<000005>But matters had greatly changed at Calcutta before this. Maclean did not present the letter of resignation till October, 1776; but, in September of that year, Colonel Monson had died, and, the members in the Council being now equal, the Governor-General's casting vote restored to him his lost majority. Hastings was not the man to defer for a moment the exercise of his authority. He began instantly to overturn, in spite of their most violent efforts, the measures of Francis and friends. He dismissed Goordas from the chief authority in Oude, and reinstated his "dear friend, Nat Middleton," as he familiarly termed him. He revived his land revenue system, and was planning new and powerful alliances with native princes, especially with the Nabob of Oude, and the Nizam of the Deccan, not omitting to cast a glance at the power of the Sikhs, whose dangerous ascendency he already foresaw. In the midst of these and other grand plans for the augmentation of British power in Indiaplans afterwards carried out by othershe was suddenly astounded by the arrival of a packet in June, 1777, containing the news of his resignation, and of its acceptance by the Directors. He at once protested that it was invalid, as he had countermanded the resignation before its presentation; but General Clavering, as next in succession, at once claimed the office of Governor-General, and Francis, in Council, administered the oath to him. Clavering immediately demanded the keys of the fort and the treasury from Hastings; but that gentleman refused to admit his own resignation, much less Clavering's election to his post. Here, then, were two would-be Governor-Generals, as Europe had formerly seen two conflicting Popes. To end the difficulty, Hastings proposed that the decision of the question should be referred to the Supreme Court. It is wonderful that Clavering and Francis should have consented to this, seeing that Impey, Hastings' friend, and the judge of Nuncomar, was at the head of that Court; but it was done, and the Court decided in Hastings' favour. No sooner was Hastings thus secured, than he charged Clavering with having forfeited both his place in the Council, and his post as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, by attempting to seize on the Governor-Generalship. Clavering and Francis were compelled to appeal once more to the Supreme Court, and this time, to his honour, Impey decided in favour of Clavering. Clavering, who had been deeply mortified by his defeat, died a few days after this occurred, in August, 1777. By this event the authority of Hastings in the government was sufficiently restored, notwithstanding that Wheler generally sided with Francis, for him to carry his own aims.
On the 10th of April, when Mr. Canning kissed hands as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, he found himself deserted by the Duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, Mr. Peel, Lords Bathurst, Melville, and Westmoreland. The members of the Cabinet who finally adhered to him were Lord Harrowby, Mr. Huskisson, Mr. Wynne, and Mr. Robinson, afterwards Lord Goderich, who had become Secretary of the Colonial Department, with the lead of the Government in the House of Lords. Having received the resignations, and presented them to the king, Mr. Canning said:"Here, sire, is that which disables me from executing the orders I have received from you respecting the formation of a new Administration. It is now open to your Majesty to adopt a new course; for no step has yet been taken in the execution of those orders that is irrecoverable." He added, that if he was to go on, his writ must be moved for that day, which was the last before the Easter recess. The king at once gave him his hand to kiss, and confirmed the appointment. Two hours afterwards the House was ringing with acclamations while Mr. Wynne was moving that a new writ be issued for the borough of Newport in consequence of the Right Honourable George Canning having accepted the office of First Lord of the Treasury. This was a result which Lord Eldon did not anticipate. He evidently expected that Canning would be foiled in his attempt to form a Ministry. He wrote, "Who could have thought it? I guess that I, Wellington, Peel, Bathurst, Westmoreland, and C. will be out." Again he says, "The whole conversation in town is made up of abusive, bitterly abusive, talk of people about each otherall fire and flame. I have known nothing like it." Elsewhere he remarks, "I think political enmity runs higher and waxes warmer than I ever knew it."The State prosecutions commenced in January, 1844, in the Court of Queen's Bench, before the Lord Chief Justice Penefather, and Justices Burton, Crampton, and Perrin. Besides the Attorney and Solicitor-General, there were ten counsel employed for the Crown, and there was an equal number on the side of the traversers, including Mr. Sheil, Mr. Hatchel, Mr. Moore, Mr. Whiteside, Mr. Monaghan, afterwards Chief Justice, Mr. O'Hagan, and Mr. Macdonogh. This monster trial was remarkable in many respects. It excited great public interest, which pervaded all classes, from the highest to the lowest. It lasted from the 16th of January to the 12th of February; the speech of the Attorney-General occupied two days; the jury list was found to be defective, a number