Well had it been for Murat could he have made up his mind to seek the

same asylum; for it appears clear that it would have been granted

him, for he was no longer dangerous. But he clung convulsively to the

fortunes of Napoleon, and making his way in a small coasting vessel,

he followed him to France, and reached the port of Fréjus on the 28th

or 29th of May, where Buonaparte had landed on his return from Elba.

From this place Murat wrote to Buonaparte through Fouché, offering

his services to him; but Buonaparte, who would have been duly sensible

of the services of Murat had he succeeded in holding Italy against

the Austrians, and thus acting as an important divider of the efforts

of the Austrians, was equally sensible of the little value of Murat

as a mere individual, defeated, and having lost Italy. He refused to

give him a word of reply. Murat accordingly lay in concealment with

his followers, vainly hoping for a word of encouragement, till the

news of the utter defeat of Buonaparte at Waterloo came upon him like

the shock of an earthquake. The south of France was no longer a place

for any who had been prominent amongst the retainers of Buonaparte;

some of Murat's followers made haste to escape from the search and

the vengeance of the Royalists. As for Murat himself, he wrote again

to Fouché, imploring his good offices with the Allies to obtain him a

passport for England. Receiving no response to this, Murat condescended

to write a most imploring letter to Louis XVIII., but he had no time

to wait for the slow progress of diplomatic life--he fled and, after

many adventures, reached Corsica. There he was allowed to remain, and a

few weeks would have brought him the assurance of entire freedom from

enmity on the part of the Allies. But, unfortunately, by this time the

shock of the utter overthrow and captivity of Buonaparte following on

his own misfortunes, had overturned his intellect. He conceived the

insane idea of recovering Naples by the same means that Buonaparte had

for a while recovered Paris. A large number of Neapolitan and Corsican

refugees encouraged him in the mad project.

[Illustration: CAPTURE OF MURAT. (_See p._ 117.)]

On the 8th of October Murat landed near Pizzo, on the Calabrian

coast--a coast more than any other in Italy fraught with fierce

recollections of the French. His army now consisted of only

twenty-eight men; yet, in his utter madness, he advanced at the head

of this miserable knot of men, crying, "I am your king, Joachim!"

and waving the Neapolitan flag. But the people of Pizzo, headed by

an old Bourbon partisan, pursued him, not to join, but to seize him.

When they began firing on him, he fled back to his vessels; but the

commander, a man who had received the greatest benefits from him, deaf

to his cries, pushed out to sea, and left him. His pursuers were

instantly upon him, fired at him, and wounded him; then rushing on

him, they knocked him down and treated him most cruelly. Women, more

like furies than anything else, struck their nails into his face and

tore off his hair, and he was only saved from being torn to pieces by

the old Bourbon and his soldiers, who beat off these female savages

and conveyed him to the prison at Pizzo. The news of his capture was

a great delight to Ferdinand. He entertained none of the magnanimity

of the Allies, but sent at once officers to try by court-martial and,

of course, to condemn him. Some of these officers had been in Murat's

service, and had received from him numerous favours, but not the less

readily did they sentence him to death; and on the 13th of October,

1815, he was shot in the courtyard of the prison at Pizzo--with

characteristic bravery refusing to have his eyes bound, and with

characteristic vanity bidding the soldiers "save his face, and aim at

his heart!"

[Illustration: LORD CASTLEREAGH.]

The Congress of Vienna, interrupted by the last razzia of Buonaparte,

now resumed its sittings, and the conditions between France and the

Allies were finally settled, and treaties embodying them were signed at

Paris by Louis XVIII. on the 20th of November. France was rigorously

confined to the frontier of 1790, losing the additions conferred on it

by the first Treaty of Paris; and to prevent any danger of a recurrence

of the calamities which had called the Allies thus a second time to

Paris, they were to retain in their hands seventeen of the principal

frontier fortresses, and one hundred and fifty thousand of their

soldiers were to be quartered, and maintained by France, in different

parts of the kingdom. The term of their stay was not to exceed five

years, and that term might be curtailed should the aspect of Europe

warrant it. The Allied sovereigns also insisted on the payment of

the enormous expenses which had been occasioned by this campaign of

the Hundred Days--the amount of which was estimated at seven hundred

millions of francs. This sum, however, was not to be exacted at once,

but to be paid by easy instalments.

There was one restitution, however, which the Allies had too delicately

passed over on their former visit to Paris--that of the works of art

which Napoleon and his generals had carried off from every town in

Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, during their wars. As has been

already stated, museums had been freely pillaged by Buonaparte or by

his orders. Accordingly, there was now a great stripping of the Louvre,

and other places, of the precious pictures and statues which the hands

of the greatest marauder that the world had ever seen had accumulated

there. The "Horses of the Sun," from St. Mark's, Venice, the "Venus di

Medici," the "Apollo Belvedere," the "Horses of the Car of Victory,"

which Buonaparte had carried away from Berlin, and many a glorious

painting by the old masters, precious books, manuscripts, and other

objects of antiquity, now travelled back to their respective original

localities, to the great joy of their owners, and the infinite disgust

of the French, who deemed themselves robbed by this defeat of robbery.

Louis XVIII., having raised an army of thirty thousand men, thought

that he could protect himself, and was anxious that France might be

spared the expense of supporting the one hundred and fifty thousand

men. Accordingly, one-fifth of the army was withdrawn in 1817. In the

following year a Congress was held, in the month of September, at

Aix-la-Chapelle, at which the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the

King of Prussia attended; on the part of France, the Duke of Richelieu;

and of Great Britain, the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh, when

it was determined that a complete evacuation of France might and should

take place by the 20th of November, when the three years terminated. At

this Congress it was determined also that, besides the seven hundred

million francs for the charges incurred by the Allied armies, another

seven hundred millions should be paid in indemnification of damages

to private individuals in the different countries overrun by France.

These and other items raised the total to be paid by France for

Napoleon's outbreak of the Hundred Days to about sixty million pounds

sterling.

Great Britain, which had amassed so vast a debt in aiding the

Continental sovereigns against Napoleon, played the magnanimous to

the last. She gave up her share of the public indemnities, amounting

to five million pounds, to the King of Holland and the Netherlands,

to enable him to restore that line of fortresses along the Belgian

frontiers which our Dutch king, William III., had planned, and which

Joseph II. of Austria had suffered to fall to decay, thus rendering

invasion from France especially easy. Nor was this all: she advanced

five million pounds to enable the different sovereigns to march their

troops home again, as she had advanced the money to march them up,

the money demanded of France not being ready. Truly might Napoleon,

in St. Helena, say that England, with her small army, had no business

interfering in Continental wars; that "with our fleet, our commerce,

and our colonies, we are the strongest power in the world, so long as

we remain in our natural position; but that our gains in Continental

wars are for others, our losses are for ourselves, and are permanent."

Here, then, our history of the political transactions of the reign of

George III. terminates. That reign really terminated in 1811, with the

appointment of the Regency, which continued the ruling power during

the remainder of his life. From that date it is really the history of

the Regency that we have been prosecuting. But this was necessary to

maintain the unity of the narrative of that most unexampled struggle

which was involving the very existence of every nation in Europe. Of

all this the poor old, blind, and deranged king knew nothing--had no

concern with it. The reins of power had fallen from his hands for ever:

his "kingdom was taken from him, and given to another." He had lived

to witness the rending away of the great western branch of his empire,

and the sun of his intellect went down in the midst of that tempest

which threatened to lay in ruins every dynasty around him. We have

watched and detailed that mighty shaking of the nations to its end. The

events of the few remaining years during which George III. lived but

did not rule, were of a totally different character and belong to a

totally different story. They are occupied by the national distresses

consequent on the war, and the efforts for reform, stimulated by

these distresses, the first chapter of which did not close till the

achievement of the Reform Bill in 1832.

The Government and Parliament which, with so lavish a hand, had enabled

the Continental monarchs to fight their battles, which had spent

above two thousand millions of money in these wars, of which eight

hundred millions remained as a perpetual debt, with the perpetual

necessity of twenty-eight millions of taxation annually to discharge

the interest--that burden on posterity which Napoleon had, with such

satisfaction, at St. Helena, pronounced permanent--this same Government

and Parliament, seeing the war concluded, were in great haste to

stave off the effects of this burden from the landed aristocracy,

the party which had incurred it, and to lay it upon the people. They

saw that the ports of the world, once more open to us, would, in

exchange for our manufactures, send us abundance of corn; and, that

the rents might remain during peace at the enormous rate to which war

prices had raised them, they must keep out this foreign corn. True,

this exclusion of foreign corn must raise the cost of living to the

vast labouring population to a ruinous degree, and threatened fearful

convulsions from starving people in the manufacturing districts; but

these considerations had no weight with the land-holding Government

and its Parliamentary majority. In 1814 they were in haste to pass a

Corn Law excluding all corn except at famine prices; but the lateness

of the season, and an inundation of petitions against it, put it off

for that Session. But in 1815 it was introduced again and carried by

a large majority. By this all corn from abroad was excluded, except

when the price was eighty shillings per quarter. By this law it was

decreed that the people who fought the battles of the world, and who

would bear the bulk of the weight of taxation created by these wars,

were never, so long as this law continued, to eat corn at less than

four pounds per quarter. This was, in fact, not only a prohibition of

cheap bread, but a prohibition of the sale of the labours of the people

to foreign nations to the same extent. It was an enactment to destroy

the manufacturing interest for the imagined benefit of land-owners;

and it was done on this plea, as stated by Mr. Western, one of the

leading advocates of the Bill--"That, if there is a small deficiency

of supply, the price will rise in a ratio far beyond any proportion

of such deficiency: the effect, indeed, is almost incalculable. So,

likewise, in a surplus of supply beyond demand, the price will fall

in a ratio exceeding almost tenfold the amount of such surplus." The

avowed object, therefore, was to prevent the manufacturing population

from reaping the benefit of that Continental peace which they had

purchased at such a cost, and consequently to repress the growth of

their trade to the same degree. Mr. Tooke, in his "History of Prices,"

confirms this view of the matter, asserting that "the price of corn in

this country has risen from one hundred to two hundred per cent., and

upwards, when the utmost computed deficiency of the crops has not been

more than between one-sixth and one-third below an average, and when

that deficiency has been relieved by foreign supplies." Mr. Western

candidly showed that, to the farmer, years of deficiency were the most

profitable, from this principle of enormous rise from a small cause;

that if the produce of an acre of wheat in a good year is thirty-three

bushels at six shillings, the amount realised would be only nine pounds

eighteen shillings; but, if the produce were reduced by an unfavourable

season one-sixth, and the price raised from six shillings to twelve

shillings, the produce of twenty-seven and a half bushels would realise

sixteen pounds ten shillings, the difference being profit!

The effect was immediately shown by a rapid rise of prices, wheat

becoming one hundred and three shillings a quarter. But this did not

satisfy the land-owners, and Mr. Western, in 1816, introduced no less

than fourteen resolutions to make more stringent the exclusion of

foreign corn. It was openly declared "that excessive taxation renders

it necessary to give protection to all articles, the produce of our

own soil, against similar articles, the growth of foreign countries."

Mr. Barham declared that "the country must be forced to feed its own

population. No partial advantage to be derived from commerce could

compensate for any deficiency in this respect. The true principle of

national prosperity was an absolute prohibition of the importations of

foreign agricultural produce, except in extreme cases;" and on this

ground it was proposed to exclude foreign rape-seed, linseed, tallow,

butter, cheese, etc.

Some of the most eminent land-owners were clear-sighted and

disinterested enough to oppose these views with all their power.

The Dukes of Buckinghamshire and Devonshire, the Lords Carlisle,

Spencer, Grey, Grenville, Wellesley, and many members of the Commons,

voted and protested energetically against them; and the additional

restrictions were not carried. But enough had been done to originate

the most frightful sufferings and convulsions. We shall see these

agitations every remaining year of this reign. The Prince Regent, in

his opening speech, in 1816, declared "manufactures and commerce to

be in a flourishing condition." But Mr. Brougham at once exposed this

fallacy. He admitted that there had been an active manufacturing and an

unusual amount of exportation in expectation of the ports of the world

being thrown open by the peace; but he declared that the people of the

Continent were too much exhausted by the war to be able to purchase,

and that the bulk of these exported goods would have to be sold at a

ruinous reduction--at almost nominal prices; and then would immediately

follow a stoppage of mills, a vast population thrown out of employment,

and bread and all provisions made exorbitantly dear when there was the

least power to purchase. All this was speedily realised. British goods

were soon selling in Holland and the north of Europe for less than

their cost price in London and Manchester. Abundant harvests defeated

in some degree the expectations of the agriculturists, and thus both

farmers and manufacturers were ruined together; for, the check being

given to commerce, the manufacturing population could purchase at no

price, and, in spite of the harvest, the price of wheat was still one

hundred and three shillings per quarter. Many farmers, as well as

manufacturers, failed; country banks were broken, and paper-money was

reduced in value twenty-five per cent.; and a circumstance greatly

augmenting the public distress was the reduction of its issues by the

Bank of England from thirty-one millions to twenty-six millions.

