THREE:He was advised to try Westminster, where Mr. John Churchill, the brother of his coadjutor, the satirist, and others, were in his interest, but he boldly struck for the City of London. There were seven candidates at the poll. Wilkes received one thousand two hundred and forty-seven votes, but he was still lowest on the poll. His friends, the mob, had no franchise.The example of Oxford, who made an attempt on the life of the Queen, was followed by another crazy youth, named Francis, excited by a similar morbid passion for notoriety. On the 29th of May, 1842, the Queen and Prince Albert were returning to Buckingham Palace down Constitution Hill in a barouche and four, when a man who had been leaning against the wall of the palace garden went up to the carriage, drew a pistol from his pocket, and fired at the Queen. Her Majesty was untouched, and seemed unaware of the danger. The assassin was observed by Prince Albert, and pointed out by him to one of the outriders, who dismounted to pursue him; but he had been at once arrested by other persons. The carriage, which was driving at a rapid pace, no sooner arrived at the palace, than a messenger was sent to the Duchess of Kent to announce the Queen's danger and her safety. The prisoner, John[491] Francis, the son of a machinist or stage carpenter at Covent Garden Theatre, having been twice examined by the Privy Council, was committed to Newgate for trial at the Central Criminal Court on a charge of shooting at the Queen with a loaded pistol. He was only twenty years of age. The trial of Francis took place on the 17th of June, before Chief Justice Tindal, Baron Gurney, and Justice Patteson. The principal witness was Colonel Arbuthnot, one of the equerries who was riding close to the Queen when the shot was fired, and cried out to a policeman, "Secure him!" which was done. Colonel Wylde, another equerry, with several other witnesses, corroborated the testimony of Colonel Arbuthnot; and it appeared that Francis had on the previous day pointed a pistol at the Queen, though he did not fire. For the defence it was alleged that the attempt was the result of distress, and that the prisoner had no design to injure the Queen. The jury retired, and in about half an hour returned into court with a verdict of "Guilty," finding that the pistol was loaded with some destructive substance, besides the wadding and powder. Chief Justice Tindal immediately pronounced sentence of death for high treason, that he should be hanged, beheaded, and divided into four quarters. The sentence was commuted to transportation for life.
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THREE:
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THREE:Yet, in that blind and defiant spirit, which he continued to show till he had lost the colonies, George created Bernard a baronet on his reaching home, for having, in effect, brought Massachusetts to the verge of rebellion; and, to show his emphatic sense of these services, he himself paid all the expenses of the patent.
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THREE:What immediately follows shows that Oliver had planned and brought to a crisis, by his personal exertions, this unhappy rising. On Sunday, the 8th of June, Jeremiah Brandreth, a framework-knitter of Nottingham, appeared with some others at a public-house called the "White Horse," in the village of Pentrich, in Derbyshire. This village is about fourteen miles from Nottingham, and about a mile from the small market town of Ripley. It is in a district of coal and iron mines, and is near the large iron foundry of Butterley. The working people of the village, and of the neighbouring village of South Wingfield, were chiefly colliers, workers in the iron mines or iron foundry, or agricultural labourersa race little informed at that day, and therefore capable of being readily imposed on. This Brandreth had been known for years as a fiery agitator. He was a little, dark-haired man, of perhaps thirty years of age. He had been much with Oliver, and was one of his most thorough dupes, ready for the commission of any desperate deed. He had acquired the cognomen of the "Nottingham Captain," and now appeared in an old brown great-coat, with a gun in his hand, and a pistol thrust into an apron, which was rolled round his waist as a belt.At length, after much mischievous delay, the Government ventured to lay hands upon the disseminators of sedition and the organisers of rebellion. On the 13th of May John Mitchel was arrested and committed to Newgate. On the 15th, Mr. Smith O'Brien, who had been previously arrested and was out on bail, was brought to trial in the Queen's Bench, and arraigned on ex officio information as being a wicked, seditious, and turbulent person, and having delivered a speech for the purpose of exciting hatred and contempt against the Queen in Ireland, and inducing the people to rise in rebellion. He was defended by Mr. Butt, a Conservative barrister, who spoke of the ancient lineage and estimable character of the prisoner, concluding thus:"Believe me, gentlemen, all cannot be right in a country in which such a man as William Smith O'Brien is guilty, if guilty you pronounce him, of sedition." At the conclusion of this sentence the majority of the bar, and of the people in court, rose from their seats and loudly cheered, the ladies in the galleries waving their handkerchiefs. The jury were locked up all night without refreshments, but they could not agree. The next day Meagher was tried, with a similar result, and was hailed by a cheering multitude outside, whom he addressed from a window in the Nation office. Mitchel, however, was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years; he was immediately conveyed in the police prison van to a small steamer which waited in the bay, and then to a man-of-war which conveyed him to Bermuda.
