FORE:But the fleet at Sheerness, which sympathised with that at Portsmouth, did not think fit to accept the terms which had satisfied the seamen of Portsmouth. They were incited by a sailor, named Richard Parker, to stand for fresh demands, which were not likely to meet with the sympathy of either sailors or landsmen, being of a political character and including a revision of the Articles of War. On the 20th of May, the ships at the Nore, and others belonging to the North Sea fleet, appointed delegates, and sent in their demands, in imitation of the Portsmouth men. The Admiralty flatly rejected their petition. On the 23rd of May the mutineers hoisted the red flag; and all the ships of war lying near Sheerness dropped down to the Nore. On the 29th, a committee from the Board of Admiralty went down to Sheerness, to try to bring them to reason, but failed. The mutineers then drew their ships in a line across the Thames, cutting off all traffic between the sea and London. On this, the Government proceeded to pull up the buoys at the mouth of the river, to erect batteries along the shores for firing red-hot balls; and a proclamation was issued declaring the fleet in a state of rebellion, and prohibiting all intercourse with it. This soon brought some of the mutineers to their senses. They knew that every class of people was against them. On the 4th of June, the king's birthday, a royal salute was fired from the whole fleet, as a token of loyalty; the red flag was pulled down on every ship but the Sandwich, on board of which was Parker, and all the gay flags usual on such occasions were displayed. Several of the ships now began to drop away from the rest, and put themselves under protection of the guns of Sheerness. On the 13th of June the crew of the Sandwich followed this example, and delivered up the great agitator, Richard Parker, who was tried, and hanged at the yard-arm of that ship on the 30th. Some others of the delegates were executed, and others imprisoned in the hulks; and thus terminated this mutiny, as disgraceful to the sailors as that at Portsmouth was reasonable and honourable.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:[See larger version]
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:[See larger version]
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:Two courses were now open to the Duke of Wellington and to Peelto resign, in order that Emancipation might be carried by the statesmen who had always been its advocates, and who might therefore carry it without any violation of consistency or of their own political principles. It was for not adopting this course that they were exposed to all the odium which they so long endured. But the question was, whether Lord Grey or Lord Lansdowne could have carried Catholic Emancipation even with the aid of the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel in oppositioncould have overcome the repugnance of the Sovereign and the resistance of the House of Lords. It was their decided conviction that they could not, especially with due regard to the safety of the Established Church. But being convinced that the time had come when the question ought to be settled, the Duke examined the second course that was open to him, and embraced it. It was this: that postponing all other considerations to what he believed to be a great public duty, he should himself, as Prime Minister, endeavour to settle the question.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:"Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not,FROM THE PAINTING BY F. X. WINTERHALTER IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY.
FORE:Belgium, this summer, was the great battle-ground. In it were Austrians, Dutch, British, and Hanoverians. At the opening of the campaign the Allies had probably two hundred thousand men scattered along the frontiers, and the French upwards of three hundred thousand. But whilst the French were united in one object, and the Convention kept pouring fresh masses of men in, the Allies were slow and disunited. The Duke of York, who commanded the English and Hanoverians, about thirty thousand men, was completely tired of the sluggish formality of the Austrian general, Clairfait, and refused to serve under him. To remove the difficulty, the Emperor of Austria agreed to take the command of his forces in the Netherlands in person, so that the Duke of York would serve under him. Francis II. arrived in April, and great expectations were excited by his presence. Instead of urging all the different divisions of the allied armies to concentrate in large masses against the able generals, Pichegru and Jourdain, Francis sat down before the secondary fortress of Landrecies, though the Allies already held those of Valenciennes,[434] Cond, and Quesnoy. This enabled Pichegru to advance on West Flanders, and take Courtrai and Menin in the very face of Clairfait. At the same time Jourdain had entered the country of Luxembourg with a large force, and whilst the Austrians were wasting their time before Landrecies, he was still further reinforced from the army of the Rhine, which the absence of the King of Prussia left at leisure, and he now fell upon the Austrian general, Beaulieu; and though Beaulieu fought bravely for two days, he was overwhelmed by successive columns of fresh troops, and driven from his lines. Jourdain then advanced upon the Moselle, where the Prussians ought to have been, and were not, in spite of the subsidy.