The year 1816 was a most melancholy year. Both agricultural and

manufacturing labourers rose in great masses to destroy machinery, to

which, and not to the temporary poverty of the whole civilised world,

exhausted by war, they attributed the glut of manufactured goods,

and the surplus of all kinds of labour. In Suffolk and Norfolk, and

on the Isle of Ely, the agricultural labourers and fen-men destroyed

the threshing-machines, attacked mills and farms, pulled down the

houses of butchers and bakers, and marched about in great bands, with

flags inscribed "Bread or blood!" In Littleport and Ely shops and

public-houses were ransacked, and the soldiers were called out to

quell the rioters, and much blood was shed, and numbers were thrown

into prison, of whom thirty-four were condemned to death, and five

executed. The colliers and workers in the iron mines and furnaces of

Staffordshire and Warwickshire, as well as in the populous districts

of South Wales, were thrown out of work, and the distress was terrible.

The sufferings and consequent ferments in Lancashire were equally

great. In Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Derbyshire, the Luddites

broke out again, as they had done in 1812, and by night demolished the

stocking-frames and the machinery in the cotton-mills. Great alarm

existed everywhere, and on the 29th of July a meeting was called at

the "City of London" Tavern to consider the means of relieving the

distress, the Duke of York taking the chair, the Dukes of Kent and

Cambridge, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the

Chancellor of the Exchequer, and others attending. Many palliatives

were proposed, but Lord Cochrane and other reformers declared that

the only effectual remedy would be the abolition of the Corn Law.

Soup-kitchens were recommended, but in Scotland these were spurned

at as only insults to the sufferers; at Glasgow the soup-kitchen was

attacked, and its coppers and materials destroyed; and at Dundee

the people helped themselves by clearing a hundred shops of their

provisions.

During the whole of these scenes the attitude of Government was not

merely indifferent, but absolutely repulsive. At no time had so cold

and narrow-spirited a Ministry existed. The names of Castlereagh,

Liverpool, Sidmouth, and Lord Eldon as Lord Chancellor, recall the

memory of a callous Cabinet. They were still dreaming of additional

taxation when, on the 17th of March, they were thunderstruck by seeing

the property-tax repealed by a majority of forty. The Prince Regent

had become utterly odious by his reckless extravagance and sensual

life. The abolition of the property-tax was immediately followed by

other resistance. On the 20th of March a motion of disapprobation of

the advance of the salary of the Secretary to the Admiralty, at such

a time, from three to four thousand pounds a-year was made, but lost.

On this occasion Henry Brougham pronounced a most terrible philippic

against the Prince Regent, describing him as devoted, in the secret

recesses of his palace, to the most vicious pleasures, and callous to

the distresses and sufferings of others! Mr. Wellesley Pole described

it as "language such as he had never heard in that House before."

Not only in Parliament, but everywhere the cry for Reform rose with the

distress. Hampden Clubs were founded in every town and village almost

throughout the kingdom, the central one being held at the "Crown and

Anchor" in the Strand, London, its president being Sir Francis Burdett,

and its leading members being William Cobbett, Major Cartwright, Lord

Cochrane, Henry Hunt, and others. The object of these clubs was to

prosecute the cause of Parliamentary reform, and to unite the Reformers

in one system of action. With the spirit of Reform arose, too, that of

cheap publications, which has now acquired such a vast power. William

Cobbett's _Political Register_, on the 18th of November, 1816, was

reduced from a shilling and a halfpenny to twopence, and thence-forward

became a stupendous engine of Reform, being read everywhere by the

Reformers, and especially by the working-classes in town and country,

by the artisan in the workshop, and the shepherd on the mountain. The

great endeavour of Cobbett was to show the people the folly of breaking

machinery, and the wisdom of moral union.

[Illustration: THE MOB OF SPENCEANS SUMMONING THE TOWER OF LONDON.

(_See p._ 121.)]

It is only too true, however, that many of the Hampden Clubs

entertained very seditious ideas, and designs of seizing on the

property of the leading individuals of their respective vicinities.

Still more questionable were the doctrines of the Spenceans, or

Spencean Philanthropists, a society of whom was established in

London this year, and whose chief leaders were Spence, a Yorkshire

schoolmaster, one Preston, a workman, Watson the elder, a surgeon,

Watson the younger, his son, and Castles, who afterwards turned

informer against them. Mr. "Orator" Hunt patronised them. They

sought a common property in all land, and the destruction of all

machinery. These people, with Hunt and Watson at their head, on the

2nd of December, met in Spa Fields. The Spenceans had arms concealed

in a waggon, and a flag displayed declaring that the soldiers were

their friends. The crowd was immense, and soon there was a cry to go

and summon the Tower. Mr. Hunt and his party appear to have excused

themselves from taking part in this mad movement. The mob reached

the Tower, and a man, supposed to be Preston, summoned the sentinels

to surrender, at which they only laughed. The mob then followed

young Watson into the City, and ransacked the shop of Mr. Beckwith,

a gunsmith, on Snow Hill, of its firearms. A gentleman in the shop

remonstrated, and young Watson fired at him and severely wounded

him. Young Watson then made his escape, but his father was secured

and imprisoned; and the Lord Mayor and Sir James Shaw dispersed the

mob on Cornhill, and took one of their flags and several prisoners.

Watson the elder was afterwards tried and acquitted; but a sailor who

was concerned in the plunder of the gunsmith's shop was hanged. A week

after this riot the Corporation of London presented an Address to the

Throne, setting forth the urgent necessity for Parliamentary reform.

These events were a little diversified by the storming of Algiers on

the 27th of August. In 1815 the Government of the United States of

America had set the example of punishing the piratical depredations

of the Algerines. They seized a frigate and a brig, and obtained a

compensation of sixty thousand dollars. They do not appear to have

troubled themselves to procure any release of Christian slaves, or to

put an end to the practice of making such slaves; and, indeed, it would

have been rather an awkward proposal on the part of North Americans,

as the Dey might have demanded, as a condition of such a treaty, the

liberation of some three millions of black slaves in return. But at

the Congress of Vienna a strong feeling had been shown on the part of

European Governments to interfere on this point. It was to the disgrace

of Great Britain that, at the very time that she had been exerting

herself so zealously to put an end to the negro slave trade, she had

been under engagements of treaty with this nest of corsairs; and Lord

Cochrane stated in Parliament this year that only three or four years

before it had been his humiliating duty to carry rich presents from our

Government to the Dey of Algiers. But in the spring of this year it was

determined to make an effort to check the daring piracies of Tunis,

Algiers, and Tripoli. Lord Exmouth was sent to these predatory Powers,

but rather to treat than to chastise; and he effected the release of

one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two Christian slaves. From Tunis

and Tripoli he obtained a declaration that no more Christian slaves

should be made. The Dey of Algiers refused to make such concession

till he had obtained the permission of the Sultan. Lord Exmouth gave

him three months to determine this point, and returned home. A clause

in the treaty which he had made with Algiers ordered that Sicily and

Sardinia should pay nearly four hundred thousand dollars for the ransom

of their subjects; they accordingly paid it. This clause excited just

condemnation in England, as actually acknowledging the right of the

Algerines to make Christian slaves.

But the matter was not to be thus peacefully ended. Before Lord Exmouth

had cleared out of the Mediterranean, the Algerines--not in any concert

with their Government but in an impulse of pure fanaticism--had rushed

down from their castle at Bona on the Christian inhabitants of the

town, where a coral fishery was carried on chiefly by Italians and

Sicilians, under protection of a treaty made by Britain, and under that

of her flag, and committed a brutal massacre on the fishermen, and also

pulled down and trampled on the British flag, and pillaged the house of

the British vice-consul.

Scarcely had Lord Exmouth reached home when he was ordered forth

again to avenge this outrage, and he sailed from Plymouth on the 28th

of July, 1816, with a fleet of twenty-five large and small ships.

At Gibraltar he was joined by the Dutch Admiral Van Cappellan with

five frigates and a sloop, to which were added a number of British

gunboats. On the 27th of August Lord Exmouth sailed right into the

formidable harbour of Algiers, and dispatched a messenger to the Dey,

demanding instant and ample recompense for the outrage; the delivery

of all Christian slaves in the kingdom of Algiers; the repayment of

the money received by the Dey for the liberation of Sicilian and

Sardinian slaves; the liberation of the British consul--who had been

imprisoned--and of two boats' crews detained; and peace between Algiers

and Holland. The messenger landed at eleven o'clock, and two hours

were given the Dey to prepare his answer. The messenger remained

till half-past two o'clock, and no answer arriving, he came off, and

Lord Exmouth gave instant orders for the bombardment. The attack was

terrible. The firing from the fleet, which was vigorously returned from

the batteries in the town and on the mole, continued till nine in the

evening. Then most of the Algerine batteries were knocked literally to

pieces, but the firing did not cease till about eleven. No sooner was

the assault over than a land wind arose and carried the fleet out of

the harbour, so that the vessels were all out of gunshot by two o'clock

in the morning. A wonderful spectacle then presented itself to the eyes

of the spectators in the fleet. Nine Algerine frigates, a number of

gunboats, the storehouses within the mole, and much of the town were in

one huge blaze, and by this they could see that the batteries remained

mere heaps of ruins. The next morning Lord Exmouth sent in a letter to

the Dey with the offer of the previous day, saying, "If you receive

this offer as you ought, you will fire three guns." They were fired.

The Dey made apologies, and signed fresh treaties of peace and amity,

which were not of long endurance. But within three days one thousand

and eighty-three Christian slaves arrived from the interior, and were

received on board and conveyed to their respective countries.

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.

The next day the debate was resumed. It appeared that the Prince had

been hooted at, and a stone, or other missile, flung through the

window of the carriage. The Ministerial party endeavoured to raise the

occurrence into an attempt on the Prince's life; the Opposition hinted

at the expression of public disgust with the tone which Government

was assuming towards the distresses of the people, called zealously

for stringent reductions of expense, and moved an amendment to that

very effect. But the Government had yet much to learn on this head;

and Lord Sidmouth announced that the Prince Regent in three days would

send down a message on the disaffection of the people. It would have

been wise to have added to this measure a recommendation of serious

inquiry into the causes of this disaffection, for disaffection towards

a Government never exists without a cause; but the Government had

carried on matters so easily whilst they had nothing to do but to vote

large sums of money for foreign war that they had grown callous, and

had been so much in co-operation with arbitrary monarchs that they had

acquired too much of the same spirit; and they now set about to put

down the people of England as they, by means of the people of England,

had put down Buonaparte. It was their plan to create alarm, and under

the influence of that alarm to pass severe measures for the crippling

of the Constitution and the suppression of all complaints of political

evil.

In the debate on this subject, George Canning, who on many occasions

had shown himself capable of better things, breathed the very language

of Toryism. He declared the representation of Parliament perfect, and

treated the most moderate proposals for Reform as only emanations

from the mad theories of the Spenceans. The message of the Prince

Regent came down on the 3rd of February, ordering certain papers to be

laid before the House, "concerning certain practices, meetings, and

combinations in the metropolis, and in different parts of the kingdom,

evidently calculated to endanger the public tranquillity, to alienate

the affections of his Majesty's subjects from his Majesty's person and

Government, and to bring into hatred and contempt the whole system of

our laws and institutions." Lord Sidmouth endeavoured to guard the

House of Peers against the belief that the insult to the Regent had

any share in the origination of this message, but the House of Lords,

in its Address, directly charged this event as an additional proof of

the public disaffection. Unfortunately, the Regent had two Houses of

Parliament only too much disposed to make themselves the instruments

of such vengeance. The message was referred to a secret committee in

each House, and on the 18th and 19th of February they respectively

made their reports. Both went at great length into the affair of the

Spa Fields meeting, and the proceedings and designs of the Spenceans

were made to represent the designs of the working classes all over the

kingdom; that such men as Thistlewood, who not long after suffered for

his justly odious conduct, were conspicuous among the Spenceans, and

that there had been an affray in Spa Fields, were circumstances to give

ample colouring to the reports of these committees. The Lords' report

stated--"It appears clear that the object is, by means of societies,

or clubs, established, or to be established, in all parts of Great

Britain, under pretence of Parliamentary reform, to infect the minds

of all classes of the community, and particularly of those whose

situation most exposes them to such impressions, with a spirit of

discontent and disaffection, of insubordination, and contempt of all

law, religion, and morality; and to hold out to them the plunder of all

property as the main object of their efforts, and the restoration of

their natural rights; and no endeavours are omitted to prepare them to

take up arms, on the first signal, for accomplishing their designs."

