ONE:But though Pitt ceased to be a Parliamentary reformerand by degrees became the most determined opponent of all reformhe yet made an immediate movement for administrative reform. He took up the plans of Burke, praying for a commission to inquire into the fees, gratuities, perquisites, and emoluments received in the public offices, with reference to existing abuses. He stated that, alreadyacting on the information of reports of the Board of Commissioners appointed in Lord North's timefixed salaries, instead of fees and poundages, had been introduced in the office of the land-tax, and the Post Office was so improved as to return weekly into the Treasury three thousand pounds sterling, instead of seven hundred sterling. Similar regulations he proposed to introduce into the Pay Office, the Navy and Ordnance Office. He stated, also, that he had, when out of office, asserted that no less than forty-four millions sterling was unaccounted for by men who had been in different offices. He was ridiculed for that statement, and it was treated as a chimera; but already twenty-seven millions of such defalcations had been traced, and a balance of two hundred and fifty-seven thousand pounds sterling was on the point of being paid in. In fact, the state of the Government offices was, at that time, as it had long been, such that it was next to impossible for any one to get any business transacted there without bribing heavily. As a matter of course, this motion was strongly opposed, but it was carried, and Mr. Francis Baring and the two other Comptrollers of army accounts were appointed the Commissioners.
It Is very likely that your best photograph has not yet been captured
- imperdiet doming
THREE:The year 1824 is memorable in Ireland for the establishment of the Catholic Association. The Catholic question had lain dormant since the union. Ireland remained in a state of political stupor. There was a Catholic committee, indeed, under the direction of a gentleman of property, Mr. John Keogh, of Mount Jerome, near Dublin. But his voice was feeble, and seldom heard. The councils of the Roman Catholics were much distracted. Many of the bishops, and most of the gentry, recommended prudence and patience as the best policy. Liberal statesmen in England were willing to make concessions, but the conscientious scruples of George III. had presented an insuperable barrier in the way of civil equality. There was an annual motion on the subjectfirst by Grattan, then by Plunket, and lastly by Burdett; but it attracted very little attention, till the formidable power of the Catholic Association excited general alarm for the stability of British institutions. Adverting to the past history of Irelandher geographical position, her social state in respect of the tenure of property, and the numbers of the respective religious denominations of her peoplethe ablest Conservative statesmen considered that it would be extremely difficult to reconcile the perfect equality of civil privilege, or rather the bona fide practical application of that principle, with those objects on the inviolable maintenance of which the friends and opponents of Catholic Emancipation were completely agreednamely, the Legislative union and the Established Church. There was the danger of abolishing tests which had been established for the express purpose of giving to the legislature a Protestant charactertests which had been established not upon vague constitutional theories, but after practical experience of the evils which had been inflicted and the dangers which had been incurred by the struggles for ascendency at periods not remote from the present. There was the danger that the removal of civil disabilities might materially alter the relations in which the Roman Catholics[249] stood to the State. Sir Robert Peel, in his "Memoirs," recites those difficulties at length, and in all their force. He fully admits that "the Protestant interest" had an especial claim upon his devotion and his faithful service, from the part which he had uniformly taken on the Catholic question, from the confidence reposed in him on that account, and from his position in Parliament as the representative of the University of Oxford.
THREE:This being done, Mr. Vyner suggested that the physicians should rather be examined by the House itself, a proposal supported by Fox. Pitt[344] replied that this was a matter requiring much delicacy, and that the opinions of the physicians before the Council being on oath, he imagined that they had greater force than any given before Parliament, where they would not be on oath. But, during the four days' adjournment, he had ascertained, to his satisfaction, that the majority of the physicians were of opinion that the king would pretty soon recover, and that especially Dr. Willis was of this opinion, under whose more immediate care he was; and no sooner did the Commons meet, than Pitt most judiciously acquiesced in the suggestions of Vyner and Fox; and the physicians were examined by a committee of twenty-one members, of which he himself was chairman. On the 16th of December Pitt brought up the report of the committee, in which a majority of the physicians had expressed the opinion that the malady of the king would not be of long duration; and he then moved for another committee to search for precedents as to the power to be exercised by a regent. Fox declared that Pitt knew very well that there were no precedents to be found while there existed an Heir Apparent, at the time, of full age and capacity; that he was seeking only the means of delaying what ought to be done at once; that the failure of the mind of the sovereign was a case of natural demise, and that the Heir Apparent succeeded to the exercise of the royal authority from the period of that failure, as a matter of course; that the Parliament had, indeed, the authority to decide that such failure had actually taken place, and to sanction the assumption of the powers of regency, as the other two Estates of the realm, but nothing more. When Fox made this astounding assertion, Pitt slapped his thigh and exclaimed to a colleague sitting near him, "I'll unwhig the gentleman for the rest of his life."[See larger version]
THREE:The British during this year were engaged in a variety of enterprises, and in very different and distant parts of the world, with a success as various. The most remarkable undertaking was the defence of Lower Calabria, which showed what might be effected by British soldiers, if employed in sufficient numbers, and under able commanders. We have already sketched the attempt by a small Russian army and a smaller British one to support Ferdinand of Naples in his kingdom against the French. As General St. Cyr came back upon them, followed by Massena, with altogether sixty thousand men, the seven thousand of British and Russians were obliged to retreat, the Russians embarking for Corfu, and the British crossing over into Sicily, whither the Neapolitan Court had fled, taking up its residence at Palermo.