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ONE:Notwithstanding the constant wars of this time, British shipping, commerce, colonies, and manufactures made considerable progress. At the commencement of this period the amount of shipping employed in our commerce was altogether 244,788 tons, being 144,264 tons English, and 100,524 foreign; in 1701 the amount of shipping employed was 337,328 tons, of which alone 293,703 were English. In 1702, the end of William's reign, the number of English mercantile vessels was about 3,281, employing 27,196 seamen. The royal navy, at the end of William's reign, amounted to about 159,000 tons, employing some 50,000 sailors, so that the seamen of England must have amounted at that period to nearly 80,000.
ONE:With the reign of George III. began the real era of civil engineering. With respect to our highways there had been various Parliamentary enactments since the Revolution of 1688; but still, at the commencement of George III.'s reign, the condition of the greater part of our public roads was so dreadful as now to be almost incredible. Acts of Parliament continued to be passed for their amendment, but what was their general state we learn from the invaluable "Tours" of Arthur Young. He describes one leading from Billericay to Tilbury, in Essex, as so narrow that a mouse could not pass by any carriage, and so deep in mud that chalk-waggons were continually sticking fast in them, till so many were in that predicament that the waggoners put twenty or thirty of their horses together to pull them out. He describes the same state of things in almost every part of the countryin Norfolk, Suffolk, Wiltshire, and Lancashire. Some of them had ruts four feet deep by measure, and into these ruts huge stones were dropped to enable waggons to pass at all; and these, in their turn, broke their axles by the horrible jolting, so that within eighteen miles he saw three waggons lying in this condition. Notwithstanding, from 1785 to 1800 no fewer than six hundred and forty-three Acts of Parliament regarding roads were passed. But scarcely a penny of the money collected at the toll-bars went to the repair of the roads, but only to pay the interest of the debt on their original construction. Whatever was raised was divided amongst the members of the body known as the trustees for the original fund; and though many Acts of Parliament limited this interest, means were found for evading the restriction.We must return from victory abroad to discontent at home. On the 28th of January, 1817, the Prince Regent opened the fifth Session of Parliament. In his speech he expressed indignation at "the attempts which had been made to take advantage of the distresses of the country for the purpose of exciting a spirit of sedition and violence;" and he declared himself determined to put down these attempts by stern measures. The seconder of the Address in the Commons had the good sense to believe that the demagogues and their acts would die of themselves. Certainly, if the demagogues had no cause on which to base their efforts, those efforts must have proved fruitless; and the wisdom of Government consisted in seriously inquiring whether there were such causes. To attempt to insure peace by smothering distress is the old remedy of tyrants, and is like heaping fuel on fire to put it out. Whilst this debate was proceeding, a message arrived from the Lords to announce that the Regent, on his return from the House, had been insulted, and some missile thrown through the windows of his carriage. The House agreed upon an Address to the Regent on this event, and then adjourned.
ONE:Meanwhile, Washington and Rochambeau were mustering for the march to the Chesapeake. On the 14th of September Washington reached the headquarters of Lafayette, and took the supreme command, Rochambeau being second, and the especial head of the French. The next day Washington and Rochambeau held a conference with the Comte de Grasse. De Grasse told them that what they did they must do quickly, for that he could not remain on that station longer than the 1st of November; and it was resolved to act accordingly.He had been able to borrow a hundred and eighty thousand livres from two of his adherents, had made serious exertions to raise arms, and though he had kept his project profoundly secret from the French King and Ministry, lest they might forcibly detain him, he had managed to engage a French man-of-war called the Elizabeth, carrying sixty-seven guns, and a brig of eighteen guns called the Doutelle, an excellent sailer. On the 2nd of July the Doutelle left St. Nazaire, at the mouth of the Loire, and waited at Belleisle for the Elizabeth, when they put forward to sea in good earnest. Unfortunately, only four days after leaving Belleisle, they fell in with the British man-of-war the Lion, of fifty-eight guns, commanded by the brave Captain Butt, who in Anson's expedition had stormed Paita. There was no avoiding an engagement, which continued warmly for five or six hours, when both vessels were so disabled that they were compelled to put back respectively to England and France.
