ONE:[See larger version]The next morning, the 6th of December, the retreat commenced; but the soldiers and the inferior officers little dreamed that it was a retreat. They imagined that they were going to fight the Duke of Cumberland, and marched out in high spirits. The morning was foggy, and for some time the delusion was kept up; but when the fog cleared away, and they perceived that they were retracing their former route, their disappointment and rage became excessive. The retreat was rapidly continued through Preston, and on to Lancaster, which they reached on the 13th. On the 18th Oglethorpe and Cumberland, accompanied by a mob of country squires and mounted farmers, attacked Lord George Murray's rear near Penrith; but the countrymen were speedily put to flight by a charge of the Glengarry clan, and Oglethorpe fell back to the main body. They came up again, however, in the evening near the village of Clifton, and Lord George perceived, by the fitful light of the moon, the enemy forming behind the stone walls, and lining every hedge, orchard, and outhouse. Just as the royal troops commenced their charge they were stopped by a cross-fire of the concealed Highlanders, and, whilst affected by this surprise, Lord George cried, "Claymore! claymore!" and rushing down upon them with the Macphersons of Cluny, attacked them sword in hand. Being supported by the Stuarts of Appin, they compelled the English to retreat.
TWO:The career of Lord Ellenborough as Governor-General of India was one of the most remarkable in its annals. He went out for the purpose of inaugurating a policy of peace, conciliation, and non-intervention. His course from that day was one of constant aggression and war. The conquests of Scinde and Gwalior were planned and prepared for deliberately and in good time; and when the Governments to be subdued were goaded into hostilities, he was ready to pounce upon them with overwhelming force. His friends defended this policy on the ground that, though it was aggressive it was self-defensive; to guard against a possible, but very remote contingencyan invasion of the Sikhs to drive the British out of India. The Governor-General, however, had become entirely too warlike; and since he had smelt powder and tasted blood at Gwalior, the Board of Control, who had already formally censured his Scinde policy, became so alarmed at his martial propensities that they determined on his immediate recall, and sent out Sir Henry Hardinge to rule in his stead.
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ONE:On the day after the surrender of Ulm, Buonaparte announced by proclamation to the army that he was going to annihilate the Russians, as he had done the Austrians; that Austria, in fact, had no generals with whom it was any glory to compete; and that Russia was only brought by the gold of England from the ends of the earth, for them to chastise them. At the end of October, accordingly, he commenced his march on Vienna.
TWO:[See larger version]This avowal in the royal speech called forth John Wilkes in No. 45 of the North Briton, destined to become a famous number indeed. Wilkes had ceased in the North Briton to employ mere initials when commenting on leading men in Parliament or Government; and he now boldly declared that the speech put into the king's mouth by the Ministers was false in its assertion, that the peace was neither honourable to the Crown nor beneficial to the country. This was regarded as a gross insult to his Majesty, though it was avowedly declared to attack only the Ministry; and on the 30th of April Wilkes was arrested upon a general warrant, that is, a warrant not mentioning him or any one by name, but applying to the authors, printers, and publishers of the paper in question. George Grenville, the new Minister, had, of course, the credit of this proceeding; though it was thought that Bute still secretly directed the movements of Government, and that he or the king might be the real author of the order.
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TWO:Buonaparte posted himself in his centre, near the farmhouse of La Belle Alliance, having Ney and Soult near him, but Counts Reille and D'Erlon being in immediate command of the centre. His left, which stretched round the chateau of Hougomont, was commanded by his brother Jerome; his right by Count Lobau. Wellington took his post on the ridge near where the great mound of the dead surmounted by the Belgian lion now stands. His troops were divided into two lines; the right of the first lineconsisting of British, Hanoverian, and Belgian troopsunder Lord Hill. The centre, under the Prince of Orange, consisted of troops of Brunswick and Nassau, flanked on the right by the Guards under General Cooke, and on the left by the division of the Hanoverian general Alten. The left wing consisted of the divisions of Picton, Lambert, and Kemp. The second line consisted of troops in which less confidence was placed, or which had suffered severely at Quatre Bras on the 16th. In and around the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, in advance of the centre, was placed a body of Germans. The plan of each commander was simple: Wellington's, to keep his ground till Blucher should come up, and then all simultaneously charge forward to drive the French from the field; Napoleon's, by his brisk and ponderous charges to break and disperse the British before the Prussians could arrive.
