FORE:In this Convention no mention was made of the right of search, and various other matters were reserved for the consideration of the plenipotentiaries. When the Convention was announced to Parliament by the king in his opening speech, there arose a general denunciation of it both in and out of Parliament. The right of search was declared to be purposely sacrificed; the limits of Georgia were undefined; and the Spanish captains in the West Indies were unpunished for all their cruelties. That sixty thousand pounds should be allowed for compensation for ships taken by Admiral Byng in 1718 was very justly declared taxing us for our victories. In fact, Walpole, in this treaty, seemed ready to give up everything to Spain, knowing, probably, how hopeless it was to extract money from that country, and glad of an excuse of any set-off against our claims as to the easiest way of settling them. But all did not avail him. The more conceding he was to the Spaniards the more immovable they became, whilst the public at home were enraged at the tameness displayed by Ministers. Ministers found their majority continually on the wane. On the division in the Commons it had dwindled to twenty-eight, namely, two hundred and sixty votes against two hundred and thirty-two.On the 24th of June Parliament was prorogued by commission. The Royal Speech expressed thanks for the attention that had been given to the affairs of Ireland, and the settlement of the Catholic question, which the king hoped would tend to the permanent tranquillity of that country, and to draw closer the bonds of union between it and the rest of the empire. It was announced that diplomatic relations had been renewed with the Porte, for which ambassadors from England and France had taken their departure. But it was with increased regret that his Majesty again adverted to the condition of the Portuguese monarchy. He repeated his determination to use every effort to reconcile conflicting interests, and to remove the evils which pressed so heavily on a country the prosperity of which must ever be an object of his solicitude. The condition of that country was, indeed, most deplorable under the lawless despotism of Dom Miguel, who, on the abdication of his brother Dom Pedro in favour of Do?a Maria da Gloria, had been appointed regent, but had subsequently assumed the royal title, and driven his niece from the country. He overruled the decisions of the courts of justice regarding political prisoners, and inflicted the punishment of death by his own mere arbitrary order, when only transportation had been decreed by the judges. He crowded the prisons with the most distinguished supporters of constitutional government, confiscated their property, and appropriated it to his own use. Yet this monster would have been acknowledged by the Duke of Wellington. Had the Duke been free to follow the dictates of his own judgment, he would have at once resumed the diplomatic relations which had been broken off between the two states. But Britain was committed to the young queen by the policy of the preceding Administration; and the Duke, though he believed that policy to be unwise, could not break through it in a moment. It was not without difficulty, however, that Britain maintained her neutrality between the contending parties. The Portuguese refugees endeavoured, under various false pretences, to avail themselves of British hospitality, for the purpose of conveying arms and ammunition, and bodies of troops into Portugal, to restore the queen. They asserted that they were sending them to Brazil, but really conveyed them to Terceira, one of the Azores, where Do?a Maria had been proclaimed. The consequence was that 4,000 Portuguese troops, which were lying at Plymouth, were ordered to disband, and Captain Walpole, with a squadron, was sent to watch the Portuguese ships in the Atlantic, in order to avoid the imputation of violating the neutrality. His orders were to proceed to the Azores, to intercept any vessels arriving at those islands, and "should they persist, notwithstanding, in hovering about or making any attempt to effect a landing, you are then to use force to drive them away from the neighbourhood." Walpole intercepted four vessels, containing a force of 650 men under the command of the Duke of Saldanha. They declined to bring-to, whereupon he fired a shot which killed one man and wounded another. Saldanha thereupon declared that he considered himself Walpole's prisoner, and turned his vessels towards Europe. Walpole, in great perplexity, followed him, until he was within 500 miles of Scilly, when they parted company and Saldanha went to Havre. These proceedings were regarded with indignation in Great Britain, the enemies of the Government asserting that, in spite of their declarations of neutrality, they had proved themselves partisans of Dom Miguel. Debates were raised in both Houses, Lord Palmerston in the Commons making his first great speech in condemnation of the Duke's foreign policy. It is significant that Wellington should have written to Lord Aberdeen in a private letter: "In respect to Portugal you may tell Prince Polignac that we are determined that there shall be no revolutionary movement from England or any part of the world."
