TWO:To all this his Lordship had to add various specimens of the Canons. By the 3rd, every one asserting that the Church of England was not a true apostolical church should be excommunicated. The 4th and 5th excommunicated all who declared that there was anything contrary to sound Scripture in the form of worship of the Church of England, or anything superstitious or erroneous in the Thirty-Nine Articles. The 65th enjoined all ordinaries to see that all offenders, under the different Acts here enumerated, should be cited and punished according to statute, or excommunicated. The 72nd forbade, under pain of excommunication, all ministers, without licence of the bishop, to attempt, upon any pretence whatever, to cast out any devil or devils, under pain of deposition from the ministry. The 73rd made it a subject of excommunication that any priest or minister should meet with other persons in any private house or elsewhere to consult upon any canon, etc., which may tend to impeach or deprave the doctrine, the Book of Common Prayer, or any part of the discipline and government of the Church of England; and by the 115th, all churchwardens are enjoined to make presentments of offenders in any of these particulars; and all judges, magistrates, etc., are bound to encourage, and not to discourage, all such presentments. Lord Stanhope observed that the Court of King's Bench, in 1737, had decided that these Canons, not having ever received the sanction of Parliament, were not binding on the laity; and he contended that the ratification of them by James I., not being authorised by the original statute, the 25th of Henry VIII., made them as little binding on the clergy. He had not, therefore, included the Canons in his Bill. He took care, too, to except Catholics from the benefit of the Bill; neither was the Bill to repeal any part of the Test and Corporation Acts, nor the 12th and 13th of William III., "for the better securing the rights and liberties of the subject." He finally showed that these fierce[163] and persecuting Acts were not become utterly obsolete; they were ever and anon revived, and might, any of them, be acted upon at any moment. It might reasonably have been supposed that the bishops would have supported the Bill unanimously; that they would have been glad to have all such evidences of the odious means by which their Church had been forced on the people, swept out of the Statute-book and forgotten. No such thing. The Archbishop of Canterbury declared, if Dissenters were allowed to defend their principles, the atheist and the theist might be allowed to defend theirs. But Bishop Horsley, then of St. David's, was the chief speaker against the repeal of these precious laws. He declared that this repeal would level every bulwark of the Church; that "the Christian religion would not remain in any shape, nor, indeed, natural religion!" It is needless to say that the Bill was rejected; it could not attain even to a second reading.
TWO:Mr. Nicholls next applied himself to the solution of the problem how the workhouse system, which had been safely and effectually applied to depauperise England, might be applied with safety and efficiency to put down mendicancy and relieve destitution in Ireland. In that country the task was beset with peculiar difficulties. Assuming the principle that the pauper should not be better off than the labourer, it would be difficult to devise any workhouse dress, diet, or lodging that would not be better than what many of the poor actually enjoyed. But, on the other hand, the Irish poor were fond of change, hopeful, sanguine, migratory, desultory in their habits, hating all restraints of order and system, averse from the trouble of cleanliness; and rather than be subject to the restrictions and regularity of a workhouse, an Irishman, in health and strength, would wander the world over to obtain a living. Hence, no matter how well he might be lodged, fed, and clad in a workhouse, he could not endure the confinement. Consequently, Mr. Nicholls found in the state of Ireland no sufficient reason for departing from the principle of the English Poor Law, which recognises destitution alone as the ground of relief, nor for establishing a distinction in the one country that does not exist in the other.Besides those already mentioned as distinguished in various branches of literature, there was a host of others whom we can only name. In theology there were Warburton, South, Horsley, Jortin, Madan, Gerard, Blair, Geddes, Lardner, Priestley; in criticism and philology, Harris, Monboddo, Kames, Blair, Sir William Jones, Walpole; in antiquarian research, Hawkins, Burney, Chandler, Barrington, Stevens, Pegge, Farmer, Vallancey, Grose, Gough; in belles-lettres and general literature, Chesterfield, Hawkesworth, Brown, Jenyns, Bryant, Hurd, Melmoth, Potter, Francklin, etc.; in mathematical and physical science, Black, the discoverer of latent heat, Cavendish, the discoverer of the composition of water, Priestley, Herschel, Maskelyne, Horsley, Vince, Maseres, James Hutton, author of "The Huttonian Theory of the Earth," Charles Hutton, Cullen Brown, the founder of the Brownian theory of medicine, John and[179] William Hunter, the anatomists, Pennant, the zoologist, etc.; discoverers of new lands, plants, and animals, Commodore Byron, Captains Wallis, Cook, Carteret, Flinders, etc., Dr. Solander, Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. Green.
TWO:In this utter desertion, the king prevailed on Lord North, who was already Chancellor of the Exchequer, to accept Grafton's post of First Lord of the Treasury, with the Premiership. Lord North, eldest son of the Earl of Guildford, was a man of a remarkably mild and pleasant temper, of sound sense, and highly honourable character. He was ungainly in his person and plain of countenance, but he was well versed in the business of Parliament, and particularly dexterous in tagging to motions of the Opposition some paragraph or other which neutralised the whole, or turned it even against them. He was exceedingly near-sighted, so much so, that he once carried off the wig of the old Secretary of the Navy, who sat near him in the House. For the rest, he was of so somnolent a nature that he was frequently seen nodding in the House when Opposition members were pouring out all the vials of their wrath on his head. He thought himself a Whig, but if we are to class him by his principles and his acts of administration, we must pronounce him a Tory.
TWO:On the 8th of October Murat landed near Pizzo, on the Calabrian coasta coast more than any other in Italy fraught with fierce recollections of the French. His army now consisted of only twenty-eight men; yet, in his utter madness, he advanced at the head of this miserable knot of men, crying, "I am your king, Joachim!" and waving the Neapolitan flag. But the people of Pizzo, headed by an old Bourbon partisan, pursued him, not to join, but to seize him. When they began firing on him, he fled back to his vessels; but the commander, a man who had received the greatest benefits from him, deaf to his cries,[117] pushed out to sea, and left him. His pursuers were instantly upon him, fired at him, and wounded him; then rushing on him, they knocked him down and treated him most cruelly. Women, more like furies than anything else, struck their nails into his face and tore off his hair, and he was only saved from being torn to pieces by the old Bourbon and his soldiers, who beat off these female savages and conveyed him to the prison at Pizzo. The news of his capture was a great delight to Ferdinand. He entertained none of the magnanimity of the Allies, but sent at once officers to try by court-martial and, of course, to condemn him. Some of these officers had been in Murat's service, and had received from him numerous favours, but not the less readily did they sentence him to death; and on the 13th of October, 1815, he was shot in the courtyard of the prison at Pizzowith characteristic bravery refusing to have his eyes bound, and with characteristic vanity bidding the soldiers "save his face, and aim at his heart!"
