The indisposition of Parliament to attend to the ordinary business of the legislature, however important and pressing any portion of it might be considered in other circumstances, may be easily accounted for. One subject engrossed the minds of all men at this time, and agitated the nation to a depth and extent altogether unprecedented in our history. The story of Caroline of Brunswick is one of the saddest and most romantic in the annals of the Queens of England. When the Prince Regent became king, his wife, as a matter of course, became the rightful Queen of[206] England. But her husband had resolved that she should not be queen; and, rather than not have his way in this, he was ready to imperil his throne. She was as fully entitled to enjoy the well-defined rank and position that devolved upon her by the laws of the country, as he was to wear his crown, without regard to personal character. He would break the marriage tie, if he could; but, failing that, he was determined to degrade the queen by bringing against her the foulest charges of immorality. She might, indeed, have escaped a trial on these charges if she had consented to remain abroad, and had agreed to forego any title that would have connected her with the Royal Family of England. Till the death of George III., who had always been her steady friend, she had been prayed for in the liturgy as the Princess of Wales. There was now no Princess of Wales, and the king insisted that she should not be prayed for at all. His Ministers, against their own convictionsagainst what they well knew to be the almost unanimous feeling of the nationweakly yielded to the arbitrary will of their licentious Sovereign. They and their apologists attempted to uphold this conduct by alleging that she was prayed for under the words, "the rest of the Royal Family." But Mr. Denman, who defended her, afterwards observed with more truth that the general prayer in which she was embraced was, "For all that are desolate and oppressed." The moment the news of this outrage reached the queen, she resolved, with characteristic spirit and determination, to come at once to England and assert her rights in person. The Ministers flattered themselves that this was a vain boast, and that, conscious of guilt, her courage would fail her.[See larger version]
FORE:Government, not content with expelling Wilkes from the House of Commons, had commenced an action against him in the Court of King's Bench, where they succeeded in obtaining a verdict against him for a libel in the North Briton. Temple paid the costs, and the City of London[183] turned this defeat into a triumph, by presenting its freedom to the Lord Chief Justice Pratt, for his bold and independent conduct in declaring against the general warrants. They ordered his portrait to be placed in Guildhall; and the example of London was followed by Dublin and many other towns, who presented their freedom and gold snuff-boxes to Pratt. The City of London also gave its thanks to its members for their patriotic conduct.
FORE:Chatham had begun to ponder the proceedings of Ministers towards America and towards Wilkes, or rather his constituents, as soon as the returning activity of his mind permitted him. The conduct of the Duke of Grafton, who had taken the lead during his retirement, did not escape his censure. He had too easily fallen into the demand of the Cabinet for severe measures in both those cases. No sooner, therefore, did Chatham appear than he launched the whole thunder of his indignation, and such was still his power that he shattered the Cabinet to atoms. No sooner was the Address to the king moved and seconded, than he rose and passed, with some expressions of contempt, from the mention of the horned cattle to the more important topics. He drew a dismal picture both[198] of the domestic condition and the foreign relations of the country. He glanced at the manner in which the Treaty of Paris had been made, the abandonment of the King of Prussia, and the consequent isolated condition of the kingdom, without a friend or an ally. But bad as the external affairs of the nation were, he described the internal as far worse. There everything was at discount. The people were partly starving and wholly murmuring; the constituencies were alarmed at the invasion of their rights in the case of John Wilkes; and the colonies were on the very edge of rebellion. Such was the condition to which the Government in a short time had reduced the commonweal. More than all did he condemn the policy pursued towards America. He protested against the term "unwarrantable," as applied to the conduct of the colonists; proposed to substitute the word "dangerous." He owned that he was partial towards the Americans, and strongly advocated a system of mildness and indulgence in their case.
ONE:RICHARD COBDEN. (From a Photograph by Messrs. W. and D. Downey.)