The country societies were pointed out "as principally to be found in

the neighbourhood of Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham, Mansfield,

Derby, Chesterfield, Sheffield, Blackburn, Manchester, Birmingham,

Norwich, Glasgow, and its vicinity; but," it added, "they extend, and

are spreading in some parts of the country, to almost every village."

The report of the Commons went over much the same ground, dwelling

particularly on the Hampden Clubs as avowed engines of revolution.

It dwelt on the acts and activity of the leaders, of the numbers

which they had seduced and were seducing, the oaths which bound them

together, and the means prepared for the forcible attainment of their

objects, which were the overthrow of all rights of property and all

the national institutions, in order to introduce a reign of general

confusion, plunder, and anarchy.

Now, though in some obscure and ignorant parts of the country

there were clubs which contemplated the foolish idea of seizing

on neighbouring properties, the committees must have been very

ill-informed to have drawn any such conclusion as to the Hampden Clubs,

which were organised for Parliamentary reform under the auspices of Sir

Francis Burdett, Major Cartwright, Lord Cochrane, Cobbett, and others.

Most of these persons had large properties to be sacrificed by the

propagation of any such principles, and the great topics of Cobbett's

_Register_, the organ through which he communicated with the people,

were the necessity of refraining from all violence, and of rising into

influence by purely political co-operation. But these reports answered

the purposes of the Government, and they proceeded to introduce, and

succeeded in passing, four Acts for the suppression of popular opinion.

The first was to provide severe punishment for all attempts to seduce

the soldiers or sailors from their allegiance; the second to give

safeguards to the person of the Sovereign, but which did not include

the most effectual of all--that of making him beloved; the third was

to prevent seditious meetings, and gave great power to the magistrates

and police to interfere with any meeting for the mildest Reforms; the

fourth was the old measure of suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act,

which armed the magistrates with the fearful authority to arrest and

imprison at pleasure, without being compelled to bring the accused to

trial. The last of these Acts was not passed till the 29th of March,

and it was to continue in force only till the 1st of July. But in the

meantime events took place which occasioned its renewal.

Within a few days after the first passing of this Act, that is, in

the first week of March, a body of weavers--said by the Government to

amount to ten thousand men, but by a more competent authority, Samuel

Bamford, the author of the "Life of a Radical," not to have exceeded

four or five thousand--met in St. Peter's Field, at Manchester, and

commenced a march southward. The intention was to proceed to London, to

present to the Prince Regent, in person, a petition describing their

distress. Bamford had been consulted, and had condemned the project as

wild, and likely to bring down nothing but trouble on the petitioners.

He believed that they were instigated by spies sent out by Government

in order to find an opportunity of justifying their arbitrary measures.

Suspicious persons had been trying him. But the poor, deluded people

assembled, "many of them," says Bamford, "having blankets, rugs, or

large coats rolled up, and tied knapsack-like on their backs. Some

had papers, supposed to be petitions, rolled up, and some had stout

walking-sticks." From their blankets, they afterwards acquired the name

of Blanketeers. The magistrates appeared and read the Riot Act, and

dispersed the multitude by soldiers and constables; but three or four

hundred fled in the direction of their intended route, and continued

their march, pursued by a body of yeomanry. By the time that they

reached Macclesfield, at nine o'clock at night, they amounted to only

one hundred and eighty; yet many of them persisted in proceeding, but

they continually melted away, from hunger and from the misery of lying

out in the fields on March nights. By the time that they reached Leek

they were reduced to twenty, and six only were known to pass over the

bridge at Ashbourne.

This was an attempt as constitutional as it was ignorantly and

hopelessly planned by suffering people; but more criminal speculations

were on foot. A second report of the Lords' secret committee,

recommending the renewal of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus

Act, stated that a general insurrection was planned to take place

at Manchester, on the 30th of March--to seize the magistrates, to

liberate the prisoners, burn the soldiers in their barracks, and set

fire to a number of factories; and that such proposals were really in

agitation is confirmed by Bamford and other of the Radical leaders.

The report says that the design was discovered by the vigilance

of the magistrates, a few days before its intended taking place;

but it is far more probable that the magistrates had received some

intimation of what was in progress from those who had misguided the

ignorant multitude. Bamford tells us that both he and his friends

had been applied to to engage in the design, but they had condemned

it as the work of incendiaries, who had availed themselves of the

resentment of the Blanketeers at their treatment, to instigate them

to a dreadful revenge. The truth was, a number of spies in the pay of

Government, with the notorious Oliver at their head, were traversing

the manufacturing districts of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire,

and Lancashire, to stimulate the suffering population into open

insurrection, that they might be crushed by the military. Bamford and

the more enlightened workmen at once saw through the snare, and not

only repulsed the tempters, but warned their fellows against their

arts. The failure of the first design, however, did not put an end to

the diabolical attempt on the part of the spies. They recommended the

most secret meetings for the purpose; that another night attack should

be prepared for Manchester, and that Ministers should be assassinated.

Such proposals were again made to Bamford and his friends, but they not

only indignantly repelled them, but sought safety for their own persons

in concealment, for continual seizures of leading Reformers were now

made.

[Illustration: THE "NOTTINGHAM CAPTAIN" AND THE AGITATORS AT THE "WHITE

HORSE." (_See p._ 126.)]

Disappointed in this quarter, the odious race of incendiary spies of

Government tried their arts, and succeeded in duping some individuals

in Yorkshire, and many more in Derbyshire. That the principal

Government spy, Oliver, was busily engaged in this work of stirring up

the ignorant and suffering population to open insurrection from the

17th of April to the 7th of June, when such an outbreak took place in

Derbyshire, we have the most complete evidence. It then came out, from

a servant of Sir John Byng, commander of the forces in that district,

that Oliver had previously been in communication with Sir John, and no

doubt obtained his immediate liberation from him on the safe netting of

his nine victims. In fact, in a letter from this Sir John Byng (then

Lord Strafford), in 1846, to the Dean of Norwich, he candidly admits

that he had received orders from Lord Sidmouth to assist the operations

of Oliver, who was, his lordship said, going down into that part of the

country where meetings were being frequently held, and that Oliver, who

carried a letter to Sir John, was to give him all the information that

he could, so that he might prevent such meetings. Here, as well as from

other sources, we are assured that Oliver only received authority to

collect information of the proceedings of the conspirators, and by no

means to incite them to illegal acts. We have also the assurance of Mr.

Louis Allsop, a distinguished solicitor of Nottingham, that Oliver was

in communication with him on the 7th of June, immediately on his return

from Yorkshire, and informed him that a meeting was the same evening to

take place in Nottingham, and he and another gentleman strongly urged

him to attend it, which Oliver did. Mr. Allsop says that Oliver had no

instructions to incite, but only to collect information. All this has

been industriously put forward to excuse Ministers. But what are the

facts? We find Oliver not only--according to evidence which came out

on the trials of the unfortunate dupes at Derby--directly stimulating

the simple people to insurrection, but joining in deluding them into

the persuasion that all London was ready to rise, and that one hundred

and fifty thousand from the east and west of the capital only waited

for them. We find him not only disseminating these ideas throughout

these districts from the 17th of April to the 27th of May, but also

to have concerted a simultaneous rising in Yorkshire, at Nottingham,

and in Derbyshire, on the 6th of June. Thornhill-lees, in Yorkshire,

was on the verge of action, and ten delegates, including Oliver, were

arrested. In Derbyshire the insurrection actually took place.

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 labourers--a 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.

Two of the workmen from Butterley Foundry entered the "White Horse,"

which was kept by a widow Wightman, whose son George was deep in the

foolish conspiracy into which Oliver and this his blind, savage tool,

the Nottingham Captain, were leading him. They found Brandreth with a

map before him, and telling them there was no good to be done, they

must march up to London and overthrow the Government. He said all the

country was rising; that at Nottingham the people had already taken

the castle and seized the soldiers in their barracks, and were waiting

for them. This shows that he had come straight from Oliver, who, on

the 7th, was at Nottingham, attending the meeting there, and who knew

that the meeting in Yorkshire had been prevented. Yet he had allowed

the people of Nottingham to believe that the Yorkshire men were coming,

according to agreement, in thousands; and he allowed Brandreth to go

and arouse Derbyshire, under the belief that Nottingham that night

would be in the hands of the insurgents. On Monday night, the 9th of

June, Brandreth and a knot of his colleagues proceeded to muster their

troop of insurgents for the march to Nottingham. They roused up the

men in their cottages, and, if they refused to go, they broke in the

doors with a crowbar, and compelled them to join them. Most of these

unwilling levies slipped away in the dark on the first opportunity.

At South Wingfield he assembled his forces in an old barn, and then

they proceeded through the neighbourhood demanding men and guns. An

old woman had the courage to tap the "captain" on the shoulder, and

say--"My lad, we have a magistrate here;" and many of the men thought

Brandreth must be mad or drunk. At the farm of widow Hetherinton he

demanded her men and arms, and when she stoutly refused him, he put

the gun through the window and shot one of her men dead. As the

day dawned, Brandreth and his infatuated troop appeared before the

gates of Butterley Foundry, and demanded the men; but Mr. Goodwin,

the manager, had been apprised of their approach, and had closed the

gates. Brandreth had planned to take Butterley Foundry, and carry away

not only the men but a small cannon kept there; but Mr. Goodwin went

out and told Brandreth he should not have a man for any such insane

purpose, and seeing an old man that he well knew, Isaac Ludlam, who

bore a good character, and had been a local preacher amongst the

Methodists, he seized him by the collar and pushed him into the foundry

court, telling him not to be a fool, but stay at home. Ludlam, however,

replied, "he was as bad as he could be," rushed out, and went on--to

his death; for he was one of those that were executed.

All this time it was raining heavily, and Brandreth, daunted by the

weather, or by the courageous conduct of the manager, gave the word to

march. The manager calculated that there were only about a hundred of

them at this point; but they were soon after joined by another troop

from Ripley, and they took two roads, which united about three miles

farther on, collecting fresh men by the most direful threats. When they

reached Eastwood, a village three or four miles farther on the road

to Nottingham, they were said to amount to three hundred, but ragged,

famished, drenched with the rain, and not half of them armed, even

with rude pikes. Near Eastwood they were met by a troop of horse from

Nottingham, which had been summoned by Mr. Rolleston, a magistrate, and

at the sight they fled in confusion. About forty guns and a number of

pikes were picked up, and a considerable number of prisoners were made,

amongst them Brandreth. These prisoners were afterwards tried at a

special assize at Derby. They were defended by Thomas (afterwards Lord)

Denman, whose eloquence on the occasion raised him at once into notice,

and whose generous, gratuitous, and indefatigable exertions on behalf

of these simple, ignorant victims of Government instigation, showed

him to be a man of the noblest nature. Notwithstanding his efforts,

twenty of these unhappy dupes were transported for different terms, and

three--Brandreth, Ludlam, and Turner--were hanged and then beheaded as

traitors.

Such were the means employed by the British Government in 1817 to quiet

the country under its distress--a distress the inevitable result of the

long and stupendous war. The only idea was to tighten the reins of

Government--to stimulate the sufferers into overt acts, and then crush

them. Fortunately, with the exception of the Derby juries, the juries

in general saw through the miserable farce of rebellion, and discharged

the greater part of Oliver's and Lord Sidmouth's victims. Watson was

acquitted of high treason in London on the 16th of June, less than a

week after the Derbyshire insurrection. His son had eluded the pursuit

of the police. Seventeen prisoners on the like charges were liberated

in July in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and were paid seven shillings each to

carry them home. On the 22nd of August, of the twenty-four persons that

Oliver had entrapped in Yorkshire, twenty-two were discharged--against

eleven of them no bills being found by the grand jury--and the two left

in prison were detained there because, under the suspension of the

Habeas Corpus Act, they were not brought up for trial. The Manchester

Blanketeers were, in like manner, all discharged, though the Duke

of Northumberland did his utmost to stimulate Lord Sidmouth to get

them punished. On the country at large the impression was that the

Government had propagated a most needless alarm, and that those who had

fallen on the scaffold had been exalted by them from poor, ignorant

labourers into burlesque traitors, through the execrable agency of

their incendiaries, Oliver, Castles, Mitchell, and others.

