TWO:The first Reform Parliament was dissolved by proclamation on the 30th of December, after an existence of only one year and eleven months. This proceeding was regarded by the Reformers as a sort of political sacrilege; a manifest flying in the face of the people; a clear declaration of an intention to destroy popular rights. But the care bestowed on the registries told strongly in favour of the Conservatives at the English elections. The exertions they made to secure a majority were immense. It was believed at the time that the Carlton Club had expended nearly a million sterling in securing the success of their candidates in every possible way in which money could be made available. In the counties and boroughs the Whigs and Radicals lost about 100 seats, but after all the Conservatives could muster only 302 members; against 356. The contests were unusually numerous and severe, but the Reform Act machinery worked so well that the elections were for the most part conducted in a very orderly manner. In many places the closeness of the poll was remarkable. It was a neck and neck race between the rival candidates. In the metropolitan boroughs the Ministerialists were everywhere defeated. Not one of the sixteen seats in this vast centre of influence could the Government, with all its lavish expenditure, obtain. In some of the provincial towns, howeverBristol, Exeter, Newcastle, Hull, York, Leeds, Halifax, and Warringtona Tory supplanted a Whig. At Liverpool the contest was intensely exciting. During the last hour of polling were seen in every direction vans, gigs, and flies in rapid motion, and the price of a vote rose from 15 to 25. The result was the return of Lord Sandon, a moderate Tory; Sir Howard Douglas, the other Conservative candidate, being defeated by Mr. Ewart. In Lancashire and Hampshire both the Liberal candidates were defeated. Manchester, Birmingham, Bolton, Sheffield, Preston, and most of the manufacturing towns, returned Liberals. On the whole, the Government had a small majority of the five hundred English members. In Scotland, however, the Reform Act had wrought a complete revolution, and the mass of the electors so long excluded from political power used the privileges they had obtained with great zeal in favour of the party to which they were indebted for their enfranchisement. The whole of the burghs, twenty in number, returned Liberal members. Five of the counties were gained by the Tories and three by the Whigs, where respectively they had formerly failed. Glasgow, whose voice had been neutralised by returning one representative of each party, now returned two Liberals. Serious disturbances took place at Jedburgh when Lord John Scott, the Tory candidate, made his appearance. At Hawick, in the same county, the rioting was still worse. The persons who came to vote for him were spit upon, pelted with stones, and severely struck. In some cases they were thrown into the stream that runs through the town, and subjected to the most shocking indignities, which the judges who afterwards tried the cases declared to be "worse than death itself."
THREE:FLORA MACDONALD. (After the Portrait by J. Markluin, 1747.)
THREE:On the 6th of Juneonly a fortnight after Howe's departurethe three Commissioners, Lord Carlisle, Mr. Eden, and Governor Johnstone, arrived. They learned with consternation and unspeakable chagrin this order for the evacuation of Philadelphia, and, still more, that so important a dispatch had been kept concealed from them. There was not a single circumstance in favour of the Commissioners. At the same moment that we were making this disastrous retreat from the hardly-won Philadelphia, publishing our weakness to the world, Congress had just received the mighty news of French alliance, French aid, and French ships and troops steering towards their coasts. The Commissioners came furnished with propositions the most honourable and favours the most absolute. They were authorised to offer to the Americans that no military forces should be maintained in the Colonies without the consent of the General Congress or of the Assembly of a particular State; that England would take measures to discharge the debts of America, and to give full value to its paper money; would admit an agent or agents from the States into the British Parliament, and send, if they wished it, agents to sit with them in their Assemblies; that each State should have the sole power of settling its revenue, and perfect freedom of internal legislation and governmentin fact, everything except total severance from the parent country. Such terms, conceded at the proper time, would have made war impossible; but the proper time was long past, and they were now useless. The Commissioners applied to Washington for a passport to Congress, in order to lay the proposals brought by the Commissioners before them. But Washington bluntly refused the passport; and only consented to forward the letter through the common post. Congress took time to deliberate on the contents of the letter, and then returned an answer through their President, that the Act of Parliament and the forms of the Commission all supposed the American States to be still subject to Great Britain, which had long ceased to be fact; and that Congress could listen to no overtures from the King of England until he had withdrawn his fleet and armies, and was prepared to treat with them as independent States. The Commissioners could only retire, leaving behind them a manifesto threatening the utmost severities of war.Grattan had given notice that on the 16th of April he would move for the utter repeal of the Acts destructive of the independent legislative[289] rights of Ireland. On the appointed day, the House of Commons having been expressly summoned by the Speaker, Grattan rose, and, assuming the question already as carried, began, "I am now to address a free people. Ages have passed away, and this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation. I have found Ireland on her knees; I have watched over her with an eternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injury to arms, from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift! spirit of Molyneux! your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation. In that new character I hail her, and, bowing to her august presence, I say, Esto Perpetua!" The speech was received with thunders of applause. It concluded with an Address to the Crown, declaring in the plainest, boldest language, that no body of men, except the Irish Parliament, had a right to make laws by which that nation could be bound. The Address was carried by acclamation; it was carried with nearly equal enthusiasm by the Lords, and then both Houses adjourned to await the decision of the Parliament and Ministry of Great Britain.
- Justine Goliyad
- Justine Goliyad
- Justine Goliyad