ONE:
TWO:While thus tottering on the verge of revolution the Orleanist monarchy had the misfortune to affront the British Court. The reason of the rupture is known to history as the affair of the Spanish marriages, of which it is enough to say here that Louis Philippe succeeded in marrying the young Queen of Spain to her cousin, the Duke of Cadiz, who was imbecile, while at the same time he secured the hand of her sister for his youngest son, the Duc de Montpensier. Thus he apparently acquired the reversion of the throne for his family, but the coup was effected in defiance of pledges made repeatedly to Lord Aberdeen and continued to his successor at the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston. It was undoubtedly the advent of the latter to power which hurried on the conclusion of the intrigue. Louis Philippe and Guizot suspected him of trying to secure the hand of the Queen of Spain for a prince of the House of Coburg, and was justified to a certain extent by an imprudent despatch sent by the English Foreign Secretary to our Minister at Madrid. Thereupon the King of the French frightened the Queen-Mother of Spain into giving her consent to the marriages, which were celebrated simultaneously on the 10th of October, 1846. The calculating cunning displayed by Louis Philippe and the deliberate sacrifice of a young girl to sordid requirements of State aroused a feeling of universal disgust. From Queen Victoria the proceedings provoked a letter to Louis Philippe's queen, which[549] concluded with the scathing remark"I am glad that I can say for myself that I have always been sincere with you." It was in fact, as her Foreign Minister wrote to his brother, "a twister."On the 15th of September this year the Manchester and Liverpool Railway was opened. It was the first line opened for passenger traffic in the British empire. There was much difference of opinion as to the success of the experiment, and vast crowds attended to see the first trains running. The Duke of Wellington, Mr. Huskisson, and many persons of the highest distinction, started in the trains, which travelled on two lines in the same direction, sometimes nearly abreast. At Parkside the trains stopped to take in water, and Mr. Huskisson and several of his friends got out. He was brought round to the carriage where the Duke of Wellington was seated, who, as soon as he saw him, shook hands cordially with his old colleague. At this moment the other train started, when there was a general cry of "Get in, get in!" There was not time to do this, but Mr. Holmes, who was with Mr. Huskisson, had sufficient presence of mind to draw himself up close to the Duke's carriage, by which means he escaped uninjured. Mr. Huskisson, unfortunately, caught one of the doors, which, struck by the train in motion, was swung round, and caused him to fall on the other railway, so that his right leg was passed over and crushed by the engine. The Duke of Wellington and others ran to his assistance. The only words he uttered were, "I have met my death. God forgive me!" He was carried to Eccles, where the best medical advice was obtained, but he survived only a few hours, bearing his intense pain with great fortitude.
ONE:Food we had none;Nor did these terms contain anything like the extent of tyranny imposed on the conscience of the nation by these monarchs. By the 29 Elizabeth it was provided that what right or property any person might dispose of, or settle on any of his[162] family, should still be liable to these penalties if the proprietor and disposer of them neglected to go to church. So that a son might be deprived of lands or other property settled upon him at his marriage, or at any other time, if his father ceased to attend church, though he himself went punctually; and by the 21 James I. the informers were stimulated by great rewards to lay complaints against all whom they could discover offending. And, moreover, any person was to be considered an absentee from church, and liable to all the penalties, who did not remain in church during the whole time of the service; and, also, not only on Sundays, "but upon all the other days ordained and used to be kept as holidays." All these odious enactments were left in force by the Toleration Act, except that they did not compel every one to go to church, but to some licensed place of worship.
TWO:Whilst Clive had been reducing our enemies in Bengal and Oude, a more powerful antagonist than any whom we had yet encountered in India was every day growing more formidable in Mysore, and combining several of the petty chiefs of the different States of Madras as his allies against us. He was now far more considerable than when he had appeared against us as the ally of the French general, Lally, in the neighbourhood of Pondicherry. Hyder Ali was a self-made man. He was originally the grandson of a wandering fakir; then the captain of banditti; then at the head of an army composed of freebooters; continually growing in the number of his followers, and in the wealth procured by plunder, he at length became Commander-in-Chief of the Rajah of Mysore. Soon rising in his ambition, he seized the Rajah, his master, pensioned him off with three lacs of rupees, and declared himself the real Rajah. In 1761 he was become firmly established on the throne of Mysore, but this distinction did not satisfy him. He determined to be the founder of Mysore as a great kingdom, and extended his power to near the banks of the Kistnah. There he was met and repulsed by the Peishwa of the Mahrattas, who crossed the Kistnah, defeated him repeatedly, seized some of his newly-acquired territory, and levied on him thirty-two lacs of rupees. Hyder returned to Seringapatam, which he had made his capital, and had strongly fortified, and he thence conducted an expedition against Malabar, which he conquered, and put the chiefs to death to make his hold of it the more secure. It is unnecessary to go minutely into the history of the next few years. Hyder organised an army of 100,000 men, officered by Frenchmen, and sometimes in confederation with the Nizam of the Deccan, sometimes in conjunction with the Mahrattas of the Western Ghauts, waged perpetual war on the English. In 1769 Indian Stock fell sixty per cent. The resources of the Company were fast becoming exhausted, when Hyder Ali, by an artful feint, drew the English army, in the spring of 1769, a hundred and forty miles to the south of Madras. Then, by a rapid march, he suddenly appeared, with a body of five thousand horse, on the heights of St. Thomas, overlooking Madras. The whole of the city and vicinity, except the port of St. George itself, lay at his mercy. The terrified Council, in all haste, offered most advantageous terms of peace, which it was the very object of Hyder to accept, and that, too, before the English commander,[321] Colonel Smith, could arrive and intercept his retreat. Hyder gladly consented to the terms, which were those of mutual restitution, and of alliance and mutual defence: the last, a condition which, with Hyder's disposition to aggrandisement, was sure to bring the English into fresh trouble.