But the Government had to receive another lesson this year on the folly

of endeavouring, in the nineteenth century, to crush the liberties of

Britons. There was an organ called the Press, which, partaking neither

of the Governmental fears of a natural complaint by the public of the

evils which preyed upon it, nor the Governmental hopes of silencing the

sufferers without any attempt to mitigate their calamities, reported

freely the mingled folly and cruelty of Ministers, and called for

the only remedy of the country's misfortunes--Reform. On moving the

second reading of the Bill for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus

Act, Lord Sidmouth observed that some noble lords had complained that

the authors and publishers of infamous libels on the Government were

not prosecuted. He assured them that the Government were quite as

anxious as these noble lords to punish the offenders, but that the law

officers of the Crown were greatly puzzled in their attempts to deal

with them; that authors had now become so skilful from experience, that

the difficulties of convicting them immeasurably exceeded those of any

former time.

It would seem that the law officers of the Crown despaired of

proceeding in the old way, but they, or the Ministers themselves, hit

on a new and more daring one. On the 27th of March the Secretary of

State addressed a circular letter to the lords-lieutenant of counties,

informing them that the Law Officers were of opinion that a justice

of the peace may issue warrants to apprehend persons charged with the

publication of political libels, and compel them to give bail; and

he required the lords-lieutenant to communicate this opinion to the

ensuing Quarter Sessions, that all magistrates might act upon it. This

was the most daring attack on the liberty of the subject which had

been made in England since the days of the Stuarts. Lord Grey, on the

12th of May, made a most zealous and able speech in the House of Lords

against this proceeding, denouncing the investment of justices of the

peace with the power to decide beforehand questions which might puzzle

the acutest juries, and to arrest and imprison for what might turn

out to be no offence at all. He said:--"If such be the power of the

magistrate, and if this be the law, where, I ask, are all the boasted

securities of our independence and freedom?" But it appears from the

correspondence of Lord Sidmouth, that he was at this moment glorying

in this expedient and triumphing in its imagined success. He said the

charge of having put such power into the hands of magistrates, he would

do his best and most constant endeavour to deserve; and that already

the activity of the dealers in libellous matter was much diminished.

He had, in truth, struck a deadly terror to the hearts of the stoutest

patriots, who saw no prospect but ruin and incarceration if they dared

to speak the truth. Cobbett then fled, and got over to America. In

taking leave of his readers, in his _Register_ of March 28th, he gave

his reasons for escaping from the storm:--"Lord Sidmouth was 'sorry

to say' that I had not written anything that the Law Officers could

prosecute with any chance of success. I do not remove," he continued,

"for the purpose of writing libels, but for the purpose of being able

to write what is not libellous. I do not retire from the combat with

the Attorney-General, but from a combat with a dungeon, deprived of

pen, ink, and paper. A combat with the Attorney-General is quite

unequal enough; that, however, I would have encountered. I know too

well what a trial by special jury is; yet that, or any sort of trial,

I would stand to face. So that I could be sure of a trial of whatever

sort, I would have run the risk; but against the absolute power of

imprisonment, without even a hearing, for time unlimited, in any gaol

in the kingdom, without the use of pen, ink, and paper, and without

communication with any soul but the keepers--against such a power it

would have been worse than madness to attempt to strive."

Nor were the fears of Cobbett imaginary. The Ministry at this time were

such fanatics in tyranny, that they would have rejoiced to have thus

caged the great political lion, and kept him in silence. At this very

moment they had pounced upon one who was equally clever in his way,

and who had, perhaps, annoyed them still more, but whom they did not

so much fear to bring into a court of justice. This was William Hone,

who had for some time been making them the laughing-stock of the whole

nation by his famous parodies. Hone was a poor bookseller in the Old

Bailey, who had spent his life in the quest after curious books, and

in the accumulation of more knowledge than wealth. His parodies had

first brought him into notice, and it did not appear a very formidable

thing for the Government to try a secluded bookworm not even able to

fee counsel for his defence. His trial did not come on at the Guildhall

till the 18th of December, and then it was evident that the man of

satirical fun meant to make a stout fight. The judge, Mr. Justice

Abbott, and the Attorney-General, Sir Samuel Shepherd, from their

manner of surveying the accused, did not apprehend much difficulty in

obtaining a verdict against him. But they very soon discovered their

mistake. The charge against Hone was for having published a profane

and impious libel upon the Catechism, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten

Commandments, thereby bringing into contempt the Christian religion.

The special indictment was for the publication of John Wilkes's

catechism. The Attorney-General did not very judiciously commence

his charge, for he admitted that he did not believe that Hone meant

to ridicule religion, but to produce a telling political squib. This

let out the whole gist of the prosecution, though that was very well

perceived by most people before; and it was in vain that he went on to

argue that the mischief was just the same. Hone opened his own defence

with the awkwardness and timidity natural to a man who had passed his

life amid books, and not in courts; but he managed to complain of his

imprisonment, his harsh treatment, of his poverty in not being able to

fee counsel, of the expense of copies of the informations against him,

and of the haste, at last, with which he had been called to plead. The

judge repeatedly interrupted him, with a mild sort of severity, and the

spectators were expecting him to make a short and ineffective defence.

Hone, on the contrary, began to show more boldness and pertinacity.

He began to open his books, and to read parody after parody of former

times. In vain Mr. Justice Abbott and the Attorney-General stopped him,

and told him that he was not to be allowed to add to his offence by

producing other instances of the crime in other persons. But Hone told

them that he was accused of putting parodies on sacred things into his

books, and it was out of his books he must defend himself. The poor,

pale, threadbare retailer of old books was now warmed into eloquence,

and stood in the most unquestionable ascendency on the floor of the

court, reading and commenting as though he would go on for ever; and he

did go on for six hours. He declared that the editor of _Blackwood's

Magazine_ was a parodist--he parodied a chapter of Ezekiel; Martin

Luther was a parodist--he parodied the first Psalm; Bishop Latimer was

a parodist; so was Dr. Boys, Dean of Canterbury; so was the author

of the "Rolliad;" so was Mr. Canning. He proved all that he said by

reading passages from the authors, and he concluded by saying that

he did not believe that any of these writers meant to ridicule the

Scriptures, and that he could not, therefore, see why he should be

supposed to do so more than they. Nay, he had done what they never

did: as soon as he was aware that his parodies had given offence he

suppressed them--and that long ago, not waiting till he was prosecuted.

They, in fact, were prosecuting him for what he had voluntarily and

long ago suppressed. The Attorney-General, in reply, asserted that it

would not save the defendant that he had quoted Martin Luther and Dr.

Boys, for he must pronounce them both libellous. The judge charged the

jury as if it were their sacred duty to find the defendant guilty; but,

after only a quarter of an hour's deliberation, they acquitted him.

[Illustration: WILLIAM COBBETT.]

This signal and unexpected defeat seemed to rouse the Government to

a fresh effort for victory over the triumphant bookseller. The Lord

Chief Justice Ellenborough, who was not accustomed to let juries and

the accused off so easily, rose from his sick bed, where he was fast

drifting towards the close of his career. The defendant was called into

court the next morning, the 19th of December. There sat Ellenborough,

with a severe and determined air. Abbott sat by his side. Hone this

time was charged with having published an impious and profane libel,

called "The Litany, or General Supplication." The Attorney-General

again asserted that, whatever might be the intention of the defendant,

the publication had the effect of bringing into contempt the service

of the Church. Hone opened his books to recommence the reading of

parallel productions of a former day, or by persons high in esteem in

the Church, but this was precisely what the invalid Lord Chief Justice

had left his bed to prevent. The judge told him all that was beside the

mark, but Hone would not allow that it was so, opened his books, and

read on in spite of all attempts to stop him. Never had Ellenborough,

not even in his strongest and best days, been so stoutly encountered;

scarcely ever had such a scene been witnessed in the memory of man. The

spectators showed an intense interest in the combat, for such it was,

and it was evident that the general sympathy went with the accused,

who put forth such extraordinary and unlooked-for power. The exhausted

Chief Justice was compelled to give way, and Hone went on reading one

parody after another, and dwelt especially on the parodies of the

Litany which the Cavaliers wrote to ridicule the Puritan Roundheads.

When he had done, the Lord Chief Justice addressed the jury in a strain

of strong direction to find a verdict for the Crown. He said "he would

deliver the jury his solemn opinion, as he was required by the Act of

Parliament to do; and under the authority of that Act, and still more

in obedience to his conscience and his God, he pronounced this to be

a most impious and profane libel. Believing and hoping that they, the

jury, were Christians, he had no doubt but they would be of the same

opinion." This time the solemn and severe energy of the Lord Chief

Justice seemed to have made an impression on part of the jury, for they

took an hour and a half to determine their verdict, but they again

returned one of Not Guilty.

Here, had the Government been wise, they would have stopped; but they

were not contented without experiencing a third defeat. The next

morning, the 20th of December, they returned to the charge with an

indictment against Mr. Hone for publishing a parody on the Athanasian

Creed, called "The Sinecurist's Creed." The old Chief Justice was

again on the bench, apparently as resolved as ever, and this time the

defendant, on entering the court, appeared pale and exhausted, as he

well might, for he had put forth exertions and powers of mind which

had astonished the whole country and excited the deepest interest.

The Attorney-General humanely offered to postpone the trial, but the

defendant preferred to go on. He only begged for a few minutes' delay

to enable him to put down a few notes on the Attorney-General's address

after that was delivered; but the Chief Justice would not allow him

this trifling favour, but said, if the defendant would make a formal

request for the purpose, he would put off the trial for a day. This

would have injured the cause of the defendant, by making it appear that

he was in some degree worsted, and, fatigued as he was, he replied,

promptly, "No! I make no such request." William Hone, on this third

trial, once more seemed to forget his past fatigues, and rose with a

strength that completely cowed the old and fiery judge. He did not

desist till he had converted his dictatorial manner into a suppliant

one. After quoting many eminent Churchmen as dissentients from the

Athanasian Creed, and amongst them Warburton and Tillotson, he added,

"Even his lordship's father, the Bishop of Carlisle, he believed, took

a similar view of this creed." This was coming too near; and the judge

said, "Whatever that opinion was, he has gone, many years ago, where

he has had to account for his belief and his opinions. For common

delicacy, forbear." "O, my lord," replied the satisfied defendant, "I

shall certainly forbear." The judge had profited by the lesson to-day:

he gave a much more temperate charge to the jury, and they required

only twenty minutes to return the third and final victory of Not

Guilty. Never had this arbitrary Government suffered so withering a

defeat. The sensation throughout the country was immense. The very next

day Lord Ellenborough sent in his announcement of retiring from the

bench, and in a very short time he retired from this world altogether

(December 13, 1818), it being a settled conviction of the public mind

that the mortification of such a putting-down, by a man whom he rose

from his sick-bed to extinguish, tended materially to hasten that

departure.

The only matters of interest debated in Parliament during this year,

except that of the discontent in the country, were a long debate

on Catholic emancipation, in the month of May, which was negatived

by a majority of only twenty-four, showing that that question was

progressing towards its goal; and a motion of Lord Castlereagh for the

gradual abolition of sinecures. This intimated some slight impression

of the necessity to do something to abate the public dissatisfaction,

but it was an impression only on the surface. This Ministry was too

much determined to maintain the scale of war expenditure to which

they had been accustomed to make any real retrenchment. A committee

appointed to consider the scheme recommended the abolition of sinecures

to the amount of fifty-four thousand pounds per annum, but neutralised

the benefit by recommending instead a pension-list of forty-two

thousand pounds per annum. The country received the amendment with

disgust and derision.

The year, gloomy in itself from the dislocation of trade and the

discontent of the people, terminated still more gloomily from another

cause--the death of the Princess Charlotte. This event, wholly

unexpected, was a startling shock to the whole nation. This amiable

and accomplished princess was not yet twenty-two. She had been married

only in May, 1816, to Prince Leopold of Coburg, and died on the 6th

of November, 1817, a few hours after being delivered of a stillborn

child. What rendered the event the more painful was that her death

was attributed to neglect by her accoucheur, Sir Richard Croft. Dr.

