On the 2nd of May, two days only before Buonaparte entered his little capital of Elba, Louis made his public entry into Paris amid quite a gay and joyous-seeming crowd; for the Parisians are always ready for a parade and a sensation; and none are said to have worn gloomy looks on the occasion except the Imperial Guard, now, as they deemed themselves, degraded into the Royal Guardfrom the service of the most brilliant of conquerors to that of the most pacific and unsoldierlike of monarchs, who was too unwieldy even to mount a horse. For a time all appeared agreeable enough; but there were too many hostile interests at work for it to remain long so. In the new constitution, by which the Senate had acknowledged Louis, they had declared him recalled on the condition that he accepted the constitution framed for him; and at the same time they declared the Senate hereditary, and possessed of the rank, honours, and emoluments which Buonaparte had conferred on the members. Louis refused to acknowledge the right of the Senate to dictate a constitution to him. He assumed the throne as by his own proper hereditary descent; and he then gave of his free will a free constitution. This was the first cause of difference between the king and the people. The Royalists condemned the new constitution as making too much concession, and the Republicans resented his giving a charter of freedom, because it made them the slaves of his will. The Royalists soon began to monopolise offices and honours, and to clamour for the recovery of their estates, now in the hands of the people, and these were naturally jealous of their prevailing on the king and his family to favour such reclamations. The clergy, who, like the Noblesse, had been stripped of their property, and had now to subsist on annuities of five hundred livres, or about twenty-six pounds sixteen shillings and eightpence a-year, looked with resentment on those who were in possession of the spoil; and the well-known disposition of the king and his family to restore the status and the substance of the Catholic Church, made those who had this property, and thosethe greater part of the nationwho had no religion whatever, readily believe that ere long they would attempt to recall what the Revolution had distributed. These suspicions were greatly augmented by the folly and bigotry of the clergy. They refused to bury with the rites of the Church a Mademoiselle Raucour, simply because she was an actress. Great tumults arose on the occasion, and the Government was compelled to interfere and ensure the burial in due form. The more regular observance of the Sabbath was treated as bringing back the ancient superstitions; and the taking up of the remains of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette and conveying them to the royal place of sepulture in the Abbey of St. Denis was regarded as a direct censure of the Revolution. It was quite natural that Louis XVIII. should do this, and equally so that he should show some favour to the surviving chiefs of La Vende; but these things had the worst effect on the public mind, as tending to inspire fears of vengeance for the past, or of restoration of all that the past had thrown down. In these circumstances, the Royalists were discontented, because they thought Louis did too little for them, and the rest of the community because he did too much. The Jacobins, who had been suppressed, but not exterminated, by Buonaparte, now again raised their heads, under so mild and easy a monarch, with all their old audacity. They soon, however, despaired of reviving the Republic, and turned to the son of their old partisan, Philip galit, the Duke of Orleans, and solicited him to become their leader, promising to make him king. But the present dukeafterwards King Louis Philippewas too honourable a man for their purpose; he placed the invitation given him in the hands of Louis, and the Jacobins, then enraged, were determined to bring back Napoleon rather than tolerate the much easier yoke of the Bourbons. Carnot and Fouch soon offered themselves as their instruments. Carnot, who had been one of the foremost men of the Reign of Terror, had refused to acknowledge the rule of Buonaparte, who suppressed the Revolution, for a long time, but, so late as the present year, he had given in his adhesion, and was appointed engineer for carrying on the fortifications of Antwerp. He had now the hardihood to address a memorial to Louis XVIII., which, under the form of an apology for the Jacobins during the Revolution, was in truth a direct attack on the Royalists, describing them as a contemptible and small body, who had allowed Louis XVI. to be destroyed by[85] their cowardice, and now had brought back the king by the hands of Englishmen and Cossacks to endeavour to undo all that had been done for the people. He represented kings as naturally prone to despotism, and priests and nobles as inciting them to slaughter and rapine. The pretence was to lead the monarch to rely only on the people; the object was to exasperate the people against kings, nobles, and the Church.
[See larger version]The third reading of the Arms Bill passed by a majority of 66, and soon received the Royal Assent. In the Queen's Speech at the close of the Session there was a very pointed reference made to the state of Ireland. Her Majesty said that she had observed with the deepest concern the persevering efforts made to stir up discontent and disaffection among her subjects in Ireland, and to excite them to demand the repeal of the union; and from her deep conviction that the union was not less essential to the attainment of good government in Ireland than to the strength and stability of the empire, it was her firm determination, with the support of Parliament, and under the blessing of Divine Providence, to maintain inviolate that great bond of connection between the two countries. She thus concluded, "I feel assured that[530] those of my faithful subjects who have influence and authority in Ireland will discourage to the utmost of their power a system of pernicious agitation which disturbs the industry and retards the improvement of that country, and excites feelings of mutual distrust and animosity between different classes of my people."John Wilson, though born so far back as 1785, was one of the writers of this period distinguished for originality, freshness, power, and rich fancy, combined with learning and eloquence. As "Christopher North" he was long the delight of the readers of Blackwood's Magazine. His criticisms on poetry were distinguished by a profusion of thought and imagery, which flowed forth so rapidly, and sometimes so little under the control of judgment, that there seemed no reason why the[439] stream of illustration should not flow on for ever. He was a poet as well as a critic; but it is a singular fact that his imagination, like that of Milton, was more active in prose than in verse. In the latter, his genius was like a spirited horse in harness; in the former, like the same horse unbridled, and bounding wildly over the prairies. His principal poetical work was "The Isle of Palms," published in 1812, which was followed by one more elaborate, "The City of the Plague." Among the most popular of his prose fictions are, "The Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life," "The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay," and "The Foresters." But it was in periodical literature that he shone most brightly. Soon after the establishment of Blackwood's Magazine, in 1817, he became its chief editor, and thenceforward he poured forth through this organ all the treasures of his intellect. In 1820 he succeeded Dr. Thomas Brown as Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, which he held till 1851, when he resigned, in consequence of ill-health, receiving about the same time a pension of 300 a year from the Crown. As a professor he was greatly beloved by his students, on account of his genial nature and the warm interest he took in their welfare; and he was always surrounded by troops of friends, who respected his character almost as much as they admired his genius. He died in 1854.
