual pension of four lacs of rupees for himself, a jaghire, worth two lacs of rupees, for his wife, and another, worth one lac, for his daughter. As for his father-in-law, Surjee-Row-Gautkaa man most hostile to the British, and who was supposed to have stimulated both Scindiah and Holkar to their late warhe was bound, like Holkar, not to admit him again to his counsels or service. No interference was made with his conquests between the rivers Chumbul and Taptee, nor with his arrangements with his tributary chiefs in Mewar and Marwar; but, on the other hand, he was required not to take into his service any Europeans, without consent of the British. French officers, indeed, who had served under M. Perron, were found to have directed the defence of the hill forts in this campaign, greatly to our damage.
FORE:THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA.The House, meanwhile, seemed to have been getting still more involved in the meshes of these difficulties. Stockdale commenced a fourth and fifth action against Hansard; an order was issued for the arrest of his attorney for contempt, and he was ultimately lodged in Newgate. But he afterwards brought actions against all the officers of the House that had been concerned in his arrest and had searched his premises. On the 17th of February Lord John Russell informed the House that he had a petition to present from Messrs. Hansard to the effect that a fifth action had been commenced against them by Stockdale for the same course as before. It was then moved that Stockdale, and the son of Howard, his attorney, a lad of nineteen, and his clerk, by commencing this action had been guilty of a contempt of the House. This was carried by a majority of 71, and they, too, were imprisoned.
Our forces in Sicily had an encounter, in the autumn, with those of Murat, King of Naples. Murat was ambitious of driving us out of Sicily, and Ferdinand IV. and his court with us. From spring till September he had an army lying at Scylla, Reggio, and in the hills overlooking the Strait of Messina, but he did not attempt to put across till the 18th of September. Seizing then the opportunity, when our flotilla of gunboats and our cruisers were off the station, he pushed across a body of three thousand five hundred men, under General Cavaignac. These troops were chiefly Neapolitans, but there were two battalions of Corsicans, and they were furnished with an embroidered standard to present to the Corsicans in our service, whom they hoped to induce to desert to them. General Cavaignac managed to land about seven miles to the south of Messina, and attacked the British right wing. Sir John Stuart made haste to bring up other troops to the support of the right, but before he could arrive, Colonel C. Campbell defeated the invaders, taking prisoners a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and forty other officers, with eight hundred men. There was a rapid retreat to their boats by the intruders, but the British pursued and cut to pieces great numbers of them, besides what were killed by the Sicilian peasantry. One boat full of soldiers was sunk as it went off, and the Neapolitans in another deserted to their old king.
