The corruptionists in Parliament were deaf to eloquence or remonstrance; the base contractors sitting there, and the other vile absorbers of the money voted by the country for the most sacred purposes, for the preservation of the integrity and existence of the empire, sat still in impudent hardihood; but the sound of these stirring words was already out of doors. The City of London voted thanks to the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Shelburne for their motions, and for their promised resumption of the subject on the 8th of February. A great meeting was called at York to induce that county to prepare a petition for reform in Parliament. Many efforts were made by persuasion and by menace to prevent these freeholders from meeting. But the Marquis of Rockingham and Sir George Savile stood forward, attended the meeting, and encouraged the freeholders. The meeting was held on the 30th of December, and, besides these distinguished men, was attended by peers, gentlemen, clergymenthe richest and noblest in the county. A petition was adopted to the House of Commons in the strongest terms. Before separating, this most important meeting appointed a committee of correspondence, consisting of sixty-one gentlemen, to carry out the objects of the petition, and still further to prepare the plan of a national association for the promotion of the great business of reform. The contagion spread rapidly; in numbers of other counties, and in many of the leading cities, similar petitions were got up, and committees of correspondence formed. The result was that very soon, in the counties of Middlesex, Chester, Hants, Hertford, Sussex, Huntingdon, Surrey, Cumberland, Bedford, Essex, Gloucester, Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, Devon, Norfolk, Berks, Bucks, Nottingham, Kent, Northumberland, Suffolk, Hereford, Cambridge, Derby, Northampton, and the towns of York and Bristol, Cambridge, Nottingham, Newcastle, Reading, and Bridgewater, petitions were prepared, and in most of them corresponding committees organised.
A great raid of reform was made in the Opposition, and it fell first on the corruption of the boroughs, both in Scotland and England. The subject was brought on, as it were, incidentally. An Enclosure Bill, affecting some parts of the New Forest, Hampshire, was attacked, as a job intended to benefit Pitt's staunch supporter, George Rose, who had rapidly risen from an obscure origin to the post of Secretary to the Treasury. Rose had a house and small estate in the Forest, and there was a universal outcry, both in Parliament and in the public press, that, in addition to the many sinecures of the fortunate Rose, there was also a sop intended for him at the cost of the Crown lands. The reformers were successful in casting much blame on Ministers, and they followed it up by charging Rose with bribing one Thomas Smith, a publican in Westminster, to procure votes for the Ministerial candidate, Lord Hood. Though the motion for a committee of the House to inquire into the particulars of this case was defeated, yet the debates turned the attention of the country on the scandalous bribery going on in boroughs. The Scots, the countrymen of Rose, petitioned for an inquiry into the condition of their boroughs. Of the sixty-six boroughs, petitions for such inquiry came from fifty. They complained that the members and magistrates of those corporations were self-elected, and by these means the rights and property of the inhabitants were grievously invaded.[158]The Company was then compelled to reduce its dividends to six per cent. and apply to Parliament for a loan of a million and a half to meet its pecuniary difficulties. This, Ministers and Parliament complied with, and proceeding to relieve the Company of its embarrassments, Lord North[208] proposed and carried a measure, by which the Company, which had no less than seventeen million pounds of tea in its warehouses, should, without limit of time, be authorised to export its teas to the British colonies of America duty free. This was thought a great and conciliatory boon to the Americans, but it proved otherwise. The import duty of threepence in the pound was still stubbornly retained, and the Americans, looking at the principle of taxation, and not at a mere temptation of a cheapened article, saw through the snare, and indignantly rejected it. The principal tea merchants declared that this would be the case, and that the whole Government scheme was wild and visionary.