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:[See larger version]
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:Five days after this, February 10th, the matter was made public by Lord Darnley rising in the Upper House, and moving for an inquiry into the conduct of the Ministry. This roused up Lord Grenville, who candidly avowed that, in consequence of their failure to introduce the question of Catholic emancipation, the Ministers had resigned and only held office till a new Cabinet was formed. On this, Lord Darnley postponed his motion. On the same day, in the Commons, a letter from Addington, the Speaker, was read, announcing his resignation of the Speakership in consequence of the king's proposal to nominate him to a situation incompatible with that post. Pitt then rose and confirmed this, and proposed an adjournment till the next day in order to prepare for the nomination of the new Speaker. The House adjourned accordingly, and next day, the 11th of February, elected Sir John Mitford, the Attorney-General, as Speaker. Before the House could resume business, it was announced that the king was illconfined to the house by a severe cold; but it was soon known that it was a return of his old malady, lunacy, in consequence of his extreme agitation on the proposal of the Catholic question and the resignation of Pitt. The report was soon augmented into the startling rumour that the king was dangerously ill, and that a regency must take placeif not superseded by his death. At this news Fox, who had for some time absented himself from Parliament, on the plea that all endeavours to carry sound and prudent measures were hopeless with Pitt's great martial majority, hastened up to town from St. Anne's Hill; and the Whig body was in a flutter of expectation that he would soon be the Minister of the prince regent, or of George IV. But all these hopes were speedily overthrown by the news of the rapid improvement of the king, and on the 12th of March the royal physicians announced him perfectly recovered. He attributed his illness to Pitt's conduct, and the ex-Premier thereupon wrote and promised never to re-open the question again.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:Bolingbroke promptly fled and took service with the Pretender; Ormonde, after putting himself ostentatiously forward as leader of the Jacobite Opposition, followed his example. Both were proceeded against by Act of Attainder.
FORE:In such circumstances closed the year 1789. The intense excitement which the rapid course of these French events had produced in England had nearly superseded all other topics of interest. At first there was an almost universal jubilation over this wonderful revolution. The dreadful state of misery and oppression to which France had been reduced; the fearful exactions; the system of popular ignorance maintained by priestcraft; the abominable feudal insolence; the abuse of lettres de cachet; and the internal obstructions of customs and barriers between one province and another, made every friend of freedom desirous of seeing all these swept away. The early progress of their destruction was hailed with enthusiasm in England. Even the retired and timid poet, Cowper sang a triumphal note on the fall of the Bastille; but soon the bloody fury of the populace, and the domineering character of the Assembly, which did not deign to stop at the proper constitutional limits, began to create distrust and alarm. Amongst the first to perceive and to denounce this work of anarchy rather than of reform, was Burke. In common with Fox and Pitt, and many other statesmen, he had rejoiced in the fall of the corrupt government of France; but he soon began to perceive that the people were displaying the same ferocious character as in all their former outbreaks. "If," he wrote to M. Menonville, a moderate Member of the Assembly, "any of these horrid deeds were the acts of the rulers, what are we to think of the armed people under such rulers? But if there be no rulers in reality, and the chiefs are driven before the people rather than lead them; and if the armed corps are composed of men who have no fixed principle of obedience, and are moved only by the prevalence of some general inclination, who can repute himself safe amongst a people so furious and so senseless?" As he continued to gaze, he was compelled to confess that he saw no great and wise principles of legislation displayed by the Assembly; but that it went on destroying, without knowing how to rebuild in a manner likely to last or to work any one any good. The whole of the constitution-making, which annihilated the royal power, which erected no second chamber, but absorbed all authority into the Assembly, a mixed and heterogeneous body, he declared to be a bungling and monstrous performance. On the other hand, Dr. Price, Dr. Priestley, and numbers of equally enthusiastic men, saw nothing but what was animating in the progress of the French Revolution. "The Revolution Society," including many of the highest names of the Whig aristocracy, which was accustomed to meet on the 5th of November, to celebrate the anniversary of the landing of William III., and the English Revolution of 1688, this year presented a glowing address of congratulation to the French National Assembly, which was carried over by Lord Stanhope and Dr. Price. Of course, they and the address were received with great acclamation by the Assembly. The admiration of the French Revolution spread over Britain. Clubs were established, both in London and in the country, in sympathy with it, and the press became very Gallican and Republican in its tone, and there was much corresponding with admirers of the revolution in France, especially with Thomas Paine, who had now transferred himself from America, with a political fanatic destined to acquire considerable attention, calling himself Anacharsis Clootz, the "orator of mankind," and with many others.