Baillie, who saw her soon after her confinement, refused to join in

the issue of a bulletin which the other medical men had prepared,

stating that she was going on well, and a few hours proved the fatal

correctness of his opinion. Sir Richard, overwhelmed by the public

indignation and his own feelings, soon afterwards destroyed himself. No

prince or princess had stood so well with the nation for many years.

The people saw in her a future queen, with the vigour, unaccompanied by

the vices and tyrannies, of Elizabeth. She had taken the part of her

mother against the treatment of her father, and this was another cause

which drew towards her the affections of the people. All these hopes

were extinguished in a moment, and the whole nation was plunged into

sorrow and consternation, the more so that, notwithstanding the twelve

children of George III., there had only been this single grandchild,

and several of his sons remained unmarried.

The year 1818 commenced gloomily. On the 27th of January Parliament was

opened by a Speech, drawn up for the Prince Regent, but read by the

Lord Chancellor. The first topic was, of course, the severe loss which

the country and the prince had sustained in the death of the Princess

Charlotte. It was only too well known that the prince and his daughter

had not for some time been on very cordial terms, the princess having

taken the part of her mother; and the vicious and voluptuous life of

the Regent did not probably leave much depth of paternal affection in

his nature, which had originally been generous and capable of better

things. It was remarked by Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley and Ward,

that the mention of the princess "was rather dry--sulky, rather than

sad." But the death of his only issue, and that at the moment that she

might have been expected to give a continued succession to the Throne,

was a severe blow to him. There was an end of all succession in his

line. He stood now without the hopeful support which his daughter's

affectionate regard in the country had afforded him, and he was ill

able to bear the loss of any causes of popularity. He received a

serious shock; and it was only by copious bleeding that he was saved

from dangerous consequences; yet, so little was the depth of his

trouble, that within three months of his loss he attended a dinner

given by the Prussian ambassador, and entertained the company with a

song.

The rest of the Speech consisted of endeavours to represent the country

as in a prosperous condition; to have escaped from insurrection by

the vigilance of Ministers, and to have recovered the elasticity of

commerce. No amendment was moved to the Address in either House, but

not the less did the conduct of Ministers escape some animadversion. In

the Peers, Lord Lansdowne ridiculed the alarms which had been raised

regarding the movements in Derbyshire, which, he said, had not been at

all participated in by the working population at large, and had been

put down by eighteen dragoons. He contended that there was no evidence

of any correspondence with these conspirators in other quarters; but

this was notoriously incorrect, for there had been a correspondence in

Lancashire and Yorkshire, a correspondence especially disgraceful to

Ministers, for it was on the part of their own incendiary agents. He

observed truly, however, that the insurrection, as it was called, had

by no means justified the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, for it

could have been most readily put down without it by the regular course

of law. In the Commons, Sir Samuel Romilly thought that the Derbyshire

insurrectionists had been very properly brought to trial; for Brandreth

had committed a murder, and, therefore, those who acted with him were,

in the eye of the law, equally guilty. But if they were properly

brought to trial, there were others who ought still more properly

to have been brought to trial too--the very men whom Government had

sent out, and who had aroused these poor people into insurrection

by false and treacherous statements. There was no justice in trying

and punishing the victims, and screening their own agents; and this

was what Government had done, and were still doing. It is in vain,

therefore, that their defenders contend that they gave no authority

to Oliver and the other spies to excite the people to outbreak: these

spies having notoriously done it, they still protected and rewarded

them, and thus made themselves responsible for their whole guilt. If

they had not authorised the worst part of the conduct of the spies,

they now acted as though they had, and thus morally assumed the _onus_

of these detestable proceedings. One thing immediately resulted from

the pæans of Ministers on the flourishing state of the country--the

repeal of the Suspension Act. The Opposition at once declared that

if the condition of the country was as Ministers described it, there

could be no occasion for the continuance of this suppression of the

Constitution; and accordingly a Bill for the repeal of the Suspension

Act was at once brought in and passed by the Lords on the 28th, and by

the Commons on the 29th of January.

[Illustration: OLD BAILEY, LONDON, 1814.]

Now, much of this at the moment was true; the manufacturers were

naturally anxious to resume their business, and a fall in the price of

corn, after the plentiful harvest of 1817, to seventy-four shillings

and sixpence, relieved a little the pressure on the working classes.

Could cheap bread have been secured, the condition of the people

might soon have become easy; but the fatal Corn Law came immediately

into operation. By the end of 1817 corn had risen in price again to

eighty-five shillings and fourpence; and then the ports were opened,

but the supplies did not bring down the markets. The spring of 1818

proved wet, and then about the middle of May a drought set in, and

continued till September, so that the apprehension of a deficient

harvest kept up the price of all articles of life, notwithstanding that

a million and a half quarters of wheat had been imported during the

year. So long as bread was tolerably cheap, and work more abundant,

political agitation in the manufacturing districts subsided; but it was

soon proved that the apparent increase of activity in manufacturing

and commercial exports was but a feverish desire on the part of

manufacturers and merchants to force a trade for which the exhausted

Continent was not yet prepared. Nothing but a free importation of corn

could have carried the country comfortably through the crisis; and

this was denied by the measures of Government, except at a rate of

price that put the proper consumption of bread beyond the means of the

working classes.

[Illustration: BEAUS AND BELLES OF THE REGENCY PERIOD.]

Meanwhile Ministers, anxious to exonerate themselves from the odium so

fully their due for fomenting insurrection, commenced Parliamentary

inquiries which only the more clearly demonstrated their guilt. On the

2nd of February the celebrated green bag was sent down by the Prince

Regent to the Lords, and another green bag on the following day to the

Commons. These green bags--or rather, this green bag, for they were

classed as one by the public, their contents being one--made a great

figure in the newspaper comments of the time. They were stuffed with

documents regarding the late extraordinary powers assumed by Ministers,

and the occurrences in the midland counties which had been held to

justify them. No doubt the papers had been carefully selected, and they

were now submitted to a secret committee of each House, which, being

named by Ministers, was pretty sure to bring in reports accordingly.

On the 23rd the Lords' committee brought up their report, and on the

27th the Commons' produced theirs. As might have been expected from

their parentage, there was a striking likeness in the offspring of

the committees; they were veritable twins. Both travelled over the

same ground; the statements made by the secret committee of 1816

averring that schemes of conspiracy were in agitation, and the events

of 1817, particularly in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, as fully confirming

these averments. They were compelled, however, to confess that the

insurrections, though clearly connected in different counties, in

Lancashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire, were not very

formidable, and that the mass of the population in these counties

did not at all sanction, much less second, such proceedings. Yet,

notwithstanding this confession, the fact remained that under the

arbitrary measures of Ministers a great number of persons had been

thrown into prison, against whom no charge could be established; and

that at Derby three had been executed, and twenty others transported

or imprisoned for long terms, and these, every one of them, through

the acts and incitements of the emissaries of Ministers themselves. On

the motion for printing the report of the Commons, which, of course,

justified Ministers, Mr. Tierney said it was scarcely worth while

to oppose the printing of "a document so absurd, contemptible, and

ludicrous."

But Ministers were too sensible of the unconstitutional character

of their deeds to rest satisfied with the mere justification of an

accepted report. A Bill of Indemnity was introduced to cover "all

persons who had in 1817 taken any part in apprehending, imprisoning, or

detaining in custody persons suspected of high treason, or treasonable

practices, and in the suppression of tumultuous and unlawful

assemblies." Thus Ministers were shielded under general terms, and to

avoid all appearance of personal movement in this matter by those in

the Cabinet the most immediately active, the Bill was introduced by the

Duke of Montrose, the Master of the Horse.

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. Lambton--afterwards Lord Durham--and Sir Samuel Romilly.

They condemned the conduct of Ministers in severe language, while the

Bill was supported by Canning, by Mr. Lamb--afterwards Lord Melbourne,

who generally went with the other side--by Sir William Garrow, and Sir

Samuel Shepherd, Attorney-General.

Ministers carried their indemnity in the Commons by one hundred and

sixty-two against sixty-nine; but this did not prevent a prolongation

of the demands of the Reformers for a searching inquiry into their

employment of the spies. Many petitions were presented to the House

of Commons for this inquiry--one of them from Samuel Bamford, who had

been a sufferer by imprisonment. On the 3rd of February Hone's case

was brought forward by William Smith, of Norwich; on the 10th, Lord

Archibald Hamilton made a motion for inquiry into similar prosecutions

of persons in Scotland, and especially of Andrew M'Kinley, and this

was supported by Sir Samuel Romilly and others, but rejected; yet the

next day Mr. Fazakerley made a demand for a rigid inquiry into the

employment of the spies, and for ascertaining whether they really had

exceeded their instructions. Here was an opportunity for Ministers

to clear themselves, were they really innocent of sending them out

to excite as well as to discover conspirators. There was a violent

debate, but the motion was rejected by one hundred and eleven against

fifty-two. The discussion left no doubt of the employment of Oliver

and others, and this fact being put beyond dispute, Ministers should,

in self-vindication, have cleared themselves, if they were guiltless,

as their friends pretended; but they did not do so. On the 17th Lord

Folkestone moved for inquiry into the treatment in prison of Mr. Ogden

and others, and a similar motion was made on the 19th, in the Lords,

by the Earl of Carnarvon. In both cases Ministers, instead of courting

inquiry, resented it, and closed the door of investigation by large

majorities. Lords Sidmouth, Bathurst, and Liverpool were prominent in

staving off these inquiries; and Lords Grosvenor, King, and Holland

were earnest in urging the necessity of such inquiry for their own

good fame. Lord Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby, put this in the

strongest light. He said that he thought Ministers "had been much

calumniated, but they would be most so by themselves if they refused

to inquire into those acts, when inquiry, according to their own

statements, would fully acquit them of the charges laid against them."

This was so self-evident that the fact that they would not admit this

inquiry might, were there no other grounds for decision, be taken as

positive proof of their guilt. But it is not likely that Oliver and his

comrades, who were for months in daily communication with Ministers

whilst on their detestable missions, would have dared so far to exceed

their orders, or, had they done so, that they would have been protected

at the expense of the reputations of Ministers themselves, and rewarded

into the bargain. The instructions to these men were undoubtedly of too

dark a character to be produced in open daylight.

Amid this melancholy manifestation of a convicted, yet dogged, treason

against the people on the part of their rulers, many motions for reform

and improvements in our laws were brought forward. On the part of Mr.

Sturges Bourne, a committee brought in a report recommending three

Bills for the improvement of the Poor Law: one for the establishment

of select vestries, one for a general reform of the Poor Law, and one

for revising the Law of Settlement. On the part of Henry Brougham, a

Bill was introduced for appointment of commissioners to inquire into

the condition of the charities in England for the education of the

poor. There were many attempts to reform the Criminal Law, in which Sir

Samuel Romilly especially exerted himself. One of these was to take

away the penalty of death from the offence of stealing from a shop to

the value of five shillings, another was to prevent arrests for libel

before indictment was found, and another, by Sir James Mackintosh,

to inquire into the forgery of Bank of England notes. There was a

Bill brought in by Mr. Wynn to amend the Election Laws; and one for

alterations in the Law of Tithes, by Mr. Curwen; another by Sir Robert

Peel, father of the great statesman, for limiting the hours of labour

in cotton and other factories; a Bill to amend the Law of Bankruptcy,

and a Bill to amend the Copyright Act, by Sir Egerton Brydges; and

finally a Bill for Parliamentary Reform, introduced by Sir Francis

Burdett, and supported by Lord Cochrane, subsequently the Earl of

Dundonald. All of these were thrown out, except the Select Vestries

Bill, Brougham's Bill to inquire into the public charities, a Bill for

rewarding apprehenders of highway robbers and other offenders, and a

Bill granting a million of money to build new churches. The cause of

Reform found little encouragement from the Parliamentary majorities of

the Sidmouths, Liverpools, and Castlereaghs. This list of rejections

of projects of reform was far from complete; a long succession

followed. The Scots came with a vigorous demand, made on their behalf

by Lord Archibald Hamilton, for a sweeping reform of their burghs.

Municipal reform was equally needed, both in Scotland and England. The

whole system was flagrantly corrupt. Many boroughs were sinking into

bankruptcy; and the elections of their officers were conducted on the

most arbitrary and exclusive principles. The Scots had agitated this

question before the outbreak of the French Revolution, but that and

the great war issuing out of it had swamped the agitation altogether.