ONE:When the intense agitation had in some degree subsided, Fox rose and proposed the mode in which the trial should be conducted, which was that the evidence on both sides should be gone through on each separate charge, and that charge immediately decided, whilst all the facts were fresh in the minds of the lords, who were the judges. But this was opposed by the counsel of Hastings, who knew well the advantage of leaving the decision till the vivid impression of the events was worn off. They succeeded in carrying their object, and when the trial terminated eight years afterwards, the result was quite according to their hopes. The Managers complained loudly, but there was no remedy. Fox, therefore, proceeded to open the Benares case, which occupied[343] five hours. Grey took it up, and completed it the next day. Several succeeding days were employed in reading papers and hearing witnesses, and then Anstruther summed up and commented on the charge.The formidable organisation of the Roman Catholics led to a counter organisation of the Protestants, in the form of Brunswick Clubs. This organisation embraced the whole of the Protestant peasantry, north and south, the Protestant farmers, and many of the gentry. They, too, held their regular meetings, had their exciting[284] oratory, and passed strong resolutions, condemnatory of the inaction of the Government, which was charged with neglecting its first and most imperative dutythe protection of society from lawless violence. The Brunswickers, as well as the Emancipators, had their "rent" to bear the expenses of the agitation. They alleged that they were obliged to organise in self-defence, and in defence of the Constitution. In Ulster the country was divided into two camps, Catholic and Protestant. Notwithstanding the difference in numbers, the Protestants of Ulster were eager to encounter their antagonists in the field, and had not the slightest doubt of being able to beat them. They had all the proud confidence of a dominant race, and regarded the military pretensions of their antagonists as scornfully as the Turks would have regarded similar pretensions on the part of the Greeks. The feeling on both sides was such, that an aggression upon the Protestants in the south would have called forth 100,000 armed men in the north; and an aggression upon the Catholics in Ulster would have produced a similar effect among the Catholics in Munster. The number of Protestants in favour of Emancipation constituted but a small minority. The great mass were against concession. They believed that an insurrection would be the most satisfactory solution of the difficulty. With the aid of the army they felt that they were able to crush the "Papists," as they had been crushed in 1798, and then they hoped they would be quiet for at least another generation, resuming what they considered their proper position as "sole-leather." They forgot, however, the increase in their numbers, their property, and their intelligence. They forgot the growth of a middle class amongst them; the increased power and influence of the hierarchy, and the formidable band of agitators supplied by the Roman Catholic bar, whose members, many of them men of commanding abilities and large practice, were excluded by their creed from the Bench; which exclusion filled the minds of the ambitious with a burning sense of wrong, and made it their interest to devise all possible modes of evading the law, while keeping the country on the verge of insurrection.
THREE:A new and surprising phenomenon was discovered in the attacks upon Ministers for these concessions: Fox and North were in coalition! Fox, who so lately had declared North and his colleagues men "void of every principle of honour and honesty," and who would consent, should he ever make terms with them, to be called "the most infamous of mankind," now as warmly declared that he had ever found Lord Norththis man void of honour and honestya man always "open and sincere as a friend, honourable and manly as an enemy, above practising subterfuges, tricks, and stratagems." Lord North, on his side, repaid the compliments of Fox, growing enthusiastic on the genius, eloquence, and generous nature of that statesman. "While I admire the vast extent of his understanding," exclaimed North, "I can rely on the goodness of his heart." The coalition was looked upon with disfavour, but it was justified to a considerable extent during the debate on the peace. Lord John Cavendish truly represented that France and Spain were on the verge of ruin; that Holland was in an exhausted and helpless condition; and that as for America, it was in the very gulf of destitution, the people refusing to pay the taxes ordered by[300] Congress for the continuance of the war. And it was to such defeated and demolished enemies that Ministers had conceded almost everything they had asked. Lord North turned more particularly to the concession made to the French in the East Indies. It was in that quarter, he said, that he looked for a consolidated and expanding empire, calculated to recompense us, and more than recompense us, for the loss of America. From that splendid continent we had completely driven the French, and the soundest policy dictated their continued firm exclusion from it. Yet here had Ministers most fatally readmitted them, to renew their old plots and alliances against us, by which they would to a certainty continue to harass, thwart, and weaken us, till we once more went through the ruinous and sanguinary process of expulsion. He was equally severe on the surrender of Minorca and the Floridas to Spain, and the admission of the unconceding, unconciliating Americans to our own proper fishing grounds. Fox called on Ministers to produce the treaty which he had sketched a few months before, and to see what very different terms he had demanded, and would have exacted. That the sense of the House went with these sentiments was shown by both the amendments of the Coalition being carried by a majority of sixteen. Lord John Cavendish moved another resolution strongly condemning the terms of the treaty, but consented that the peace now made should remain inviolate. This was also carried, by a majority of seventeen, being two hundred and seven votes against one hundred and ninety.[See larger version]