TWO:The Ministers and their supporters were complimentary, as a matter of course, to the new Sovereign, who had graciously continued them in their offices; and the Whigs, who had ascribed their exclusion from power to the personal dislike of the king, were resolved that there should not be again any obstacle of the kind, and that they would keep upon the best possible terms with the Court. During the previous part of the Session they had kept up a rapid fire of motions and questions upon the Government, especially with regard to the public expenditure, the distress of the operatives, and the necessity of rigid economy and large retrenchment. The attacks were led by Sir James Graham, who, though he was always left in a minority in the divisions on his motions, did much to weaken the Government by exciting public feeling against them on the ground of their alleged heartless extravagance, while many of the people were starving and the country was said to be going fast to destruction. The Duke of Wellington, however, moved an answer to the Royal Message, declaring that they would forward the measure necessary to provide for the temporary supply required. He suggested that as everybody would be occupied about the coming elections, the best mode of proceeding would be to dissolve at once. Lord Grey, in the name of the Opposition, complained of this precipitancy, and delivered a long speech full of solemn warnings of evil. He supposed that the king might die before the new Parliament was chosen; the Heir Apparent was[313] a child in fact, though not in law. No regency existing, she would be legally in the possession of her full regal power, and this was a situation which he contended would be fraught with danger. A long, unprofitable wrangle ensued, dull repetitions dragged out the debate, when at length the Duke wisely refused to accede to the proposition for a useless interval of delay, and proved the numerical strength of the Administration. Lord Grey having moved for an adjournment to allow time for providing a regency, the motion was lost by a majority of 44, the numbers being 56 against 100.The troops of Austria were already in Bavaria on the 21st of August. They amounted to eighty thousand men, under the nominal command of the Archduke Ferdinanda prince of high courage and great hopesbut really under that of General Mack, whose utter incapacity had not been sufficiently manifested to Austria by his miserable failures in the Neapolitan campaign, and who was still regarded in Germany as a great military genius. His army had been posted behind the Inn, in the country between the Tyrol and the Danube, into which the Inn falls at Passau. This was a strong frontier, and had the Austrians waited there till the arrival of the Russians, they might have made a powerful stand. But Mack had already advanced them to the Lech, where again he had a strong position covering Munich. Meanwhile, the Archduke Charles, Austria's best general, was posted in the north of Italy, with another eighty thousand men, and the Archduke John in the Tyrol with an inferior force. Such were the positions of the Austrian armies when Mack was invading Bavaria, and Buonaparte was preparing to crush him.
THREE:The French allowed the retreating Allies no rest. There was no want of men. The Convention, by the menace of the guillotine at home, and the promises of plunder and licence abroad, could raise any number of thousands of men, could find millions of money, and they had not a single feeling of humanity, as the streaming axes of the executioners all over the country showed. They could also fight and daunt their enemies by the same unhesitating ferocity. They had long published to all their armies that no quarter was to be given to British or Hanoveriansthey were to be massacred to a man; and they now sent word to the fortresses of Valenciennes, Cond, Quesnoy, and Landrecies, that unless the garrisons surrendered every soul on their being taken should be butchered. The fortresses were immediately surrendered, for the menace was backed by one hundred and fifty thousand menthe combined troops of Pichegru and Jourdain. Besides, the fortresses in the hands of the Allies were so badly supplied both with ammunition and stores, that they were but dens of famine and impotence. On the 5th of July Ghent opened its gates to the French; on the 9th the French entered Brussels, having driven the Duke of Coburg out of his entrenchments in the wood of Soignies, near which the battle of Waterloo was afterwards fought. They next attacked the Duke of York and Lord Moira at Mechlin, and after a sharp conflict drove them thence. The very next day Clairfait was defeated and obliged to abandon both Louvain and Lige. General Beaulieu was driven out of Namur, solely because he had no provisions there for his army, though otherwise the place could have made a long defence. The Duke of York was compelled to abandon the strong and important citadel of Antwerp from the same cause, and to cross the Scheldt into Dutch territory, leaving the French to make their triumphant entry into Antwerp on the 23rd of July. Such was the brilliant campaign of the French in the[435] Netherlands in the summer of 1794such the ignominious defeat of the Allies, with an army of two hundred thousand men. Pitt, however, bravely struggled to keep up the Coalition. A loan of four million pounds was granted to Austria. At the same time, in addition to the Hessian soldiers engaged, the Duke of Brunswick, the king's relative, was to furnish two thousand two hundred and eighty-nine men on the same liberal terms, and was himself to have an annual allowance of sixteen thousand pounds sterling.
FORE:From skirmishing at sea the British had now come to direct war with the people of North America. From the period of the American colonists obtaining their independence of Great Britain, they retained a peculiar animus against the mother country. In the war by which that independence was achieved by the aid of France, Holland, and Spain, which all combined to attack Britain on sea and land, the Americans displayed no traces of the magnanimity that usually accompanies bravery. They resorted to many dishonourable practices, amongst which was the breach of contract in retaining prisoners from the army of General Burgoyne. The same spirit continued to animate them afterwards. It was natural to suppose that their success would have the usual effect of making them forget enmity when the cause of it was gone by; but this was not the case. In all contests of Great Britain with revolutionary France, they rejoiced over any disasters which befel her, and were silent in the hour of her victories. Though they were bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and our population was pouring over to swell their numbers, they displayed towards us a hostility that no other nation, France excepted, had ever shown.What a totally different species of composition was the "Vicar" to the tale of "Rasselas," published by his friend Dr. Samuel Johnson (b. 1709; d. 1784), the great lexicographer, seven years before! This was conceived in the romantic and allegoric spirit of the time"The Ten Days of Seged," "The Vision of Mirza," and the like. It was laid in the south, but amid Eastern manners, and didactic in spirit and ornate in style. It was measured, and graceful, and dulltoo scholastic to seize on the heart and the imagination. On a nature like Goldsmith's it could make no impression, and therefore leave no trace. The one was like a scene amid palm trees, and fountains, and sporting gazelles; the other like a genuine English common, on which robust children were tumbling and shouting, amid blooming gorse, near the sunny brook, with the lark carolling above them. There is no country in Europe, scarcely in the world, where letters are known, which has not its translation of the "Vicar of Wakefield." Even in England, "Rasselas" is almost forgotten.