It was now revived, but only to meet with a defeat like a score of

other measures quite as needful. Lord Archibald Hamilton asked for the

abolition of the Scottish Commissary Courts in conformity with the

recommendation of a commission of inquiry in 1808; General Thornton

called for the repeal of certain religious declarations to be made on

taking office; and Dr. Phillimore for amendment of the Marriage Act

of 1753; and numerous demands for the repeal of taxes of one kind or

another all met the same fate of refusal.

The death of the Princess Charlotte left the prospect of the succession

to the Crown equally serious. Of the numerous sons and daughters of

George III. not one had legitimate issue. It might be necessary soon

to look abroad in Germany or in Denmark for an heir to the Crown. This

consideration led to a number of royal marriages during the earlier

part of this year. The first of these marriages was not of this

description. It was that of the Princess Elizabeth, his Majesty's third

daughter, to the Landgrave and Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Homburg, on

the 7th of April. As the princess was already nearly eight-and-forty,

no expectation of issue in that quarter was entertained. On the 13th

of April Lord Liverpool brought down a message from the Regent to the

Peers, and Lord Castlereagh to the Commons, announcing treaties of

marriage in progress between the Duke of Clarence and the Princess

Adelaide Louisa, of Saxe-Meiningen; and also between the Duke of

Cambridge and the Princess Augusta Wilhelmina, of Hesse, youngest

daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse. The House of Commons was also asked

to add an additional ten thousand pounds a year to the allowance of the

Duke of Clarence, and six thousand pounds a year each to those of the

Dukes of Cumberland and Cambridge, and to that of the Duke of Kent,

if he, too, should marry. Ministers intimated that it had been the

intention to ask much larger sums, but they found that it was necessary

to reduce the sum asked for the Duke of Clarence. It was a matter of

notoriety that the duke had already a large family by the actress,

Mrs. Jordan, and probably the feeling of the House was influenced

by his desertion of that lady; but there was a stout opposition

and the sum was reduced to six thousand pounds. Loud acclamations

followed the carrying of this amendment, and Lord Castlereagh rose

and said, after the refusal of the sum asked, he believed he might

say that the negotiation for the marriage might be considered at an

end. The next day the duke sent a message declining the sum granted;

yet, after all, his marriage took place. The Duke of Cumberland was

already married to the Princess Frederica Sophia, the daughter of the

Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who had been divorced from Frederick

Louis, Prince of Prussia. The Duke of Cumberland was one of the most

unpopular men in the whole kingdom, for there were rumours of very

dark passages in his life, and Parliament had rejected an application

for an additional allowance on his marriage; and it now rejected this

application amid much applause. The sum asked for the Duke of Cambridge

was carried, but not without considerable opposition. The spirit of

reform was in the air.

On the 13th of May came down a message, announcing the approaching

marriage of the Duke of Kent with the daughter of the Duke of

Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Victoria Maria Louisa, sister of Prince Leopold,

and widow of Emich Charles, the Prince of Leiningen. The princess was

already the mother of a son and daughter. The nation was extremely

favourable to this match. The Duke of Kent was popular, and the more

so that he had always been treated with unnatural harshness by his

father. He had been put under the care of an old martinet general in

Hanover, who had received a large annual allowance with him, and kept

him so sparely that the poor youth ran away. He had been then sent

to Gibraltar, where the severe discipline which he had been taught

to consider necessary in the army brought him into disgrace with the

garrison. But towards the public at large his conduct had been marked

by much liberality of principle.

It was deemed necessary, before the end of the Session, which would

close the term of Parliament, to renew the Alien Act. It had been

renewed in 1814, and again in 1816, each time for two years. On the

last occasion it had been vehemently opposed, and as determined an

opposition was now manifested against its renewal. From the 5th of May

to the 29th the fight was continued, every opportunity and advantage

which the forms of Parliament afforded being resorted to to delay and

defeat it; but on the 29th it passed the Commons by ninety-four votes

against twenty-nine. It was introduced into the Lords on the 1st of

June by Lord Sidmouth. But it had been discovered that, by an Act of

the Scottish Parliament of 1685, all foreigners holding shares in

the Bank of Scotland to a certain amount became thereby naturalised;

and, by the Act of Union, all subjects of Scotland became naturalised

subjects of England. A clause, therefore, was introduced by the Lords

to obviate this, and passed; but on the Bill being sent down to the

Commons it was struck out; and Ministers were compelled to allow the

Bill without this clause to pass, and to introduce their separate Bill,

which was passed on the 9th of June.

Ministers were in haste to close and dissolve Parliament in order

to call a new one before the very probable demise of the king--for

though they had provided that in case of the decease of the queen

the Parliament should not reassemble, this did not apply to the

decease of the king; and should this take place before the day fixed

for the assembling of the new Parliament, the old Parliament--even

though formally dissolved--would reassemble: therefore, on the 10th

of June--the very day after the passing of the supplementary Alien

Bill--the Prince Regent came down to the House of Lords, prorogued

Parliament, and then immediately the Lord Chancellor pronounced it

dissolved. The members of the Commons were taken by surprise. No such

sudden dismissal had taken place since 1625, when Charles I. dismissed

his Oxford Parliament after a single week's session. On the return to

their own House the Speaker was proceeding, as usual, to read the Royal

Speech, but he was reminded by Mr. Tierney that there was no Parliament

in existence, and by Lord Castlereagh that, by so doing, he might

render himself liable to a Præmunire, and he therefore desisted and the

members withdrew.

The elections for the new Parliament were carried on with much vigour,

and there were upwards of a hundred contested ones. In some cases

the contest was extremely violent, considering the death of the king

was almost daily expected, and that the term of the Parliament must

necessarily be a short one. In Westminster there were no less than six

candidates. Lord Cochrane was about to depart for Chili to take the

command of the naval forces of that state, and therefore did not offer

himself again. There were Sir Francis Burdett again, the Honourable

Douglas Kinnaird, Sir Murray Maxwell, Sir Samuel Romilly, Major

Cartwright, and Mr. Henry Hunt, commonly called Orator Hunt. Of these

Sir Murray Maxwell was a Tory, and received severe treatment. Major

Cartwright and Hunt obtained very little support, and soon withdrew

from the contest. The members returned were Romilly and Burdett, a Whig

and a Radical. For London were returned four new members, all Whigs,

Wood, Wilson, Waithman, and Thorpe. Brougham patriotically stood for

Westmoreland, to break, if possible, the influence of the Lowther

family; but he was compelled to retire on the fourth day, and two of

the Lowther family were returned. A hundred and ninety new members

were returned, and the Opposition gained considerably by the election.

An acute observer, well accustomed to party battles, remarked that

Government did not appear much beloved, and that they had almost spent

all their war popularity; and they were not destined to recover it in

the coming year.

[Illustration: GIBRALTAR.]

Scarcely were the elections over when a strike took place amongst the

working cotton-spinners in Manchester. Food was dear, and the rate of

wages was not in any proportion to the dearness. The men who turned

out paraded the streets, and, as is generally too much the spirit of

strikes, endeavoured forcibly to compel the workmen of other factories

to cease working too. The magistrates, on the 1st of September, issued

a proclamation, that they were determined to resist such attempts,

and to punish the offenders. Sir John Byng, the same who had favoured

the endeavours of Oliver in Yorkshire, commanded the forces there,

and every precaution was taken to secure the factories still in work.

On the very next day the spinners were joined by a great mob from

Stockport, and they endeavoured to break into Gray's mill, in Ancoat's

Lane, and force the men to cease. But there was a party of soldiers

placed within in expectation of the attack, and they fired on the

assailants, and killed one man and wounded two others. The troops

then dispersed the mob, which was said to have amounted to at least

thirty thousand men. This ended the strike and the rioting for the

time. The coroner's jury pronounced the death of the man justifiable

homicide, and Ministers congratulated themselves on the speedy end of

the disturbance. But the elements of fresh ones were rife in the same

districts. The country was by no means in the prosperous condition that

they had represented it.

In the autumn the great Congress of Sovereigns assembled at

Aix-la-Chapelle. We have already anticipated their chief object--the

final evacuation of France by the Allied troops, and the settlement

of compensations. They assembled about the middle of September,

and remained together till the middle of November. Their business

conferences, however, did not commence till the 30th of September.

With regard to the evacuation of France, we need only state that it

was greatly promoted by the exertions of the Duke of Wellington.

Robert Owen was there to endeavour to enlist the Sovereigns in his

schemes of social reform, but did not make any proselytes amongst the

crowned heads, though the Czar Alexander told him he fully entered into

his views, as he was generally accustomed to tell all reformers and

religious professors, leaving them in the pleasing delusion that they

had won him to their opinions. Clarkson was there to engage them to

sanction the suppression of the slave trade, but with as indifferent a

result. This was the closing scene of the great European drama, which

opened with the French Revolution and terminated with the capture of

Buonaparte. The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle may be regarded as the

recital of the epilogue.

The year 1818 did not close without one more brush of war. This was

in India. There had not been much quiet, even after the destruction

of Tippoo Sultan and the power of Mysore. When the Earl of Moira

(afterwards Marquis of Hastings) succeeded, as Governor-General,

to Earl Minto, in 1813, he found the country still disturbed in

different directions, particularly on the north-west frontiers. The

Burmese engaged his immediate attention, and then the Nepaulese,

who were not quietened till after two campaigns. But there was a

far more troublesome enemy than either of these in the field. These

were the Pindarrees, a multitude of horsemen made up of the scum

of Hindostan--men who had either lost caste, or never had any--who

formed themselves into flying bands, and with the swiftness of the

wind rushed down on the cultivated districts, and swept all before

them--cattle, sheep, money, jewels, everything that could be made prey

of. The two most celebrated chiefs of the Pindarrees were Kureem and

Cheetoo, but Cheetoo managed to put down Kureem, and became the one

great and formidable head of these robbers. In 1811 he rode at the

head of twenty-five thousand cavalry. In 1814, whilst our troops were

engaged in Nepaul, the Pindarrees, under Cheetoo, crossed the Nerbudda,

the Godavery, and advanced to the Kistnah, ravaging the whole of the

Deccan and the neighbouring territories; and in spite of our forces

under Major Frazer in one direction, and Colonel Doveton in another,

they effected their retreat across the Nerbudda again, loaded with

enormous booty. In 1816 they made a still more extensive incursion,

ten thousand of them descending into the Madras Presidency as far as

Guntoor, and though Colonel Doveton exerted himself to come up with

them, it was in vain. In twelve days Cheetoo's marauders had plundered

three hundred and ninety villages in the Company's territory, put to

death one hundred and eighty-two people, wounded five hundred and five,

and tortured in various ways three thousand six hundred.

It was now found that our pretended Mahratta allies, the Peishwa,

Scindiah, and other chiefs, were in league with Cheetoo, and unless

this conspiracy were broken the most fearful devastations might be

expected on our states. The Governor-General represented this to the

authorities at home, and recommended that the Pindarrees should be

regularly hunted down and destroyed. In the course of 1816 he received

full authority to execute this scheme. At the end of October he posted

Lieutenant-Colonel Walker along the southern bank of the Nerbudda, to

prevent the Pindarrees from crossing into the Company's territories;

but as the line of river thus to be guarded was one hundred and fifty

miles in length, the force employed was found insufficient against such

adroit and rapid enemies. In November Cheetoo dashed across the river

between Lieutenant-Colonel Walker's posts, and his forces dividing,

one part made a rapid gallop through forests, and over rivers and

mountains, right across the continent, into the district of Ganjam, in

the northern Circars, hoping to reach Juggernaut and plunder the temple

of its enormous wealth. But this division was met with in Ganjam by the

Company's troops, and driven back with severe loss. The other division

descended into the Deccan, as far as Beeder, where it again divided:

one portion being met with by Major Macdonald, who had marched from

Hyderabad, was completely cut up, though it was six thousand strong.

The other body struck westward into Konkan, under a chief named Sheik

Dulloo, and then, turning north, plundered all the western coast, and

escaped with the booty beyond the Nerbudda, though not without some

loss at the hands of the British troops on that river.

As it was now clearly useless to endeavour to prevent these desperate

hordes from crossing the Nerbudda, it was determined to march into

their own retreats beyond that river, and regularly hunt them down.