FORE:After violent debates on the subject of Catholic emancipation, but with the usual negative result, Parliament was prorogued on the 24th of July. Ministers proceeded to prosecute the war in the Peninsula with increased vigour. Lord Wellington needed all the support they could give him. Notwithstanding his success and the millions of money that Great Britain was sending to Portugal, the Portuguese Government continued to annoy him, and showed itself as ignorant, as meddling and as unthankful as the Spaniards had done. Though he and his army were the sole defence of the country, which would at once have been overrun by the French were he not there, and though he was fighting their battles and defending their persons at the expense of England, they appeared to have not the slightest sense of these obligations, but continued to pester him on every possible occasion. They endeavoured to compel him to maintain the Portuguese army, too, by themselves neglecting to furnish it with pay and provisions. They demanded to have the expenditure of the very money remitted for the needs of the British forces. They raised a vast clamour because the soldiers cut down timber for firewood. To all these disgraceful annoyances Lord Wellington replied with a wonderful command of temper, but with firmness and plain-spokenness. His dispatches abound with complaints of the scurvy treatment of the Portuguese authorities. The aspect of things in Spain was worse. There the Spaniards continued to lose every force that they raised, but nevertheless to criticise all the movements of Wellington as if they knew, or had shown, that they understood the management of campaigns better than he did. In fact, if the interests of Spain and Portugal alone had been concerned, the best thing would have been to have quietly withdrawn, and have left the French to trample on them, as a proper punishment for their stupid and ignorant pride. But the attention which Wellington compelled Buonaparte to give to the Peninsula, and the constant drain which this war was to him of men and money, were enabling Russia, and Sweden, and the north of Germany to prepare for another and decisive struggle with the oppressor.
FORE:The system of combination had spread very widely in 1837 and 1838. So great was the terrorism produced that conviction for an outrage was very rare. The utmost precautions were taken to prevent discovery in committing assassination. Strangers were sent to a great distance for the purpose; and even if they were detected, few persons would run the risk of coming forward as witnesses. The consequence was that in nine cases out of ten combination murders were perpetrated with impunity. In 1837 the Cotton Spinners' Association at Glasgow struck to prevent a reduction of wages in consequence of the mercantile embarrassments arising from the commercial crash in the United States. This association had its branches all over Scotland and the North of England. During sixteen years a total of 200,000 had passed through its hands. So extensive were its ramifications that, when it struck in the spring of 1837, no less than 50,000 persons, including the families of the workers, were deprived of the means of existence, and reduced to the last degree of destitution. Crowds of angry workmen paraded the streets and gathered round the factory gates, to prevent other people from going in to work; fire-balls were thrown into the mills for the purpose of burning them. At length the members of the association went so far as to shoot one of the new hands in open day in a public street of Glasgow. In consequence of this outrage the sheriff of Lanarkshire proceeded with a body of twenty policemen and arrested the members of the secret committee, sixteen in number, who were found assembled in a garret, to which they obtained access by a trap-ladder, in Gallowgate of that city. This was on Saturday night, August 3rd. On the Monday following the strike was at an end, and all the mills in Glasgow were going. The jury found the prisoners guilty of conspiracy, and they were sentenced to transportation, but the murder not provena result which excited some surprise, as the evidence was thought to have warranted a general verdict of "Guilty." This was, two years after, followed by their being all liberated from confinement by Lord Normanby, then Home Secretary.
FORE:BOSTON "BOYS" DISGUISED AS INDIANS THROWING THE TEA CHESTS INTO THE HARBOUR. (See p. 210.)
FORE:Sir Henry Clinton had for some time been aware of the real destination of the united forces of Washington and Rochambeau. He must have seen that there was a determined resolve to crush, by the most powerful combination of American and French forces, the army in the south, and every exertion should have been made by him, with fleet and army, to release Cornwallis from his peril. But, instead of sending direct reinforcements to Cornwallis, and ordering the fleet to engage the enemy's attention, and, if possible, defeat De Grasse in the Chesapeake, he concocted a diversion in Connecticut with Arnold, which he fondly hoped would recall Washington. Sir Henry Clinton contemplated further expeditionsfirst against the Rhode Island fleet, and next against Philadelphia; but these never came off, and matters were now every day assuming such an aspect as should have stimulated him to some direct assistance to Cornwallis.The Bills were highly necessary, and, on the whole, well calculated to nip in the bud those ever-growing abuses of India and its hundred millions of people which, some seventy years later, compelled Government to take the control out of the hands of a mere trading company, whose only object was to coin as much money as possible out of the country and the folk. But it needed no sagacity to see that the means of defeat lay on the very surface of these Bills. Those whose sordid interests were attacked had only to point to the fact that Parliament, and not the Crown, was to be the governing party under these Bills, in order to secure their rejection. This was quickly done through a most ready agent. Thurlow had been removed by the Ministry from the Woolsack, where he had remained as a steady opponent of all the measures of his colleagues; and it required but a hint from the India House, and he was at the ear of the king. Nothing was easier than for Thurlow to inspire George III. with a deep jealousy of the measure, as aiming at putting the whole government of India into the hands of Parliament and of Ministers, and the effect was soon seen.