FORE:
FORE:When Parliament met on the 20th of February, this conspiracy was laid before it and excited great indignation. The two Houses voted cordial addresses to his Majesty, and for a while there was an air of harmony. But the fires of discontent were smouldering beneath the surface, and, on a motion being made in April, in consequence of a royal message, to grant the king an extraordinary Supply in order to enable his Majesty to contract alliances with foreign powers, that he might be prepared to meet any attempts at invasion which the Swedes might, after all, be disposed to make, the heat broke forth. The Supply moved for was fixed at two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It was expected that Walpole, having had his name suspiciously mentioned in Gyllenborg's correspondence, would take this opportunity to wipe off all doubt by his zeal and co-operation. On the contrary, he never appeared so lukewarm. Both he and his brother Horace, indeed, spoke in favour of the Supply, but coldly; and Townshend and all their common friends openly joined the Tories and Jacobites in voting against it; so that it was carried only by a majority of four. This could not pass; and the same evening Stanhope, by the king's order, wrote to Townshend, acknowledging his past services, but informing him that he was no longer Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.
FORE:Immediately after this debate the Government took active steps to crush that spirit of free discussion in books, pamphlets and associations, which no doubt had been greatly stimulated by the excitement of the French Revolution, and which they professed to believe was aiming at the same objectthe destruction of the monarchy. But in attempting to check this spirit, they adopted the un-English plan of fettering the press and individual opinion. Pitt's Government issued a proclamation against seditious books, and societies corresponding with the Republicans across the water; and magistrates were desired to make diligent inquiries as to the authors of seditious books and pamphlets, to put down all mischievous associations, and to take the promptest means of suppressing and preventing riots and disturbances. An Address in approbation of this proclamation was moved by Mr. Pepper Arden, the Master of the Rolls, in the Commons, and a short debate was the consequence. In this Grey and Fox declared that the proclamation was unconstitutional, mischievous, and oppressive; that it was a stimulus given to hot-headed and bigoted magistrates all over the country to invade the freedom of the press and of private life, on pretence of preventing disturbance; that the true constitutional remedy for any wrong opinions promulgated by the press was their regulation by right and sound opinions; that the blow was aimed against the Society of the Friends of the People, and intended to crush Reform, and divide the Whig party; that, in truth, the riots and instigations to anarchy came not from the Reformers, but from the Church, the magistracy, and the Tories; and they appealed for the truth of this to the disgraceful scenes which had occurred at Birmingham. They reminded Government that in 1782 Pitt had joined the Duke of Richmond, Major Cartwright, and Horne Tooke, in a meeting, at the Thatched House Tavern, for Reform; that they, the Whigs, had never gone to the length of Cartwright and Horne Tooke in their principles of Reform, as Pitt had done; and they reproached the Minister with his shameful inconsistency. Lord John Russell, Francis, Lambton, and others, supported Grey and Fox; and Windham, Lord North, Dundas, etc., supported Pitt. The Address was carried; and when sent up to the Lords produced another striking exhibition of the change going on in the Whig party; for the Prince of Wales, who had hitherto been in such close union with them, and had been so zealously supported by them, now rose and gave his decided approbation to the Address, declaring that he had been educated in admiration of the established Constitution, and was determined, so far as in him lay, to support it. These words were received with triumph by the Government party, the Address was carried almost unanimously, and was followed by an immediate prosecution of the "Rights of Man," by the Attorney-General, which caused it to be far more generally read than it otherwise would have been.We come now to the rebellion of 1715. The succession of the House of Hanover had raised the Pretender and his Jacobite faction in England to a pitch of excitement which made them ready to rush upon the most desperate measures. In England the destruction of the Tory Ministry, the welcome given to the new Protestant king, and the vigour with which the Whigs and all the supporters of the principles of the Revolution had shown the majority which they were able to return to the new Parliament, were all indications that the spirit of the nation was more firmly than ever rooted in Protestantism and the love of constitutional liberty, and that any endeavours to overturn the new dynasty must be supported by an overwhelming power from without. Without such force the event was certain failure; yet, under existing auspices, it was determined to try the venture. Bolingbroke, on his arrival in France, saw that all was rashness, impatience, and want of preparation in the party on both sides of the Channel. The Highlanders were all eagerness for the Chevalier's arrival, lest he should land in England, and the English should snatch the glory of the restoration from them. From England came the letters of Ormonde, who was down in the West, and sent most glowing representations of the spirit of the people there; that out of every ten persons nine were against King George, and that he had distributed money amongst the disbanded officers, to engage them in the cause of King James. But all these fine words terminated with the damping intelligence that nobody would stir until they saw the Chevalier with a good army at his back. Such an army there was not the smallest hope of obtaining from France. All that Louis would or could do, without engaging in a new war with England, was to prevail on his grandson, Philip of Spain, to[28] advance four hundred thousand crowns for the expedition, and besides this, the Pretender had been able privately to borrow another hundred thousand, and purchase ten thousand stand of arms. At this juncture came two fatal eventsthe flight of Ormonde and the death of Louis XIV. on September 1st.