THREE:The days of Chatham were far nearer their close than was suspected. One more sudden blaze of his high intellect, and he was gone. Whilst the subject of America continued to be discussed in both Houses with much acrimony and little result, the Duke of Richmond, seeing that Chatham did not come forward, took a decided step. He gave notice, on the 7th of April, of an address to the king, entreating him to withdraw both his fleets and armies from the United States, and make peace with them on such terms as should secure their goodwill. Chatham was roused effectually by this notice. Wrapped in flannel, pale and emaciated, he was supported into the House by his son William, and his son-in-law, Lord Mahon. His large wig seemed to bury his worn, shrunken face, except the still piercing eye and the aquiline nose. When the Duke of Richmond had made his motion, and Lord Weymouth, one of the Secretaries of State, had replied to it, Chatham arose. Lord Camden says that in speaking "he was not like himself: his speech faltered, his sentences were broken, and his mind not master of itself. His words were shreds of unconnected eloquence; and flashes of the same fire, which he, Prometheus-like, had stolen from heaven, were then returning to the place whence they were taken." All was deep attention, and even in bosoms antagonistic in principle were profound interest and respect. His words, weak and halting at first, grew, as he warmed with his subject, into much of the power and harmony of former days, and battling with his feebleness of frame he put forth, in one last great effort, the power of his spirit.Eugene, during these affairs, had been actively prosecuting the fortunes of the Allies with his remnant of an army. He pushed on the siege of Quesnoy, and took it. He sent a flying detachment of one thousand five hundred cavalry, under Major-General Grovestein, to make an incursion into France. This force made a rapid raid in Champagne, passed the Noire, the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Saar, ravaged the country, reduced a great number of villages and towns to[7] ashes, rode up to the very gate of Metz, and then retired to Traerbach with a load of rich booty. This was a proof of what might have been done in France at this period with the whole army united under a commander like Marlborough, in place of miserably giving up everything to that country in the moment of power. As it was, it created the utmost consternation in Paris, the people of which already saw the English at their gate; whilst Louis did not think himself safe at Versailles, but gathered all the troops in the neighbourhood of the capital around his palace, leaving the city to take care of itself.
"The disease by which the plant has been affected has prevailed to the greatest extent in Ireland.But the chief source whence the means at their disposal were derived was the magnificent bounty of the citizens of the United States of America. The supplies sent from America to Ireland were on a scale unparalleled in history. Meetings were held in Philadelphia, Washington, New York, and other cities in quick succession, presided over by the first men in the country. All through the States the citizens evinced an intense interest, and a noble generosity, worthy of the great Republic. The railway companies carried free of charge all packages marked "Ireland." Public carriers undertook the gratuitous delivery of packages intended for the relief of Irish distress. Storage to any extent was offered on the same terms. Ships of war, without their guns, came to the Irish shores on a mission of peace and mercy, freighted with food for British subjects. Cargo after cargo followed in rapid succession, until nearly 100 separate shipments had arrived, our Government having consented to pay the freight of all donations of food forwarded from America, which amounted in the whole to 33,000. The quantity of American food consigned to the care of the Society of Friends was nearly ten thousand tons, the value of which was about 100,000. In addition to all this, the Americans remitted to the Friends' Committee 16,000 in money. They also sent 642 packages of clothing, the precise value of which could not be ascertained. There was a very large amount of remittances sent to Ireland during the famine by the Irish in the United States. Unfortunately, there are no records of those remittances prior to 1848; but after that time we are enabled to ascertain a large portion of them, though not the whole, and their amount is something astonishing. The following statement of sums remitted by emigrants in America to their families in Ireland was printed by order of Parliament:During the years 1848, 460,180; 1849, 540,619; 1850, 957,087; 1851, 990,811.
