THREE:On the 24th of June Parliament was prorogued by commission. The Royal Speech expressed thanks for the attention that had been given to the affairs of Ireland, and the settlement of the Catholic question, which the king hoped would tend to the permanent tranquillity of that country, and to draw closer the bonds of union between it and the rest of the empire. It was announced that diplomatic relations had been renewed with the Porte, for which ambassadors from England and France had taken their departure. But it was with increased regret that his Majesty again adverted to the condition of the Portuguese monarchy. He repeated his determination to use every effort to reconcile conflicting interests, and to remove the evils which pressed so heavily on a country the prosperity of which must ever be an object of his solicitude. The condition of that country was, indeed, most deplorable under the lawless despotism of Dom Miguel, who, on the abdication of his brother Dom Pedro in favour of Do?a Maria da Gloria, had been appointed regent, but had subsequently assumed the royal title, and driven his niece from the country. He overruled the decisions of the courts of justice regarding political prisoners, and inflicted the punishment of death by his own mere arbitrary order, when only transportation had been decreed by the judges. He crowded the prisons with the most distinguished supporters of constitutional government, confiscated their property, and appropriated it to his own use. Yet this monster would have been acknowledged by the Duke of Wellington. Had the Duke been free to follow the dictates of his own judgment, he would have at once resumed the diplomatic relations which had been broken off between the two states. But Britain was committed to the young queen by the policy of the preceding Administration; and the Duke, though he believed that policy to be unwise, could not break through it in a moment. It was not without difficulty, however, that Britain maintained her neutrality between the contending parties. The Portuguese refugees endeavoured, under various false pretences, to avail themselves of British hospitality, for the purpose of conveying arms and ammunition, and bodies of troops into Portugal, to restore the queen. They asserted that they were sending them to Brazil, but really conveyed them to Terceira, one of the Azores, where Do?a Maria had been proclaimed. The consequence was that 4,000 Portuguese troops, which were lying at Plymouth, were ordered to disband, and Captain Walpole, with a squadron, was sent to watch the Portuguese ships in the Atlantic, in order to avoid the imputation of violating the neutrality. His orders were to proceed to the Azores, to intercept any vessels arriving at those islands, and "should they persist, notwithstanding, in hovering about or making any attempt to effect a landing, you are then to use force to drive them away from the neighbourhood." Walpole intercepted four vessels, containing a force of 650 men under the command of the Duke of Saldanha. They declined to bring-to, whereupon he fired a shot which killed one man and wounded another. Saldanha thereupon declared that he considered himself Walpole's prisoner, and turned his vessels towards Europe. Walpole, in great perplexity, followed him, until he was within 500 miles of Scilly, when they parted company and Saldanha went to Havre. These proceedings were regarded with indignation in Great Britain, the enemies of the Government asserting that, in spite of their declarations of neutrality, they had proved themselves partisans of Dom Miguel. Debates were raised in both Houses, Lord Palmerston in the Commons making his first great speech in condemnation of the Duke's foreign policy. It is significant that Wellington should have written to Lord Aberdeen in a private letter: "In respect to Portugal you may tell Prince Polignac that we are determined that there shall be no revolutionary movement from England or any part of the world."This appeal did something to strengthen them, but not permanently. The fact that Parliament might terminate any day from the death of the king did much to keep members in remembrance of their constituents; but the great cause of Ministerial decay of popularity was that the circumstance and spirit of the times demanded more liberal legislation than such men as Liverpool, Sidmouth, and Eldon could comprehend, much less originate. The manufacturing districts were especially in a depressed condition. The efforts which had been made to force a trade had failed. The excessive exportation of manufactured goods had resulted exactly as Brougham had prognosticated: the foreign markets had been glutted before the people were capable of buying, and the fall in prices had been ruinous. The equally great importation of raw material to continue the supply of fabrics for which the demand was inadequate, had made matters worse. The bankruptcies during the first half of this year were double the average number, credit was severely shaken, and numbers of workmen were thrown out of employment or reduced to very low wages. Wheat, though not so high as a year or two ago, averaged eighty shillings per quarter. The consequence was a renewed political action, and meetings were called by the workmen in various parts of the manufacturing districts to consider both their unsatisfactory position and the governmental as well as commercial causes of it. The Corn Laws were justly denounced as one potent cause of their sufferings, and the popular leaders of Reform were called upon to assist them in getting rid of it. So early as the 18th of January a meeting of this character was held at Manchester. Application had been made to the borough-reeve to summon a meeting to petition Parliament for this object, but he declined, the Manchester authorities of that day standing strangely aloof from the people in their endeavours for relief from this enactment, which was as inimical to their own interests as manufacturers, as it was to the comfort of their work-people.
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FORE:Joseph, in the face of these things, passed an edict sequestrating all the abbeys in Brabant. The States of Brabant therefore refused the voting of any subsidies, and Joseph, irritated to deeper blindness, determined to abolish the Great Charter entitled the Joyeuse Entre, so called because granted on the entry of Philip the Good into Brussels, and on which nearly all their privileges rested. To compel them to vote a permanent subsidy, the military surrounded the States of Hainault, forcibly dissolved their sitting, and then calling an extraordinary meeting of the States of Brabant, Trautmansdorff ordered them to pass an Act sanctioning such a subsidy. But the deputies remained firm, and thereupon the Joyeuse Entre was annulled by proclamation, and the House of Assembly dissolved. Joseph vowed that he would extinguish the rebellion in blood, and reduce the Netherlands to the same despotism which ruled all his other states, except Hungary and the Tyrol.Rodney, who was still commanding in the West Indies, had been on the look-out for De Grasse, but, missing him, he had dispatched Sir Samuel Hood after him, supposing that he had made for New York. Hood had with him fourteen ships of the line, and, arriving at Sandy Hook on the 28th of August, he found that De Grasse had then sailed for the Chesapeake. Admiral Arbuthnot had been replaced by Admiral Graves, but Graves had only seven ships of the line, and of these only five fit for action. Taking the chief command, with these twenty-one ships Graves set sail for the Chesapeake, with Hood as second in command. There, on the 5th of September, he discerned the fleet of De Grasse at anchor, just within the Capes of Virginia, and blocking up York River with his frigates. Graves had his nineteen ships, De Grasse twenty-eight, and Nelson could have desired nothing better than such a sight in the narrow waters of the Chesapeake: not a ship would have escaped him; but Graves was no Nelson, and allowed De Grasse to cut his cables and run out to sea. There, indeed, Graves attacked him, but under infinitely greater disadvantages, at four o'clock in the afternoon. The night parted them, and De Grasse returned to his old anchorage in the Chesapeake, and Graves sailed away again for New York.
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FORE:[See larger version] Sir Richard Quin, made a peer.
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FORE:
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