FORE:The Home Secretary once more submitted his views to the Duke, in a memorandum dated January 12th, that was written with a view to being submitted to the king, in which he put the inevitable alternative of a Cabinet united in the determination to carry Catholic Emancipation, or a Cabinet constructed on exclusively Protestant principles; and he came to the conclusion that no Cabinet so constructed could possibly carry on the general administration of the country. The state of the House of Commons appeared to him to be an insuperable obstacle to the successful issue of that experiment. Since the year 1807 there had been five Parliaments, and in the course of each of these, with one exception, the House of Commons had come to a decision in favour of the consideration of the Catholic question. The present Parliament had decided in the same manner. A dissolution, were it practicable, would not result in an election more favourable to the Protestant interest, if an exclusively Protestant Government were formed. Even should there be an increase of anti-Catholic members in England, it would not compensate for the increased excitement in Ireland, and the violent and vexatious opposition that would be given by fifty or sixty Irish members, returned by the Catholic Association and the priests. Then there would be the difficulty about preserving the peace in Ireland. During the last autumn, out of the regular infantry force in the United Kingdom, amounting to about 30,000 men, 25,000 men were stationed either in Ireland or on the west coast of England, with a view to the maintenance of tranquillity in Ireland, Great Britain being then at peace with all the world. What would be the consequence should England be involved in a war with some foreign Power? Various other considerations were urged, upon which Mr. Peel founded his advice to the king, which wasthat he should not grant the Catholic claims, or any part of them, precipitately and unadvisedly, but that he should, in the first instance, remove the barrier which prevented the consideration of the Catholic question by the Cabinet, and permit his confidential servants to consider it in all its relations, on the same principles on which they considered any other question of public policy, in the hope that some plan of adjustment could be proposed, on the authority and responsibility of a Government likely to command the assent of Parliament and to unite in its support a powerful weight of Protestant opinion, from a conviction that it was a settlement equitable towards Roman Catholics and safe as it concerned the Protestant Establishment.The restrictions, however, if not to any great extent a practical grievance, were felt to be a stigma utterly undeserved, and the necessity for an annual Indemnity Act continually reminded a large, influential, intelligent, energetic portion of the nation of their inferiority to the rest of the king's subjects. The Government felt that public opinion was against them. They therefore allowed the Bill to go into committee without opposition, and there they adopted it as their own by carrying certain amendments. It passed the Commons by a majority of 44, the numbers being 237 to 193. From the tone of the debate in the Commons it was evident that the Government was not sorry to be left in a minority. In the House of Lords the measure encountered more opposition. Lord Eldon, exasperated with the treatment he had received from the Ministers, denounced it with the utmost vehemence. When he heard of its success in the Lower House, he was in a state of consternation.
The effects of the growth in our commerce and manufactures, and the consequent increase of the national wealth, were seen in the extension of London and other of our large towns. Eight new parishes were added to the metropolis during this period; the Chelsea Waterworks were established in 1721; and Westminster Bridge was completed in 1750. Bristol, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Frome, Dublin, and several other towns, grew amazingly.But, sorrowful as the sight itself was, the news of it in Great Britain excited the strongest condemnation in the party which had always doubted the power of Wellington to cope with the vast armies of France. They declared that he was carrying on a system that was ruining Portugal, and must make our name an opprobrium over the whole world, at the same time that it could not enable us to keep a footing there; that we must be driven out with terrible loss and infamy. But not so thought Wellington. Before him were the heights of Torres Vedras, about twenty-four miles from Lisbon. These, stretching in two ranges between the sea and the Tagus, presented a barrier which he did not mean the French to pass. He had already planned the whole scheme; he had already had these heights, themselves naturally strong, made tenfold stronger by military art; he had drawn the enemy after[606] him into a country stripped and destitute of everything, and there he meant to stop him, and keep him exposed to famine and winter, till he should be glad to retrace his steps. Neither should those steps be easy. Floods, and deep muddy roads, and dearths should lie before him; and at his heels should follow, keen as hornets, the Allied army, to avenge the miseries of this invaded people.The English now began to contemplate taking the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch. General Johnstone was dispatched in April with five ships of the line, some frigates, and smaller vessels, having on board General Medows and three regiments for this purpose; but encountering Admiral Suffren in the way, after an indecisive action, Johnstone fell in with and took a Dutch East Indiaman of great value, and learned through it that Suffren had managed to reach the Cape and give the alarm, and that the Cape was put into strong defence. Johnstone, therefore, made for Saldanha Bay, where he learned that a number of other Dutch East Indiamen were lying. Four of these he secured; the rest were run ashore by their commanders and burnt. During the autumn both Dutch and French suffered much from the British on the coasts of Coromandel and the island of Sumatra. They also took from the Dutch Negapatam, Penang, and other places.THE DEATH OF NELSON, 1805.
