On the 6th of January there landed at Greenwich an illustrious visitor to the Court on an unwelcome errandnamely, Prince Eugene. The Allies, justly alarmed at the Ministerial revolution which had taken place in England, and at the obvious design of the Tories to render abortive all the efforts of the Whigs and the Allies through the war, from mere party envy and malice, sent over Eugene to convince the queen and the Government of the fatal consequences of such policy. Harley paid obsequious court to the prince as long as he hoped to win him over. He gave a magnificent dinner in his honour, and declared that he looked on that day as the happiest of his life, since he had the honour to see in his house the greatest captain of the age. The prince, who felt that this was a mean blow at Marlborough, replied with a polite but cutting sarcasm, which must have sunk deep in the bosom of the Lord Treasurer, "My lord, if I am the greatest captain of the age, I owe it to your lordship." That was to say, because he had deprived the really greatest captain of his command. The queen, though she was compelled to treat Eugene graciously, and to order the preparation of costly gifts to him as the representative of the Allies, regarded him as a most unwelcome guest, and in her private circle took no pains to conceal it. The whole Tory party soon found that he was not a man to be seduced from his integrity, or brought to acquiesce in a course of policy which he felt and knew to be most disgraceful and disastrous to the peace of Europe; and being fully convinced of this, they let loose on the illustrious stranger all the virulence of the press. Eugene returned to the Continent, his mission being unaccomplished, on the 13th of March.We must open the year 1790 by reverting to the affairs of Britain, and of other countries having an influence on British interests. The Parliament met on the 21st of January; and, in the course of the debate on the Address in the Commons, Fox took the opportunity to laud the French Revolution, and especially the soldiers for destroying the Government which had raised them, and which they had sworn to obey. Burke, in reply, whilst paying the highest compliments to the genius of Fox, and expressing the value which he placed on his friendship, endeavoured to guard the House and country against the pernicious consequences of such an admiration as had been expressed by Fox. He declared the conduct of the troops disgraceful; for instead of betraying the Government, they ought to have defended it so far as to allow of its yielding the necessary reforms. But the so-called reforms in France, he said, were a disgrace to the nation. They had, instead of limiting each branch of the Government for the general good and for rational liberty, destroyed all the balances and counterpoises which gave the State steadiness and security. They had pulled down all things into an incongruous and ill-digested mass; they had concocted a digest of anarchy called the Rights of Man, which would disgrace a schoolboy; and had laid the axe to the root of all property by confiscating[371] that of the Church. To compare that revolution with our glorious one of 1688, he said, was next to blasphemy. They were diametrically opposed. Ours preserved the Constitution and got rid of an arbitrary monarch; theirs destroyed the Constitution and kept a monarch who was willing to concede reforms, but who was left helpless. Fox replied that he had been mistaken by his most venerated and estimable friend; that he was no friend to anarchy and lamented the cruelties that had been practised in France, but he considered them the natural result of the long and terrible despotism which had produced the convulsion, and that he had the firmest hopes that the French would yet complete their Constitution with wisdom and moderation. Here the matter might have ended, but Sheridan rose and uttered a grand but ill-considered eulogium on the French Revolution, and charged Burke with being an advocate of despotism. Burke highly resented this; he made a severe reply to Sheridan; and instead of the benefits which he prognosticated, Burke, with a deeper sagacity, declared that the issue of that revolution would be not only civil war but many other wars.
During the spring of 1794 the British, under Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Grey, took the French island of Martinique, in which attempt the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria, distinguished himself. They also took St. Lucia, Guadeloupe, and its dependencies, Marie-Galante, Deseada, and the Saintes. But they were not so successful in assisting the French Royalists in St. Domingo to expel the Republicans. They beat the French in three successive battles, but[431] our troops were then attacked by the yellow fever. General Whyte made himself master of the French capital, Port-au-Prince; but General Dundas, who was appointed governor, was carried off by the fever, as also were numbers of the troops. The French general also fell a victim to the fever; but at this juncture arrived the Jacobin Commissioner, Victor Hugues, with a reinforcement of from fifteen hundred to two thousand men. He immediately assumed the command, proclaimed freedom to all the blacks, and the plunder of the Royalists. The Royalists, terrified, submitted, or only feebly supported their British allies, who were thereupon compelled to yield them to their fate. Hughes, one of the bloodiest of the French revolutionists, set the guillotine to work in the hands of the negroes. The Royalists were beheaded or fusilladed in troops, their houses burnt, and their estates ravaged. Before the end of the year this monster had reduced the island to a dreadful desert. In his ferocious fury, he had caused the very sick and wounded in the hospitals to be massacred, and the dead to be thrown out of their graves. Amongst these were the remains of General Dundas, and the other dead British officers, which were flung into the river. Hugues also recovered Guadeloupe, and perpetrated the same cruelties and abominations there.These vexatious proceedings, including a great number of debates and divisions, led to the passing of an Act for more clearly defining the privileges of the House of Commons, which had made itself unpopular by its course of proceeding towards the sheriffs, who had only discharged duties which they could not have