FORE:And walked into the Strand;Amongst the Independents the names of John Clayton and William Beugo Collyer, and amongst the Unitarians Dr. Priestley, Theophilus Lindsey, and Thomas Belsham are conspicuous.
FORE: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. The American Colonies and their TradeGrowing Irritation in AmericaThe Stamp ActThe American ProtestThe Stamp Act passedIts Reception in AmericaThe King's IllnessThe Regency BillThe Princess Dowager omittedHer Name inserted in the CommonsNegotiations for a Change of MinistryThe old Ministry returnsFresh Negotiations with PittThe first Rockingham MinistryRiots in AmericaThe Stamped Paper destroyedPitt's SpeechThe Stamp Act repealedWeakness of the GovernmentPitt and Temple disagreePitt forms a MinistryAnd becomes Lord ChathamHis Comprehensive PolicyThe Embargo on WheatIllness of ChathamTownshend's Financial SchemesCorruption of ParliamentWilkes elected for MiddlesexArrest of WilkesDangerous RiotsDissolution of the Boston AssemblySeizure of the Liberty SloopDebates in ParliamentContinued Persecution of WilkesHis Letter to Lord WeymouthAgain expelled the HouseHis Re-electionThe Letters of JuniusLuttrell declared elected for MiddlesexIncapacity of the MinistryPartial Concessions to the AmericansBernard leaves BostonHe is made a Baronet"The Horned Cattle Session"Lord Chatham attacks the MinistryResignations of Granby and CamdenYorke's SuicideDissolution of the Ministry.
FORE:The prorogation of Parliament, on the 21st of June, liberated both Sir Francis and the unfortunate president of the debating society, Mr. John Gale Jones. On the morning of this day vast crowds assembled before the Tower to witness the enlargement of the popular baronet. There was a great procession of Reformers with banners and mottoes, headed by Major Cartwright, and attended by Mr. Sheriff Wood and Mr. Sheriff Atkins; but as Sir Francis apprehended that there might be some fresh and fatal collision between the military and the people, he prudently resolved to leave the Tower quietly by water, which he effected, to the deep disappointment of the populace. No such excitement as this had taken place, on a question of right between the House of Commons and an individual member, since the days of Wilkes.
FORE:There was an energetic debate in each House as the Bill passed through. It was opposed in the Peers by Lords Lansdowne, Holland, and Erskine, but was carried by ninety-three against twenty-seven. Ten peers entered a strong protest on the journals against the measure, denying the traitorous conspiracy or the extensive disaffection to the Government alleged, affirming that the execution of the ordinary laws would have been amply sufficient, and that Ministers were not entitled to indemnity for causeless arrests and long imprisonments which had taken place, for the Bill went to protect them in decidedly illegal acts. In the House of Commons the Bill was strongly opposed by Brougham, Tierney, Mr. Lambtonafterwards Lord Durhamand Sir Samuel Romilly. They condemned the conduct of Ministers in severe language, while the Bill was supported by Canning, by Mr. Lambafterwards Lord Melbourne, who generally went with the other sideby Sir William Garrow, and Sir Samuel Shepherd, Attorney-General.The Peace of Amiens, instead of turning the attention of Buonaparte to internal improvements, seemed to give it opportunity to range, in imagination, over the whole world with schemes of conquest and of the suppression of British dominion. There was no spot, however remote, that he did not examine on the map with reference to plans of conquest. Louisiana and Guiana, obtained from Spain and Portugal, were viewed as ports whence conquest should advance to Nova Scotia, Canada, the Brazils, Mexico, and Peru. Every station in the West India Isles was calculated as a point for this purpose, and for seizing some day all the British islands there. The Cape of Good Hope, Madagascar, the isles of France and Bourbon, the Dutch spice isles, and their settlements in Java, Sumatra, etc., were regarded as a chain of ports which would enable Buonaparte to become master of India. He sent out expeditions, under different officers, to examine every island and region where the British had a settlement, or where he might plant one, to oppose them. One of these expeditions sailed in a couple of corvettes, commanded by Captain Baudin, who was accompanied by a staff of thirty-three naturalists, geologists, savants, etc., the ostensible object being science and discoverythe real one the ascertaining of the exact possessions of Britain, and of the best means of becoming master of them. The head of the scientific staff was M. Pron. On their return their report was published, and it is singular that in this report St. Helena, destined to be the prison of Napoleon, is described in rapturous terms as an earthly paradise.
