ONE:Soult, on the retreat of Sir John Moore, had taken possession of Ferrol, Bilbao, and the other principal towns in the north of Spain. He had then entered Portugal, and had marched to Oporto, which he took after a resistance of only two days; and Sir J. Cradock had retired to Lisbon. Soult was prevented from advancing farther by the rising of the Spaniards behind him in Galicia, who retook Vigo and other places; whilst Silviera, the Portuguese general, interposed between him and Galicia, and formed a junction with the Spaniards. Wellesley determined to expel Soult from Oporto, and did not hesitate to say that the French general could not long remain in Portugal. Leaving a division in Lisbon to guard the eastern frontiers of Portugal against the forces of Victor, who lay in Spanish Estremadura, Sir Arthur advanced towards Oporto with a celerity that astonished the French. He quitted Lisbon on the 28th of April, reached Coimbra, driving the French before him, and on the 9th of May he was advancing from that city on Oporto. By the 11th he was occupying the southern bank of the Douro, opposite to that city. Soult had broken down the bridges and sent away the boats, so that he might be able to retire at leisure into Galicia; but Sir Arthur managed to send across General Murray with a brigade, a few miles above Oporto, and a brigade of Guards also passed at the suburb of Villanova, and he discovered sufficient boats to carry over his main army just above the town. The French commenced a fierce attack on the British forces as they landed; but the first battalion, the Buffs, got possession of a large building called the Seminario, and held it till the other troops arrived. Major-General Hill soon brought up the 48th and 66th regiments; General Sherbrooke, who crossed the river below the town with the brigade of Guards and the 29th regiment, entered the town amid the acclamations of the people, and charged the French in the rear; and General Murray, about the same time, showed himself on the French left, above the town. Soult fled, leaving behind him his sick and wounded, and many prisoners, besides much artillery and ammunition. This taking of Oporto, in the face of a French force of ten thousand men, coupled with his having to cross the broad Douro, and that with very defective means of transit, was a most brilliant affair; and the most astonishing thing was, that Wellesley lost only twenty-three killed and ninety-eight wounded, whilst Soult's troops suffered severely.
ONE: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.As to the silk and wool trades, in the ten years preceding 1824 the quantity of raw and thrown silk used by our manufacturers was on an average of 1,882,311 lbs. per annum. In the ten succeeding years the average was nearly double, viz. 95 per cent. higher; and in the sixteen years which ended in 1849 there was an increase of 120 per cent. over the quantity used under the restrictive system. According to the report of the inspectors of factories, there were, in 1835, 231 silk factories in England, six in Scotland, and one in Ireland. The total number of females thus employed was over 20,000, and the total number of both sexes was about 31,000. The total number of woollen and worsted factories at work in 1835 was returned by the inspectors of factories as being 1,313, showing an increase of ten per cent. in four years. The total number of persons employed in them in 1835 was 71,274, on which there was an increase of twenty per cent. up to 1839. There was a general depression in the price of British wool, in consequence of which a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the causes. From the evidence which they received, it appeared that the actual number of sheep in England and Wales had increased one-fifth since the year 1800, when it was 19,000,000, yielding about 95,000,000 lbs. of wool, or about five pounds[419] for each fleet. It was estimated that the quantity used for manufacturing purposes increased during the first half of the nineteenth century by 115 per cent. Yorkshire is the chief seat of the woollen manufacture, and the best proof of its progress, perhaps, is presented in the state of the population, which in the whole of the West Riding increased during the first forty years of the century at the rate of 104 per cent. At the census of 1801 it was 563,953, while the census of 1841 showed it to be 1,154,101.
ONE:But the position of Buonaparte was far from being secure or satisfactory. Though the soldiers had come over to him, and endeavoured to rouse the populace of Paris to shout for his return, it was in vain. The Guards, incensed at their silence, struck them with the flat of their swords, and bade them cry, "Napoleon and Liberty!" but, though they saw that Napoleon had returned, they very much doubted whether he had brought liberty with him, and they remained cold and indifferent. They saw the armies of the Allies looming again in the distance, and they gave no credence to Napoleon's ready lies that he was at peace with them. But he omitted no exertions to enter into such a peace. He dispatched messengers to every Court, offering to accept the terms of the Treaty of Paris, though he had repeatedly avowed that this treaty consummated the disgrace of France. To these messages no answers were returned. It was already determined that he should receive no communication from the Allied sovereigns but in the shape of overwhelming armies. They had proclaimed, in their Congress at Vienna, and in their new Treaty of Coalition, that he had forfeited every claim to consideration, and the British House of Commons had fully coincided with them, and already upwards of a million of soldiers were in arms, and in march towards France to finally crush him.The Free Trade journals did not fail to observe that what they called "this remarkable lecture on Free Trade, Protection, and smuggling, delivered from the Tory Treasury bench," was wound up by the avowal that the principles of Free Trade were now beyond a question, and that the rule to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest was[490] the only valid theory of commerce. In the House some opposition was offered to the reduction of duties on pigs, apples, butter, fish, and other articles; but the Government proposals were affirmed by large majorities, except in the case of apples, which were made to pay 6d. in the bushel. The Opposition, however, raised the old question of the sugar duties, which had been omitted from the list of changes; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer declined to give way, and the Tariff Bill passed the Commons on the 28th of June. It was fiercely debated in the Upper House, but the Whigs did not carry any material amendments.