evaded without exposing themselves to the process of attachment. On the 5th of March, accordingly, Lord John Russell moved for leave to bring in a Bill relative to the publication of Parliamentary papers. He said, in the course of his speech, that at all periods of our history, whatever might have been the subjectwhether it regarded the privileges of Parliament or the rights of the Crown or any of the constituted authoritieswhenever any great public difficulty had arisen, the Parliament in its collective sense, meaning the Crown, Lords, and Commons, had been called in to solve those difficulties. With regard to the measure he was about to propose, he would take care to state in the preamble of the Bill that the privilege of the House was known only by interpretation of the House itself. He proposed that publications authorised by either House of Parliament should be protected, and should not be liable to prosecution in any court of common law. Leave was given to introduce the Bill by a majority of 149, in spite of the opposition of the Solicitor-General, Sir Thomas Wilde; the House went into committee on the Bill on the 13th of March, and it passed the third reading on the 20th of the same month. It was read a second time in the Lords on the 6th of April; and the Royal Assent was given to it by commission on the 14th of the same month.The opposition, however, was powerful. When Mr. Goulburn brought forward his resolution by which sugar certified to be the growth of China, Manila, Java, or other countries where no slave labour was employed, should be admitted at a duty of 34s., the colonial duty being 24s., the danger of the position of the Ministers was soon perceived. Lord John Russell proposed an amendment in favour of admitting all foreign sugars at 34s., a proposal which, though calculated to maintain the price of sugar at a higher point than the Government proposition, was less distasteful to the Free Traders, as abolishing the differential principle. This amendment was rejected by a majority of only 69. On the 14th of June the Government Bill came on for a third reading, and[513] the contest then began in earnest. Mr. Miles, the representative of the West India party, moved an amendment proposing a reduction of the duty on colonial sugar to 20s., instead of 24s., and the raising of the duties on foreign to 30s. and 34s. The Free Trade party were not entrapped by this offer of a reduction of 4s. on colonial sugar. They saw that Mr. Miles's amendment would only establish a differential duty of 14s. instead of 10s., the difference going to the West India planters. They now, moreover, at least hoped more from Sir Robert Peel than from any Minister likely to succeed him. Mr. Cobden and the League party therefore supported the Government; but so powerful was the combination against them that the division, which took place on the 14th of June, left Ministers in a minority of 20.On the 8th of April the dissolution of the Peel Administration took place, and on the 18th Lord Melbourne announced the completion of his arrangements. On that occasion Lord Alvanley asked the Premier if he had secured the assistance of Mr. O'Connell and his friends, and if so, upon what terms. Lord Melbourne answered that he did not coincide in opinion with Mr. O'Connell; that he had taken no means to secure his support; that he gave the most decided negative to Lord Alvanley's question; adding, "And if he has been told anything to the contrary, he has been told what is false, and without foundation." In the House of Commons, a few days after, Colonel Sibthorpe spoke of O'Connell as the prompter and adviser of the new Ministry, and said: "I do not like the countenances of the honourable gentlemen opposite, for I believe them to be the index of their minds, and I will oppose them on every point, from the conviction that they could not bring forward anything that would tend to benefit the country. I earnestly hope that we shall have a safe and speedy riddance from such a band." This escapade roused the ire of O'Connell, who instantly rose and said that he thought the gallant colonel's countenance was, at all events, as remarkable as any upon the Ministerial benches. He would not abate him a single hair in point of good-humour. "Elsewhere," he said, "these things may be treated in a different style. There is no creaturenot even a half-maniac or a half-idiotthat may not take upon himself to use that language there which he would know better than to make use of elsewhere; and the bloated buffoon ought to learn the distinction between independent men and those whose votes are not worth purchasing, even if they were in the market."The year 1792 opened in England with a state of intense anxiety regarding the menacing attitude of affairs in France. There were all the signs of a great rupture with the other Continental nations; yet the king, in opening Parliament, on the 31st of January, did not even allude to these ominous circumstances, but held out the hope of continued peace. George III. stated that he had been engaged with some of his allies in endeavouring to bring about a pacification between the Russians and Austrians with Turkey, and that he hoped for the conclusion of the war in India against Tippoo Sahib, ere long, through the able management of Lord Cornwallis. He also announced the approaching marriage of the Duke of York with the eldest daughter of the King of Prussia. Grey and Fox, in the debate upon the Address, condemned strongly our interference on behalf of Turkeya state which they contended ought, from its corruption, to be allowed to disappear. They also expressed a strong opinion that the war in India would not be so soon terminated. Fox was very severe on the treatment of Dr. Priestley and the Dissenters at Birmingham, declaring the injuries[389] done to Priestley and his friends equally disgraceful to the nation and to the national Church. He passed the highest encomiums on the loyalty of the Dissenters. Pitt regretted the outrages at Birmingham, but slid easily over them to defend the support of Turkey as necessary to the maintenance of the balance of power in Europe; and he concluded the debate by stating that the revenue of the last year had been sixteen million seven hundred and seventy thousand pounds, and that it left nine hundred thousand pounds towards the liquidation of the National Debt.[See larger version]