Sir John Malcolm, one of our ablest officers, who has left us a most

graphic account of these transactions, had just now returned from

England, and he was appointed, with Major-General Marshall, to this

service. Not only Cheetoo, but Kureem, was again on foot; and Sir John

learnt that Cheetoo was posted near the camp of the Holkar Mahrattas,

and had received a lac and sixty thousand rupees from the Peishwa. By

this time he had advanced as far as Agra, but on this information he

fell back on Oojein, where Sir Thomas Hislop lay with another body of

troops. On the 21st of December, 1817, Holkar's army and Cheetoo's

army made a united attack on the British at Mahidpore, on the banks of

the Seepra. They were received with a murderous slaughter, and fled,

leaving seventy pieces of artillery, all they had, and a great quantity

of arms. They fled in confusion to Rampoora, a fortified town in Malwa.

The British on their part had suffered severely, having one hundred and

seventy-four killed, and six hundred and four wounded. Amongst these

were thirty-five officers wounded, half of them severely.

Sir John Malcolm and Captain Grant pursued the fugitives along the

banks of the Seepra, killing numbers, and seizing immense booty,

including elephants and numerous camels. He left them no time to

reassemble, but advanced rapidly on the capital of Holkar, joined by

reinforcements from the Bombay army under Major-General Sir William

Keir. Alarmed at this vigorous action, the Holkar Mahrattas hastily

concluded peace, gave up all their forts, and placed their territories

under British protection. Some Pathan chiefs attempted to resist,

trusting to the defences of Rampoora; but General Brown soon stormed

that place, and the whole country of the Holkar Mahrattas was reduced

to obedience. No respite was granted to the Pindarrees. Cheetoo was

followed from place to place by the Gujerat army under Sir William

Keir, and sought refuge in vain amongst the hills and jungles of Malwa

and along the Nerbudda. At length, in January, 1818, Cheetoo's last

camp was surprised and cut to pieces. After seeking refuge amongst

various tribes, Cheetoo was ultimately found in the jungle near the

fort of Aseerghur, torn to pieces by a tiger, his horse grazing not far

off, safe, and a bag on his saddle containing his remaining jewels and

two hundred and fifty rupees. And thus ended the existence of the long

formidable hosts of the Pindarrees.

Whilst this extirpation of the Pindarrees had been going on, the

cholera broke out at Jessore, in the low lands of the Delta of the

Ganges. This fatal disease has been supposed by medical men to receive

its force, if not its origin, from the want of salt in this unhealthy

district. Salt being one of the monopolies of the East India Company,

it was not permitted, though abundant in Madras, to be carried into

Bengal except on payment of a duty of two hundred per cent. The

natives, therefore, who subsisted on a rice diet, not being able to

procure this necessary antiseptic, frequently fell victims to the

terrible scourge of cholera. From this centre, where it may fairly be

said to have raged in perpetuity, it now spread rapidly up the course

of the Ganges, the Jumna, and their confluent rivers, and if the

British impost on salt had anything to do with the prevalence of the

epidemic, a severe retribution now fell upon those who profited by it.

The Marquis of Hastings, the Governor-General, was posted in Bundelcund

with his army, when it appeared there and swept away thousands. The

very men attending on the Governor-General at dinner dropped down

behind his chair and died. To seek a healthier region, he marched

eastward, but all the way the pest pursued him, and when he reached

the healthy station of Erich, on the right bank of the Betwah river,

towards the end of November, one-tenth of the force had fallen under

its ravages. The scourge did not stop there, but for a number of years

continued to spread at an amazing speed, and eventually overspread

Europe with its horrors.

During the time that Malcolm, Keir, Hislop, and other officers were

running down the Pindarrees, Major-General Smith, who had received

reinforcements at Poonah, was performing the same service against Bajee

Rao, the Peishwa who had furnished Cheetoo with funds. He marched from

Poonah at the end of November, 1817, accompanied by Mr. Mountstuart

Elphinstone. They encountered the army of the Peishwa on the Kistnah,

where his general, Gokla, had posted himself strongly in a ghaut. The

pass was speedily cleared, and the army of the Peishwa made a rapid

retreat. The chase was continued from place to place, the Peishwa

dodging about in an extraordinary manner, till, at length, he managed

to get behind General Smith, and, passing between Poonah and Seroor, he

was joined by his favourite Trimbukjee, whom he had long lost sight of,

with strong reinforcements of both horse and infantry. General Smith,

so soon as he could discover the route of the Peishwa, pursued it,

but soon after the Mahrattas showed themselves again in the vicinity

of Poonah. To secure that city from the Peishwa's arms, Captain F. F.

Staunton was dispatched from Seroor on the last day of the year with

six hundred sepoys, three hundred horse, and two six-pounders; but he

was not able to reach Poonah. The very next day, the 1st of January,

1818, he found his way barred by the whole army of the Peishwa,

consisting of twenty thousand horse and several thousand foot. Could

they have remained a little longer, General Smith, who was on the track

of the Peishwa, would have been up to support them. But in the night of

the 2nd of January, having no provisions, Staunton fell back, carrying

with him all his wounded and his guns, and reached Seroor by nine

o'clock on the morning of the 3rd of January.

[Illustration: SURRENDER OF THE PEISHWA. (_See p._ 141.)]

That very day General Smith reached Corregaum in force, and at this

apparition the Peishwa fled back towards the sources of the Kistnah,

whence he had descended. Not only General Smith, but Brigadier-General

Pritzler and Colonel Boles kept up the pursuit, advancing from

different quarters, as the slippery Mahratta chief turned and

manœuvred. At length weary of the chase, they determined to reduce

Satara, his capital, and then each of his strong forts and towns one

after another, thus depriving him of supplies, and leaving him no

place of refuge or subsistence. Satara surrendered to General Smith on

the 10th of February, the same day that he appeared before it. As one

place after another fell, Gokla, the Peishwa's general, made an effort

to arrest this process of reduction, and this enabled General Smith

to attack him on the 20th of February, at Ashtee, where he completely

routed him. Gokla himself was killed, and the Peishwa only escaped

by abandoning his palanquin and mounting a horse. General Smith and

Lieutenant Warrand were wounded, but not a man was killed on the

British side. Great booty was taken, including twelve elephants and

fifty-seven camels.

The remnant of the Mahratta army fled northwards, pursued and

continually reduced by the British. At the same time the reduction of

the towns and forts was steadily going on, and every day the fugitive

Peishwa became more and more involved in the toils of his enemies. He

endeavoured to escape into Nagpore, but on the banks of the Wurda he

was met, on the 1st of April, by Colonel Scott and driven back, only

to fall into the hands of Colonel Adams, who attacked him near Soonee

with only one regiment of native cavalry and some horse artillery, and

gave him a thorough defeat, taking five guns, three elephants, and two

hundred camels. More than a thousand Mahrattas fell, and the Peishwa

himself narrowly escaped, his palanquin, which he had abandoned, being

found shot through. Bajee Rao now endeavoured to get to the north-east

into Malwa, but he was stopped by General Sir Thomas Hislop, who was

advancing from that quarter towards the Deccan. At length, his forces

dispersed, his towns in possession of the British, his way on all

sides cut off, the Peishwa came in and surrendered himself to Sir John

Malcolm, on the 3rd of June, 1818, on promise of good treatment. Sir

John granted him eight lacs of rupees per annum, on condition that

he resigned the title of Peishwa for ever, and surrendered all his

possessions. This was confirmed by the Supreme Government at Calcutta.

Thus was the existence of the Pindarrees, and the power of the

Mahrattas, broken up, and the Rajah of Satara restored. He was a minor,

but on reaching the age of twenty-one, which was in the year 1821,

he was invested with the government of his dominions. These included

a district of about eleven thousand square miles, and produced a net

revenue of fifteen million rupees. Out of this, however, three lacs per

annum were reserved for chiefs who had become subjects of the Company,

and three more lacs were alienated. As for Trimbukjee, whose crimes and

murders had determined the British to secure him at any cost, he was

discovered, after a long quest, in the neighbourhood of Nassick, by

Captain Swanston, and carried to Tannah, the prison from which he had

escaped. He was thence transferred to Calcutta, and finally to the rock

of Chunar, near Benares. The last success of this war was the reduction

of the fortress of Aseerghur, one of the most formidable strongholds in

India, which had undergone some most arduous sieges.

None of the princes who accepted our protection benefited more than

Scindiah. He was relieved from the insolence of haughty military

chieftains, who commanded his armies, and left him as little free will

as they left to his subjects quiet possession of their property. He

was enabled to disband his vast armies, and reduce them to thirteen

thousand infantry and nine thousand horse. His disbanded soldiers

returned home, and became tillers of the land lately running into

jungle, by which, and other influences of peace, his revenue was nearly

doubled. All the districts wrested from him by the Pindarrees were

restored to him; he lost only the mischievous fortress of Aseerghur.

Sir John Malcolm cleared the country of the swarms of Arabs, and

of Mekranees from Beluchistan, who had acquired a most formidable

ascendency in the armies of the Indian chiefs; and these chiefs

were informed that again to employ these mercenary ruffians, or to

allow them to remain on their territories, would be regarded as a

declaration of hostility by the British Government. Similar changes

were introduced into the territories of the dethroned Peishwa by the

Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, who resided at Poonah; and by the

conquest of the Poonah territory, by the treaty of Mundissoor, made by

Sir John Malcolm after his great victory at Mahidpore, and by exchanges

made with the Guicowar of Baroda, and other arrangements, the British

dominions were now linked together in one broad and continuous expanse,

from Calcutta to Bombay, and from Bombay to Madras, as by the former

Mahratta war they had been established between Madras and Calcutta.

If we were to believe figures, and the returns of exports and imports,

and of duties paid, we must set down the opening of the year 1819 as

considerably prosperous. This was the view which Ministers took of the

condition of Great Britain when they met the new Parliament on the

14th of January. The speculations that had been carried on during 1818

had swelled the revenue, and given an impression of growing commerce,

which unfortunately did not exist. The results of these speculations in

imports of raw material, especially of cotton, and in extensive exports

of manufactures to countries not yet sufficiently reinvigorated to

purchase, had produced numerous and heavy failures during the latter

part of the past year, and these still continued, in strange contrast

to the self-congratulating language of Ministers. In nothing was the

fall of price so great as in cotton, and those who had bought largely

suffered in proportion. These bankruptcies were not confined to Great

Britain; they extended to New York, and to southern ports of the United

States, where the same speculation had been going on largely.

Besides the flattering assurances of the steady improvement in commerce

and manufactures, and, consequently, in the revenues, the Regent's

Speech, read, as usual, by the Lord Chancellor, justly congratulated

the country on the successful termination of the Pindarree war by the

Marquis of Hastings. It informed the two Houses that a new treaty had

been entered into with the United States for adjusting the different

points at issue between the two nations, not settled by the treaty of

peace, and also for regulating the commerce between them. It announced

the results of the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle, and stated that some

new measures were needed for the care of his Majesty's person in

consequence of the death of the queen. The Address, in both Houses, was

carried almost _pro formâ_. Mr. Manners Sutton was elected Speaker of

the Commons by acclamation.

The new arrangements for the care of the king's person came on first

for discussion. On the 25th of January Lord Liverpool introduced a

Bill to make the Duke of York guardian of his Majesty's person in

place of the late queen. This question was decided with little debate.

On the 4th of February a message was brought down from the Regent

informing the House of Commons that, in consequence of the demise of

her Majesty, fifty-eight thousand pounds became disposable for the

general purposes of the Civil List; and recommending that the claims

of her late Majesty's servants to the liberality of the House should

be considered. Lord Castlereagh moved that the House should go into

committee on this subject, as, besides the fifty-eight thousand pounds,

there was another sum of one hundred thousand pounds, which had been

appropriated to the maintenance of the establishment at Windsor. It

was understood that Ministers would propose to reduce the sum for the

establishment at Windsor to fifty thousand pounds, but that they would

recommend that ten thousand pounds, which her Majesty had received in

consideration of her charge of the king, should be transferred to the

Duke of York. Mr. Tierney objected to the charge of fifty thousand

pounds for the maintenance of the establishment at Windsor. He said

he could not conceive how this money was to be spent, or on whom, for

certainly it could not be on the king, who, he understood, was in that

state of mental and bodily debility which made it necessary that as

few persons as possible should be about him, and that his regimen was

so very simple that it could cost next to nothing.

On the 22nd the Commons went into committee on this subject, and Mr.