of names having been secretly abstracted; newspaper articles were admitted as evidence against men who never saw them; the Lord Chief Justice betrayed his partiality in charging the jury, by speaking of the traversers as "the other side." The principal witnesses were shorthand writers from London, avowedly employed by the Government to report the proceedings of the monster meetings. Mr. Jackson, reporter for the Morning Herald, also placed his notes at the service of the Government. Mr. O'Connell defended himself in a long argument for Repeal, and an attack on the Government. The most brilliant orations delivered on the occasion were those of Sheil and Whiteside. Mr. Fitzgibbon, one of the counsel for the traversers, made a remark offensive to the Attorney-General, Mr. T. C. B. Smith, who immediately handed him a challenge, in the presence of his wife, while the judges had retired for refreshment. The matter was brought before the court, and, after mutual explanations, was allowed to drop.[See larger version]
ONE:For a few weeks the cottiers and small farmers managed to eke out a subsistence by the sale of their pigs, and any little effects they had. But pigs, fowls, furniture, and clothing soon went, one after another, to satisfy the cravings of hunger. The better class of farmers lived upon their corn and cattle; but they were obliged to dismiss their servants, and this numerous class became the first victims of starvation; for when they were turned off, they were refused admission by their relations, who had not the means of feeding them. Tailors, shoemakers, and other artisans who worked for the lower classes, lost their employment and became destitute also. While the means of support failed upon every side, and food rose to such enormous prices that everything that could possibly be eaten was economised, so that the starving dogs were drowned from compassion, the famine steadily advanced from the west and south to the east and north, till it involved the whole population in its crushing grasp. It was painfully interesting to mark the progress of the visitation, even in those parts of the country where its ravages were least felt. The small farmer had only his corn, designed for rent and seed. He was obliged to take it to the mill, to ward off starvation. The children of the poor, placed on short allowance, were suffering fearfully from hunger. Mothers, heart-broken and worn down to skeletons, were seen on certain days proceeding in groups to some distant dep?t, where Indian meal was to be had at reduced prices, but still double that of the ordinary market. As they returned to their children with their little bags on their heads, a faint joy lit up their famine-stricken features. Those children, who had lived for two days and two nights on a dole of raw turnips, would now be relieved by a morsel of nourishing food. The fathers, who had absented themselves from home in order to avoid the agony of listening to their heart-piercing cries, might now sit down and look their little ones in the face. But, if the mother failed to obtain the relief for which she had travelled so far, what then? Yesterday no breakfast, no dinner, no supper; the same to-day; no prospect of better to-morrow. The destitute rushed to the workhouses, which soon became crowded to excess by those who had been able-bodied men and women, while the aged, the sickly, and the children were left to starve. Overpowered by hunger, they lay down helpless, the ready victims of the pestilence that walked close upon the footsteps of famine, and died in thousands. Let us consider the state of a population such as has been described. Scattered over remote districts, with no gentry resident within many miles, none to whom a complaint could be made but the clergyman, whose energies were overtaxed, how utterly helpless must have been the condition of those doomed people!Although announced with the Budget, the proposed change in the sugar duties formed a separate and more momentous question. At that time, strictly foreign sugar was virtually prohibited by the excessive differential dutiesBritish plantation sugar paying a duty of 25s. 3d. per cwt., foreign, of 66s. 2d. When the Whig Administration had proposed to diminish this enormous difference, the Tories had pleaded the injustice to the West India landlords of taking away their slaves, and then exposing them to competition with countries still possessing slave labour. The question had thus become one of party. The Whigs were pledged to consult the interests of the British consumer; the Tories to protect the West Indies; and beating the Whigs on this very point, the Tories had turned them out of office. The British consumer had, however, happily some voice in the elections, and the problem was now to conciliate him without a glaring breach of consistency. Accordingly, the tax on our colonial sugar was to be left untouched, as was the tax on foreign sugar, the growth of slave countries; but henceforth it was proposed that the duty on foreign sugar, the produce of free labour, should pay only 10s. more than colonial. Thus was the first great blow struck at the protective sugar duties, and at that West Indian party which had so long prevailed in Parliament over the interests of the people. But the battle had yet to be fought.
