Mother says death is best!Vigilant Stair had discovered the ships that had been prepared at Havre, by the connivance and aid of the late king, and he insisted that they should be stopped. Admiral Byng also appeared off Havre with a squadron, and Lord Stair demanded that the ships should be given up to him. With this the Regent declined to comply, but he ordered them to be unloaded, and the arms to be deposited in the royal arsenal. One ship, however, escaped the search, containing, according to Bolingbroke, one thousand three hundred arms, and four thousand pounds of powder, which he proposed to send to Lord Mar, in Scotland.
ONE:The cause of the Pretender sank in proportion to the peace throughout Europe and the prosperity at home. From 1728 to 1740 it was at a very low ebb, and lost the few marked men who had moved in it. Three of the chief leaders died about this timeMar, Wharton, and Atterbury. So low was the Jacobite interest now fallen, that Sir Robert Walpole said that, if ever the Stuarts came again, it must be through the lowest people, for the chiefs were all dead or discouraged.SPADE GUINEA OF GEORGE III.
TWO:In this uneasy state of things Austria very unnecessarily put the match to the political train, and threw the whole of the south of Europe again into war. Don Joseph Molina, the Spanish Ambassador at Rome, being appointed Inquisitor-General at Spain, commenced his journey homewards, furnished with a passport from the Pope, and an assurance of safety from the Imperial Minister. Yet, notwithstanding this, he was perfidiously arrested by the Austrian authorities and secured in the citadel of Milan. The gross insult to Spain, and equally gross breach of faith, so exasperated the King and Queen of Spain that they would listen to nothing but war. The earnest expostulations of Alberoni, delivered in the form of a powerful memorial, were rejected, and he was compelled to abandon the cherished hopes of peaceful improvement and make the most active preparations for war.
THREE:[422]The news had the most instant effect across the Channel. All hesitation on the part of the French Court to enter into the treaty with the United States disappeared. The American Commissioners, Franklin, Deane, and Lee, were informed that the King of France was ready to make a treaty, claiming no advantage whatever, except that of trade with the States. It was intimated that this proceeding would, in all probability, involve France in a war with Great Britain, but that she would claim no indemnity on that score. The only condition for which she positively stipulated was, that America should, under no temptations, give up its independence, or return under the dominion of England. The two kingdoms were to make common cause, and assist each other against the common enemy. The Americans were to endeavour to make themselves masters of all the British territories that they could, and retain them as their rightful acquisition; the French to obtain whatever islands they could in the West Indies, and retain them. France did not venture to seek back the Canadas or Nova Scotia, well knowing that the Americans would not consent to have them there as neighbours. Neither country was to make peace with England without the other. Lee was to continue at Paris as the first American Ambassador there, and the treaty was to continue some weeks a secret, in order to obtain, if possible, the accession of Spain to it, which, however, they could not do then.
THREE:Not one of these monarchs, whose subjects had shed their blood and laid down their lives by hundreds of thousands to replace them in their power, had in return given these subjects a recompense by the institution of a more liberal form of government. The German kings and princes had openly promised such constitutions to induce them to expel Buonaparte; and, this accomplished, they shamefully broke their word. As Lord Byron well observed, we had put down one tyrant only to establish ten. In Spain, where we had made such stupendous exertions to restore Ferdinand, that monarch entered about the end of March; and his arrival was a signal for all the old royalists and priests to gather round him, and to insist on the annihilation of the Constitution made by the Cortes. He went to Gerona, where he was joined by General Elio and forty thousand men. Thence he marched to Saragossa and Valencia. At that city Te Deum was sung for his restoration, and, surrounded by soldiers and priests, he declared that the Cortes had never been legally convoked; that they had deprived him of the sovereignty, and the nobles and clergy of their status; and that he would not swear to the Constitution which they had prepared. On the 12th of May he entered his capital, amid the most frantic joy of the ignorant populace, and proceeded at once to seize all Liberal members of the Cortes, and throw them into prison. Wellington hastened to Madrid, and with his brother, Sir Henry Wellesley, the British Ambassador, and General Whittingham, in vain urged on Ferdinand to establish a liberal constitution, and govern on liberal principles. It was clear there was a time of terrible and bloody strife before Spain between the old tyrannies and superstitions and the new ideas.