TWO:In 1817 the number of power-looms in Lancashire was estimated at 2,000, of which only about 1,000 were then in employment, and the wages had fallen below the rate at which goods could be produced by machinery. To the power-loom, therefore, the hand-loom weavers gradually gave way. In 1832 there were 80,000 power-looms in Lancashire, employing persons of both sexes and of all ages from nine years upwards, at rates of wages varying from half-a-crown to ten shillings a week. In 1817 the estimated number of persons employed in the spinning of cotton in Great Britain was 110,763, and the quantity of yarn produced was under 100,000,000 lbs.; in 1853 the yarn spun was nearly 700,000,000 lbs. In 1838 the total number of cotton factories in Great Britain and Ireland was 1,815, of which there were in England and Wales, 1,599; in Scotland, 192; in Ireland, 24. The total number of persons employed in these factories was 206,000, of whom 145,934 were females.The evils of the social state of Ireland were bad enough without being aggravated by the virulence of faction. The result of numerous Parliamentary inquiries, and the observations of travellers from foreign countries, was to present a state of society the most deplorable that can well be imagined in any civilised country under a Christian Government. Many of the lower orders, especially in Munster and Connaught, as well as in mountainous districts of the other provinces, maintained a state of existence the most wretched that can be conceived. They lived in cabins built of mud, imperfectly covered with sods and straw, consisting generally of one room, without any window, with a chimney which admitted the rain, but did not carry off the smoke. They had little or nothing that deserved the name of furniture; their food consisted of potatoes and salt, with milk or a herring sometimes as a luxury; their wages, when they got work, were only sixpence or fourpence a day. They subsisted on small patches of land, which were continually subdivided as the children got married, the population at the same time multiplying with astonishing rapidity. When the potatoes and the turf failed, towards summer, the men went off to seek harvest work in the low lands and richer districts of the country, and in England and Scotland. The women, locking up the doors, set forth with the children to beg, the youngest of the lot being wrapped up in blankets, and carried on their backs. They passed on from parish to parish, getting a night's lodging, as they proceeded, in a chimney corner or in a barn, from the better part of the peasantry and farmers, who shared with them their potatoes, and gave them "a lock of straw" to sleep on. Thus they migrated from county to county, eastward and northward, towards the sea, lazily reposing in the sunshine by the wayside, their children enjoying a wild kind of gipsy freedom, but growing up in utter ignorance, uncared for by anybody, unrecognised by the clergy of any church. The great proprietors were for the most part absentees, who had let their lands, generally in large tracts, to "middlemen," a sort of small gentry, or "squireens," as they were called, who sublet at a rack-rent to the peasantry. Upon these rack-rented, ignorant cultivators of the soil fell a great portion of the burden of supporting the Established clergy, as well as their own priesthood. The tithes were levied exclusively off tillage, the[247] rector or vicar claiming by law a tenth of the crop, which was valued by his "tithe proctors," and unless compounded for in money, which was generally done by the "strong farmers," before the crop left the field, the tenth sheaf must have been set aside to be borne away on the carts of the Protestant clergyman, who was regarded by the people that thus supported him as the teacher of heresy.
TWO:The progress of Great Britain in commerce during the reign of George III. had been extraordinary. At the beginning of the reign the number of British vessels of all kinds amounted to only 7,075, with a tonnage of 457,316 tons; but at the end of the reign the vessels amounted to 30,000, with a tonnage of upwards of 3,000,000 tons. At the commencement of the reign the exports were 14,500,000, and the imports 9,579,159. At the end of the reign the exports had risen to 43,438,989; and the imports to 30,776,810.