During this year little was done in America. General Bradstreet defeated a body of the enemy on the River Onondaga, and, on the other hand, the French took the two small forts of Ontario and Oswego.[See larger version]By E. M. WARD, R.A.On the fifth night of the debate Sir Robert Peel rose to speak in defence of his policy against these attacks of his enemies. It was already ten o'clock, and the House listened to him for three hours. He spoke with remarkable warmth and energy, and overpowered his opponents with the unanswerable truths of political economy, and with humorous demonstrations of the fallacies in which the Protectionist speakers had indulged. In concluding he said, "This night is to decide between the policy of continued relaxation of restriction, or the return to restraint and prohibition. This night you will select the motto which is to indicate the commercial policy of England. Shall it be 'Advance!' or 'Recede'?" The division took place on the 27th (or rather on the 28th) of February, at twenty minutes to three in the morning, when the numbers for the motion were337; against it, 240; leaving a majority for going into committee of 97.On the 9th of July Earl Grey made a statement in the Lords, when the Duke of Wellington disclaimed all personal hostility in the opposition he had been obliged to give to his Government. The Lord Chancellor pronounced an affecting eulogium on the great statesman who was finally retiring from his work, and expressed his own determination to remain in office. Lord Grey's popular[374] Administration had lasted three years, seven months, and twenty-two days, which exceeded the term of his predecessor, the Duke of Wellington, by nearly a year and a half. Lord Grey, from the infirmities of age, declining health, and weariness of official life, had wished to retire at the close of the previous Session, but was prevailed upon by his colleagues to remain in office. In delivering his farewell speech he was listened to with profound attention, and at one moment was so overpowered by his feelings that he was compelled to sit down, the Duke of Wellington considerately filling up the interval by presenting some petitions.HENRY FIELDING. (The Portrait by Hogarth; the Border by James Basire.)Meanwhile the country continued to suffer from a great wave of trade depression. Gloom and discontent were throughout the land; and the Home Secretary of the new Administration afterwards stated that there was hardly a day during this period when he had not found it necessary to have personal communication with the Horse Guards, as well as with the heads of the police in the metropolis, and in the manufacturing districts. There seemed, indeed, to be no limit to the distress of the people. In Carlisle a committee of inquiry into the state of the town reported that one-fourth of their population was living in a state bordering on absolute starvation. In a population of 22,000 they found 5,561 individuals reduced to such a state of suffering that immediate relief had become necessary to save them from actual famine. Terrible accounts from other and far distant neighbourhoods showed how widespread was the evil. The manufacturers of the West of England appointed a committee to consider the distressed state of that district. Taking the town of Bradford, in Wilts, as an example, the committee reported that of the nineteen manufacturers carrying on business there in 1820, nine had failed, five had declined business from want of success, one[486] had taken another trade, and two only remained. Of 462 looms, 316 were entirely out of work, and only 11 in full employment; and this distress, it must be remembered, could not be traced to one great overwhelming cause, like that of the failure of the cotton supplies of a later day. The blight that had spread over the field of British industry was to most men a puzzle; but the West of England committee, after reporting that the same condition of things existed at Chalford, Stroud, Ulley, Wotton, Dursley, Frome, Trowbridge, etc., did not hesitate to declare that the depression of trade that was destroying capital, and pauperising the working classes was attributable to the legislation on the principle of protection. A public meeting was held at Burnley in the summer of 1842 to memorialise the Queen on the prevailing distress. At a great public conference of ministers of religion, held in Manchester in the previous autumn, it had been resolved that the existing Corn Laws were "impolitic in principle, unjust in operation, and cruel in effect;" that they were "opposed to the benignity of the Creator, and at variance with the very spirit of Christianity." This conference, which extended over an entire week of meetings, held both morning and evening, was attended by nearly 700 ministers. Their proceedings filled an entire volume, and attracted considerable attention throughout the kingdom. Similar conferences were afterwards held in a great number of towns.
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