ONE:But the English measures detained the Russian fleet in the Baltic with Greig at its head, and Russia was saved from her due chastisement. The King of Sweden, indeed, landed an army of thirty-five thousand men in Finland; and his brother, the Duke of Sudermania, appeared in the[352] Baltic at the head of a strong fleet. Nothing could have prevented Gustavus from marching directly on the Russian capital, and St. Petersburg was consequently thrown into the wildest alarm. But Gustavus was only bent on recovering the provinces which Russia had reft from Sweden. He advanced successfully for some time, the Russians everywhere flying before him; but Russian gold and Russian intrigue soon altered all this. Catherine ordered her fleet, which was in the Gulf of Finland, with Greig at its head, to bear down on the Swedish fleet, and, at the same time, emissaries were despatched amongst the officers of Gustavus's army with plenty of gold, and letters were sent to the States of Sweden, calling on them to disavow the proceedings of the king. Before Gustavus had left Sweden with his army, her Minister, passing over the king himself, had made similar communications to Gustavus's proud and disaffected nobles, and Gustavus had ordered him out of the country. The Russian and Swedish fleets now came to an engagement in the straits of Kalkbaden. The battle was desperate; the Swedes fought with their wonted valour; and the Russians, under the management of Greig and the British officers, showed that they were apt scholars. The two fleets separated, after doing each other great mischief, each claiming the victory. Catherine immediately rewarded Greig with a letter of thanks, written by her own hand, and with the more substantial present of a large sum of money, and a good estate in Livonia. Moreover, the partial success of Russia by sea had the effect of encouraging the corrupted officers of Gustavus to refuse to proceed farther in Finland.
TWO:Such are the elements which constituted the nucleus of that great nation which has been growing up under the British sceptre in North America. The French and Roman Catholic portions of the community could be most easily excited to disaffection against their Protestant governors, and in 1834 the irritation of the popular mind, supposed to be chiefly the work of the clergy, had risen to such a height that the Home Government thought it prudent to recall the Governor, Lord Aylmer, supposing his administration to be the cause of it. Sir Robert Peel appointed Lord Amherst as his successor. In one respect he was not the best that could be selected; for though his antecedents and experience were sufficient to warrant the appointment, the name must have been obnoxious to the priests and people of Lower Canada, as it was by the arms of his uncle, whose title he inherited, that the province had been wrested from France. He had been at one time ambassador to China, and subsequently Governor-General of India. He had, however, no opportunity of testing his administrative abilities in this new field, for after the fall of Peel the Melbourne Government determined on associating him with two Commissioners. Lord Melbourne thereupon sent out the Earl of Gosford as Governor, with a Board of Commissioners, of which he was chairman, to inquire into the grievances by which the colony was agitated. The Government having refused to sanction a Bill that had been brought into the Lower House of Assembly for the purpose of rendering the Upper House elective, the Lower House had recourse to the extreme proceeding of stopping the supplies. The salaries of all the public servants ceased to be paid, in consequence of which the Colonial Secretary authorised the Governor to advance 31,000 from the military chest to meet the emergency. The Governor having required time to consider the answer he should give in these circumstances, the Opposition members all withdrew; and they were so numerous that they did not leave a quorum to carry on the public business.Undaunted by this display of prelatical bigotry, Lord Stanhope immediately gave notice of a Bill to prevent a tyrannical exercise of severity towards Quakers, whose principles did not permit them to pay tithes, church-rates, or Easter offerings; this he did on the 3rd of July of the same year. By the 7 and 8 William III. two justices of peace could order a distress on a Quaker for tithes under the value of ten pounds; and by 1 George I. this power was extended to the non-payment of Easter and other dues; but his Lordship showed that of late the clergy had preferred to resort to an Act of Henry VIII., a time when Quakers did not exist, which empowered the clergy, by warrant from two justices of peace, to seize the persons of the defaulters and throw them into prison, where, unless they paid the uttermost farthing, they might remain for life. Thus the clergy of the eighteenth century in England were not satisfied with the humane enactments of William III. or George I., by which they could easily and fully obtain their demands, but they thirsted for a little vengeance, a little of the old enjoyment of imprisoning and tormenting their neighbours, and therefore went back to the days of the brutal Henry VIII. for the means. They had, two months before, thrown a Quaker of Worcester into gaol for the non-payment of dues, so called, amounting to five shillings, and there was every prospect that he might lie there for life. At Coventry six Quakers had lately been prosecuted by the clergyman for Easter offerings of the amount of fourpence each; and this sum of two shillings amongst them had, in the ecclesiastical court, been swelled to three hundred pounds. For this three hundred pounds they were cast into prison, and might have lain there for life, but being highly respected by their townsmen, these had subscribed the money and let them out. But this, his Lordship observed, would prove a ruinous kindness to the Quakers, for it would whet the avarice of the clergy and proctors to such a degree that the people of that persuasion would everywhere be hunted down without mercy for small sums, which might be recovered at once by the simple process of distraint. He declared that he would have all clerical demands satisfied to the utmost, but not by such means, worthy only of the dark ages; and he therefore, in this Bill, proposed the repeal of the obnoxious Act of 27 Henry VIII. But the glutting of their vengeance was too precious to the clergy of this period, and the Bill was rejected without a division.
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