FORE:
FORE:The Duke of Wellington had some difficulty in producing due subordination among the members of his Government at the outset. At Liverpool, Mr. Huskisson, in addressing his constituents, by way of apology for serving under a Tory chief, said that in taking office he had obtained guarantees for the future Liberal course of the Government. The Duke resented this assertion, and in the House of Lords, on the 11th of February, with some warmth, contradicted the statement, and declared that pledges had neither been asked nor given, and that if they had been asked, they would have been indignantly refused. Mr. Huskisson explained, in the Commons, that by guarantees he had meant only that the past conduct and character of his colleagues furnished pledges for the future course of the Ministry. Another cause of misunderstanding arose, on the 19th of the same month, with reference to the disfranchisement of East Retford. A Bill had been brought in for that purpose. A portion of the Cabinet were for the enlargement of the constituency by taking in the neighbouring hundred of Bassetlaw; but the constituency had obtained permission to be heard by counsel before the Lords, and they produced such an impression that the Duke of Wellington hesitated about the propriety of the measure. Another party were for transferring the members to Birmingham. The course Mr. Huskisson is represented to have taken on this question seems so tortuous that it is not easy to account for it. The Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel were understood to have advocated in the Cabinet the disfranchisement of East Retford, and the transference of its members to Birmingham. Mr. Huskisson, conceiving that he was in honour bound to adhere to an arrangement that Mr. Canning had made, voted for throwing open the franchise, and carried his point. They produced their Bill accordingly, and were met, as in the kindred case of Penryn, with a counter-proposal for transferring the members to Birmingham. Against this Mr. Huskisson argued, as tending to weaken too much and too suddenly the agricultural interest. The second reading was proposed on the 19th of May, and an animated debate ensued, in which the chief speakers on the Ministerial side were Mr. Peel and Mr. Huskisson. Nobody appeared to suspect that Mr. Huskisson did not intend to support with his vote the measure which as a speaker he had recommended. Such, however, proved to be the fact. A division took place, and Mr. Huskisson and Lord Palmerston, very much to the astonishment of all parties, went into the lobby against the Ministerial proposal. At two o'clock that night Mr. Huskisson wrote a letter to the Duke, which his Grace received at ten in the morning, in which he said, "I owe it to you, as the head of the Administration, and to Mr. Peel, as leader of the House of Commons, to lose no time in affording you an opportunity of placing my office in other hands." The Duke very naturally took this as a resignation, but Mr. Huskisson denied that it was so meant. An irritating correspondence ensued, and Mr. Huskisson left the Cabinet, as he affirmed, against his will. All the followers of Mr. Canning went with himnamely, Lord Dudley from the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston from the War Office, and Mr. C. Grant from the Board of Control. They were succeeded by Lord Aberdeen as Foreign Secretary, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald at the Board of Control, and Sir Henry Hardinge as Secretary at War. Such was the constitution of the Government, with all its Liberalism thus expurgated,[264] which repealed the Test and Corporation Acts, and carried Catholic Emancipation. The king was particularly anxious to have a strong Government. He was still firm in his resistance to Catholic Emancipation. The very mention of the subject by his Ministers produced a degree of excitement and irritation which made their intercourse with him occasionally unpleasant. The Duke of Wellington seemed, of all men, the least likely to give way on the subject. In the debate on the Test and Corporation Acts, he said, "There is no person in this House whose feelings and sentiments, after long consideration, are more decided than mine are with respect to the Roman Catholic claims; and I must say that, until I see a great change in that question, I must oppose it."In September the Americans in Fort Erie, being strongly reinforced, and elated by their repulse of General Drummond, marched out and made an attack on the British lines. General de Watteville received them with such effect that they rapidly fell back on Fort Erie and, no longer feeling themselves safe even there, they evacuated the fort, demolished its works, and retreated altogether from the shore of Upper Canada. When the news of peace, which had been concluded in December of this year, arrived in the spring, before the commencement of military operationsthough thirty thousand men at a time had invaded the Canadian frontiers, and Hampton, Wilkinson, and Harrison had all been marching in the direction of Kingston and Montreal simultaneously, the British were in possession of their fortress of Niagara, and of Michilimakinac, the key of the Michigan territory; and they had nothing to give in exchange but the defenceless shore of the Detroit. They had totally failed in their grand design on Canada, and had lostin killed, wounded, and prisonersnearly fifty thousand men, besides vast quantities of stores and ammunition. In short, they had incurred an expenditure quite heavy enough to deter them from lightly attacking the Canadas again.
FORE:Amongst the novelists of the later period of the reign we may name Horace Smith, author of "Brambletye House," etc.; Leigh Hunt, the poet, author of "Sir Ralph Esher;" Peacock, author of "Headlong Hall;" Beckford, author of the wild Eastern tale of "Vathek;" Hamilton, author of "Cyril Thornton," etc.; Maturin, author of "Melmoth the Wanderer," etc.; Mrs. Brunton, author of "Discipline," "Self-Control," etc.; and Miss Ferrier, author of "Marriage" and other novels of a high order. Jane Austen (b. 1775; d. 1817), author of "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park," "Sense and Sensibility," etc., all distinguished by the nicest sense of character, was far above any of these, and ranks with the foremost of our writers of fiction.The year 1743 opened with a mighty struggle on the subject of gin. In 1736, as we have seen, the awful increase of drunkenness, which was attributed to the cheapness of gin, induced a majority of the House of Commons to pass an Act levying twenty shillings a gallon duty upon the liquor, and charging every vendor of it fifty pounds per annum for a licence. Walpole at the time declared that such an attempt to place gin beyond the reach of the poor consumers would fail; that it would fail equally as a source of revenue, for it would lead to wholesale smuggling and every possible evasion of the law. The event had proved Walpole only too correct in his prognostications. So far from checking the use of gin, the Act had stimulated it enormously. The licences, so preposterously high, were wholly neglected; no duty was paid, yet the destructive liquid was sold at every street corner. Ministers now saw that, by attempting too much, every thing in this case had been lost. They were sacrificing the revenues only to sacrifice the well-being of the people. They determined, therefore, to reduce the licences from fifty pounds to one pound per annum, and at the same time to retain a moderate duty on the liquor. By this means the fatal compound would remain much at the same price, but the vendors would be induced to take out licences, and the revenues would be greatly improved, whilst the whole sale of the article would be more under the restraints of law and police. A Bill was framed on these principles, and passed rapidly through the Commons; but in the Lords it encountered a determined opposition. It was, however, carried entire, and, says Smollett, "we cannot help averring that it has not been attended with those dismal consequences which the Lords in the Opposition foretold."