Tierney then proposed that both the establishment at Windsor and the

salary to the Duke of York should be paid out of the Privy Purse

or other private funds of the Crown. There was a private property

belonging to the Crown of one hundred and forty thousand pounds a year,

and surely this was sufficient to defray the charge of the necessary

care of the king's person. He reminded the House also of the sums which

had been voted for the royal family since 1811. Besides fifty thousand

pounds a year set apart for the debts of the Prince Regent, he had a

privy purse of sixty thousand pounds a year, besides an additional

grant of ten thousand pounds a year made since. The king had also

a privy purse of sixty thousand pounds a year, with an additional

revenue of ten thousand pounds from the Duchy of Lancaster. Surely,

out of all these sums, there must be ample means of taking care of the

king's person. To all these second statements Mr. Peel--afterwards

the Sir Robert who began his political career in the ranks of high

Toryism--replied that the Duke of York would accept no salary which

came from the Privy Purse, and he quoted Sheridan and Adam, old friends

of the Prince Regent, and staunch Whigs, who had zealously advocated

the sacredness of the Privy Purse. When the vote was taken for the

disposal of the sum for the Windsor establishment, it was carried by

two hundred and eighty against one hundred and eighty-six, a sufficient

proof that in the new Parliament the Government possessed a strong

majority. On the 25th the proposal to confer on the Duke of York

ten thousand pounds per annum, for this charge of his own father's

person, was also carried by a still larger majority--two hundred and

forty-seven against one hundred and thirty-seven. In the debate, Denman

and Brougham opposed the vote, and Canning supported it. In the House

of Peers Lords Grey, Lansdowne, and other Whig peers opposed the vote

of the ten thousand pounds to the Duke of York. And truly, in private

life, it would not have seemed very filial conduct for a man, already

possessing a large income, to require a great annual payment for

discharging the simple duty of seeing that his aged father, a gentleman

also of ample means, was well looked after.

A great portion of the present Session was occupied with discussing

the return to cash payments, which, by the Act of Parliament, ought to

take place on the 5th of July of this year. It appears that no less

than fifty debates and conversations in both Houses took place on this

important subject during the Session. Very soon after the meeting of

Parliament a secret committee of each House was appointed to inquire

into the state of the Bank. These committees were, however, so managed,

by delivering to the members lists of suitable persons for such

committees, that scarcely any but Ministerial men were voted, though

these votes were given by ballot. In the Commons this result was so

evident that the Opposition declined to vote at all. The first reports

of the committees went rather to close more strictly than to open the

issue of gold by the Bank. It had been paying in gold its notes issued

previous to January, 1817. This payment it was proposed to stop, as,

at present, evidently injurious to the interests of the country. Mr.

Peel, on moving for a Bill for this purpose, stated that the gold at

the present price was fast finding its way abroad, and was as rapidly

absorbed in re-minting a gold coinage for France. It appeared that

during the first half of 1818 gold to the value of no less than one

hundred and twenty-eight million francs had been coined at the French

mint, of which three-fourths were derived from the gold coinage of

England. A Bill was accordingly passed to stop payment altogether

in gold till the necessary preparations were made by a fresh Bill.

Still, the condition of the Bank was represented as flourishing. Its

liabilities were stated in January, 1819, as amounting to thirty-three

million eight hundred and ninety-four thousand five hundred and eighty

pounds; its assets, including the debt due from Government, fifty-three

million seven hundred and eighty-three thousand seven hundred pounds.

The total Bank surplus appeared to be nineteen million eight hundred

and eighty-nine thousand one hundred and twenty pounds; and its

surplus, independent of the Government debt, and therefore available

for current use, was five million two hundred and two thousand

three hundred and twenty pounds. The committees adopted the scheme

broached by Mr. Ricardo in his "Proposals for an Economical and Secure

Currency," published in 1816. This was that the Bank, in the first

instance, should not pay for its notes in gold coin, but in ingots of

a certain weight, its fineness being attested by a stamp; and this

degree of purity should be regulated from time to time till the gold

descended to the Mint price of three pounds seventeen shillings and

tenpence-halfpenny per ounce. When the Mint gold at length reached this

rate of value, then the payment in coin was to be begun. Resolutions to

this effect were moved by the Earl of Harrowby on the 21st of May, and

they received the approval, not only of the Ministerial side, but of

the leading Opposition members, Lords Grenville, Lansdowne, and King.

In the House of Commons similar resolutions were moved on the 24th

by Mr. Robert Peel, who, on this occasion, made the first of those

candid admissions of new views which he afterwards repeated on the

question of Catholic Emancipation, and finally on the abolition of the

Corn Laws. This eminent statesman, though beginning his career in the

ranks of Conservatism, had a mind capable of sacrificing prejudice to

truth, though it was certain to procure him much obloquy and opposition

from his former colleagues. He now frankly admitted that the evidence

produced before the secret committee of the Commons, of which he had

been a member, had greatly changed his views regarding the currency

since in 1811 he opposed the resolutions of Mr. Horner, the chairman

of the Bullion Committee. He now believed the doctrines of Mr. Horner

to be mainly sound, and to represent the true nature of our monetary

system; and, whilst making this confession, he had only to regret

that he was compelled by his convictions to vote in opposition to the

opinions of his venerated father. Several modifications were proposed

during the debate, but there appeared so much unanimity in the House

that no alterations were made, and the resolutions passed without a

division. The resolutions were to this effect:--That the restrictions

on cash payments should continue till the 1st of May, 1822; that,

meanwhile, the House should make provision for the gradual payment of

ten millions of the fourteen millions due from the Government to the

Bank; that, from the 1st of February, 1820, the Bank should take up its

notes in gold ingots, stamped and assayed in quantities of not less

than sixty ounces, and at a rate of eighty-one shillings per ounce.

After the 1st of October of the same year the rate of gold should be

reduced to seventy-nine shillings and sixpence per ounce; and again

on the 1st of May, 1821, the price should be reduced to seventy-seven

shillings and tenpence halfpenny per ounce; and at this rate of gold,

on the 1st of May, 1822, the Bank should finally commence paying in

the gold coin of the realm. Bills to this effect were introduced into

both Houses by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Peel, and were

readily passed; and such was the flourishing condition of the Bank

that it did not wait for the full operation of the Act, but commenced

paying in coin to any amount on the 1st of May, 1821.

[Illustration: THE MINT, LONDON.]

The select committee of the Commons appointed at the instance of Lord

Castlereagh, to inquire into the state of the national income and

expenditure, now presented its report on the 3rd of June, and it was

agreed to. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated on its authority

that, since 1815, taxation had been reduced eighteen million pounds

per annum; that in 1816 the revenue of Great Britain and Ireland had

been consolidated, and that, at that time, the interest of the Debt

of Ireland, including the Sinking Fund provided for its reduction,

exceeded the entire revenue of that part of the United Kingdom by

one million nine hundred thousand pounds. He then announced that

supplies for the present year would be required to the amount of

twenty million five hundred thousand pounds; that the existing revenue

would only furnish seven million pounds towards this; and that it

would be necessary to have recourse to the Sinking Fund to make up

the deficiency of thirteen million five hundred thousand pounds. This

Sinking Fund was fifteen million five hundred thousand pounds, so that

it would leave only two million pounds; but as it was necessary to have

a tolerable surplus in hand to meet exigencies, it was proposed to

raise this reserve fund to five million pounds by fresh taxes to the

amount of three million pounds.

On this basis Mr. Vansittart, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on

the 9th of June, produced his Budget. Including the interest on the

Debt, the whole annual expenditure amounted to seventy-six million,

seventy-four thousand pounds--an ominous peace expenditure. Instead,

therefore, of the supplies, aided by the draft from the Sinking Fund,

leaving a surplus of two million pounds, a fresh loan of twelve million

pounds--besides the three million pounds of new taxes on malt, tobacco,

coffee, cocoa, tea, British spirits, pepper, and foreign wool was

needed. By the hocus-pocus of Exchequer accounts this was made to look

like a reduction of the Debt instead of an increase of it; but the

country saw with dismay that three years after the peace the incubus

of past war was still adding to its burden. Mr. Tierney, on the 18th,

moved for a committee to inquire into the state of the nation, but

this was negatived by three hundred and fifty-seven votes against one

hundred and seventy-eight; and a motion of Sir Henry Parnell on the 1st

of July for extensive retrenchments was got rid of in the same manner.

[Illustration: SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY.]

But amid the discouragements of monetary legislation, which showed that

it would require a determined contest to compel Ministers to retrench,

there were symptoms of a spirit of legal and social reform amongst

Parliamentary men generally which augured the approach of better times.

Mr. Sturges Bourne obtained the passing of his long-advocated Poor Law

Bill; but Bills for regulating settlements, and for preventing the

misapplication of the poor rates, were thrown out. A Bill was passed

to regulate the treatment of children in cotton factories, and to

limit the hours of their employment. Mr. Brougham's Act for inquiry

into the charitable foundations of England was extended, with the

support of Government, so as to apply to educational as well as to

all kinds of charities, except such as had special visitors, or were

maintained by private subscriptions. Sir James Mackintosh also took up

the humane track of labour occupied so nobly by the late Sir Samuel

Romilly. On the 2nd of March he moved for the appointment of a select

committee to take into consideration the subject of capital punishment

as regarded felonies. This was eminently needed, for the penal laws

during the reign of George III. were truly Draconian. Notwithstanding

a strong opposition by Ministers, the motion was carried, amid much

cheering, and on the 6th of July Sir James Mackintosh introduced the

report, which was ordered to be printed. Government, as if to wipe

out their disgrace in resisting so humane a measure, now proposed an

inquiry into the condition of gaols and other places of confinement,

and into the best method of employing and reforming delinquents during

their imprisonment. Some reforms were made in Scottish law. The old

rights of trial by battle, and of appeals of murder, felony, or mayhem,

were abolished as rendered unnecessary by the full exercise of the

institution of jury, and as belonging only to a barbarous age. The

severity of the Scottish law against duels was mitigated, that law

pronouncing forfeiture of all movable property, and banishment against

all persons sending, or even carrying, a challenge to fight a duel. The

principle of that law was sound, but its severity was its own defeat.

A more questionable Bill was one carried, after much opposition,

called the Foreign Enlistment Bill, which was intended to check the

aid of Englishmen in assisting the Spanish South American colonists in

throwing off the oppressive government of the mother country. Numbers

of Englishmen were engaged on the side of independence, and this Bill

was vainly intended to put an end to that generous aid.

The Scottish burgh question was brought forward again this Session.

The magistrates of the burgh of Aberdeen having been elected, in 1817,

in the same corrupt manner as those of Montrose had been in 1816,

the Court of Session had declared the election illegal. The burgh of

Montrose was found to have been disfranchised; but this was not the

case with Aberdeen, and the magistrates applied to Government to grant

a warrant for a new election, or rather a re-election of themselves.

This the Government, in the face of the decision of the Court of

Session, as well as of a numerously signed petition from the burgesses

praying that the election should be by open poll, issued. On the 1st of

April Lord Archibald Hamilton moved an address to the Prince Regent,

praying for a copy of this warrant. It was strenuously resisted by

Ministers, but the motion was lost by only a small majority. On the

6th of May Lord Archibald Hamilton renewed his motion in another

form--namely, that the petitions which had been presented from Scottish

burghs on the subject of Reform should be submitted to a committee of

inquiry. He showed that out of sixty-six royal burghs thirty-nine had

voted for Reform; that these thirty-nine contained a population of four

hundred and twenty thousand souls, whilst the remaining twenty-seven

contained only sixty thousand. The preponderance was so great that, in

spite of the opposition of Ministers, the House took another view of

the matter, and Lord Archibald's motion was carried, though only by one

hundred and forty-nine votes against one hundred and forty-four.

The question of Catholic Emancipation was brought forward on the 3rd of

May, by Grattan: it was the last time that he did so, but he had the

satisfaction of seeing that the question was rapidly advancing, for it

was lost by only two votes. A fortnight afterwards Lord Donoughmore

introduced a similar motion, in the hope of surmounting this small

difference, but, after a long debate, he found the majority increased

against it by thirty-nine votes. The closing contest of the Session

was for Parliamentary Reform. Sir Francis Burdett brought on his

annual motion, on the 1st of July, for the eighteenth time, but was

defeated by one hundred and fifty-three votes against fifty-eight. He

was seconded by Mr. George Lamb, younger brother of Lord Melbourne,

who, however, did not go the length of annual parliaments and universal

suffrage. Even at that day, Joseph Hume was for moderate reform, and

Lord John Russell was alarmed at anything further than Triennial

Parliaments, and the transferring the franchise from certain corrupt

boroughs to others not yet represented. Such were the feeble ideas of

Reform amongst its self-constituted leaders. Parliament was prorogued,

on the 13th of July, by the Prince Regent in person.