For some time after the revival of true poetry the old forms still hung about what in spirit was new. The last of the old school of any note may be said to have been Dr. Johnson and Dr. Darwin. Johnson was too thoroughly drilled into the dry, didactic fashion of the artificial past, he was too bigotedly self-willed to be capable of participating in the renovation. In fact, he never was more than a good versifier, one of that class who can win prizes for University themes on the true line and square system of metrical composition. His "London," a mere paraphrase of the third book of "Juvenal," and "The Vanity of Human Wishes" are precisely of that stamp. Johnson lived at the time of Chatterton's appearance, but he completely ignored him, and he ridiculed the simplicity of the poems introduced by Bishop Percy by absurd parodies on them, asThe king, in the first instance, applied to Lord Shelburne to form a Ministry; but he was bound by engagements to Wentworth House, and honourably refused to take the lead. George then tried Lord Gower as ineffectually, and so was compelled to send for Lord Rockingham, who accepted office, on the condition that peace should be made with America, including the acknowledgment of its independence, if unavoidable; administrative reform, on the basis of Mr. Burke's three Bills; and the expulsion of contractors from Parliament, and revenue officers from the exercise of the elective franchise. The king stood strongly on the retention of Lord Chancellor Thurlow and Lord Stormont in their offices. Rockingham, with reluctance, conceded the retention of Thurlow, but refused that of Stormont. The choice of Lord Rockingham was such as could only have been made where family influence and party cliques had more weight than the proper object of a Ministerthe able management of national affairs. Rockingham, though a very honourable man, was never a man of any ability, and though now only[288] fifty-two, his health and faculties, such as they were, were fast failing. Besides this, there was a violent jealousy between him and Lord Shelburne, who became his colleague, and brought in half of the Cabinet. The shape which the Ministry eventually assumed was this:Lord Rockingham became First Lord of the Treasury and Premier; the Earl of Shelburne and Charles Fox, Secretaries of State; Thurlow, Lord Chancellor; Camden, notwithstanding his age, President of the Council; Duke of Grafton, Privy Seal; Lord John Cavendish, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Keppelmade a viscountFirst Lord of the Admiralty; General Conway, Commander of the Forces; the Duke of Richmond, Master-General of Ordnance; Dunningas Lord AshburtonChancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Burke was not admitted to the Cabinet, for the Whigs were too great sticklers for birth and family; but his indispensable ability insured him the Paymastership of the Forcesby far the most lucrative office in the hands of Government, but the salary of which he was pledged to reduce by his Bill. Pitt was offered a place as Lord of the Treasury; but he had already declared, on the 8th of March, on the debate on Lord John Cavendish's motion, that he would never accept a subordinate situation. Dundas remained in office, as Lord Advocate, and John Lee was made Solicitor-General. Such was the new Administration: it embraced, as leaders, five Rockinghamites and five Shelburnites. The eleventh member of the Cabinet, Thurlow, belonged to neither side, but was the king's man. Fox saw himself in office with him with great repugnance, and Burke felt the slight put upon him in excluding him from the Cabinet.When he entered Portugal Massena issued a proclamation, informing the Portuguese that the British were the troublers and mischief-makers of Europe, and that they were there only for their own objects of ambition, and calling on the inhabitants to receive the French as their friends and saviours. Lord Wellington issued a counter-proclamation, remarking that the Portuguese had had too much occasion to learn what sort of friends the French were; that they had learned it by the robbery of their property, their brutality towards the women, and oppression of all classes. He called on them, as the sole means of rescue, to resist to the death; and he ordered them, as the British army retired from Lisbon, to withdraw from their towns and villages, carrying whatever they could with them, so that the enemy might find no means of support. This was part of his great plan; and he assured the Portuguese that those who stayed behind after their magistrates had ordered them to withdraw should receive no assistance from him; and that whoever was found holding any communication with the enemy should be deemed a traitor, and treated accordingly.
TWO:The progress of Great Britain in commerce during the reign of George III. had been extraordinary. At the beginning of the reign the number of British vessels of all kinds amounted to only 7,075, with a tonnage of 457,316 tons; but at the end of the reign the vessels amounted to 30,000, with a tonnage of upwards of 3,000,000 tons. At the commencement of the reign the exports were 14,500,000, and the imports 9,579,159. At the end of the reign the exports had risen to 43,438,989; and the imports to 30,776,810.