Napoleon's grand army had now dwindled down to twelve thousand men, with about thirty thousand stragglers, who added little to his strength. They were in Poland, and provisions were now more abundant; but they had still to cross the Beresina, and at this moment he heard of the fall of Minsk, and that Victor and Oudinot, instead of attacking Wittgenstein, had quarrelled about the manner of doing it, and so had not done it at all. Wittgenstein and Kutusoff were thus at liberty to attack his flanks, and Tchitchagoff to occupy the Beresina before him. On this, he turned from the route to Minsk and made for Borissov. At Borissov was a bridge of three hundred fathoms in length, and this he had sent Dombrowski to secure and hold; but now he heard of Dombrowski's defeat, that the bridge was in the hands of the Russians, and that they had broken it down. In his agony, he stamped his cane on the ground, and exclaimed, looking upwards"Is it, then, written that we shall commit nothing but errors?"Byng went in pursuit of the Spanish fleet, which was assisting in the conquest of Sicily, and came in sight of twenty-seven sail of the line,[41] with fire-ships, ketches, bombs, and seven galleys, drawn up in line of battle between him and Cape Passaro. So soon as they were clear of the straits, a council was held to determine whether they should fight or retreat. They came to no resolution, but continued to linger about in indecision till Byng was down upon them. Whereupon he utterly destroyed them (August 11, 1718).Thus entered the year 1717. It had been intended to open Parliament immediately on the king's return, but the discovery of a new and singular phase of the Jacobite conspiracy compelled its postponement. We have seen that the trafficking of George with Denmark for the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, reft in the king of Sweden's absence from his possession, had incensed that monarch, and made him vow that he would support the Pretender and march into Scotland with twelve thousand men. Such a menace on the part of a general like Charles XII. was not likely to pass unnoticed by the Jacobites. The Duke of Berwick had taken up the idea very eagerly. He had held several conferences upon it with Baron Spaar, the Swedish Minister at Paris, and he had sent a trusty minister to Charles at Stralsund, with the proposal that a body of seven or eight thousand Swedes, then encamped near Gothenburg, should embark at that port, whence, with a favourable wind, they could land in Scotland in eight-and-forty hours. The Pretender agreed to furnish one hundred and fifty thousand livres for their expenses. At that time, however, Charles was closely besieged by the Danes, Prussians, and their new ally, George of Hanover, purchased by the bribe of Bremen and Verden. Charles was compelled by this coalition to retire from Stralsund, but only in a mood of deeper indignation against the King of England, and therefore more favourable to his enemies.He next marched to St. Jean d'Acre, and summoned it to surrender. The pacha, named, from his fierce cruelties, Djezzaar, or the Butcher, instead of returning an answer, cut off the head of the messenger. Buonaparte vowed an awful revenge. But the pacha had warned Sir Sidney Smith, who was off the coast ready to convey the Turkish army to Egypt, of the appearance of the French before Acre; and Sir Sidney, so famous already for his exploits at Toulon, where he and Buonaparte had met, sailed into the port with two ships of the line, the Tigre and the Theseus. Scarcely had Sir Sidney arrived, when he heard of the approach of a French frigate flotilla bringing to Buonaparte artillery, ammunition, and machines for the siege. He captured seven vessels out of the nine, and turned the artillery on the walls against the French themselves. A French royalist officer, General Phillippeaux, took charge of these cannon. The siege began on the 17th of March, and ended on the 21st of Maya period of sixty-five days, during which eight desperate assaults had been made, and eleven as desperate sallies. At one time Buonaparte had to march to Mount Tabor to disperse an army of Moslems; at another, he succeeded in making himself master of a tower which commanded the rest of the fortifications; but Sir Sidney Smith, himself leading on a body of his seamen armed with pikes, drove the French, in a hand-to-hand fight, from the tower. Buonaparte, one day walking on the hill still called C?ur de Lion's Mount, pointing to Acre, said to Murat, "The fate of the East depends upon yonder petty tower." Buonaparte had now, however, lost several of his best generals, and retreat was inevitable; but he endeavoured to cover the disgrace of it by asserting that it was the plague raging at Acre that drove him from it. On the march he proposed to Desgenettes, the surgeon, to end the lives of some of the wounded who encumbered him, by poisoning them with opium. Desgenettes replied indignantly that his art was employed to save, and not to kill. But the proposal soon grew into a rumour that it had been carried into execution, and that not on a few dozens, but on several hundredsa rumour which continued to be believed for many years, not only by the other European nations, but by Buonaparte's own army. He continued his march back to Cairo, burning the crops and villages by the way, in revenge for the hostility of the natives. He reached Cairo on the 14th of June, his reputation much diminished by his repulse.
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