TWO:The Greeks had been struggling to emancipate themselves from the tyrannical dominion of the Turks, aided in their war of independence only by the voluntary contributions and personal services of enthusiastic friends of freedom, like Lord Byron. At length, however, the sanguinary nature of the contest, and the injury to commerce by piracy, induced the Great Powers of Europe to interfere in order to put an end to the war. Accordingly, on the 6th of July, 1827, a treaty was signed in London by the Ministers of Great Britain, France, and Russia, for the pacification of Greece. In pursuance of this treaty, a joint expedition, consisting of British, French, and Russian ships, entered the Bay of Navarino on the 20th of October, with the object of compelling the Sultan to concede an armistice, in order that there might be time for effecting an arrangement. The Sultan, Mahmoud, having declined the mediation of the combined Powers, and Ibrahim Pasha having received a large reinforcement of troops from Egypt, he was ordered to put down the insurrection at every cost by land and sea. He had accordingly recommenced the war with fanatical fury. All Greeks found in arms were to be put to the sword, and the Morea was to be laid waste. The combined fleet of the Allies had received orders to demand an armistice, and if this were refused by the Turkish admiral, they were to intercept the Turkish supplies, but not to commit hostilities. When the Turkish fleet met the Allies, the futility of these instructions became evident. They found it ranged at the bottom of the bay, in the form of a crescent. Instead of parleying, the Turks began to fire, and the battle commenced apparently without plan on either side. It soon became general. Admiral Codrington, in the Asia, opened a broadside upon the Egyptian admiral, and soon reduced his ship to a wreck; others in rapid succession shared the same fate. The conflict lasted with great fury for four hours. When the smoke cleared off, the enemy had disappeared, and the bay was strewn with the fragments of their ships. Among the Allies, the loss of the British was greatest, though not largeonly 75 men killed[263] and 197 wounded. The catastrophe produced immense excitement at Constantinople, and had the Janissaries (those fierce and bigoted defenders of Mohammedanism whom the Sultan had so recently extirpated) been still in existence, it would have fared ill with Christians in that part of the world. The Sultan demanded satisfaction, which would not be granted, and the European ambassadors left Constantinople. The battle of Navarino occurred at the time when the Duke of Wellington assumed the reins of office, our ambassador having then returned from Constantinople.THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. (After the Picture by E. M. Ward, R.A., in the National Gallery, London.)
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TWO:MARSHAL NEY.The eyes of the world were now turned upon Rome. It was not to be expected that the Catholic Powers would allow the bark of St. Peter to go down in the flood of revolution without an effort to save it. Spain was the first to interpose for this purpose. Its Government invited France, Austria, Bavaria, Sardinia, Tuscany, and Naples to send plenipotentiaries to consult on the best means of reinstating the Pope. Austria also protested against the new state of things, complaining that the Austrian flag, and the arms of the empire on the palace of its ambassador at Rome, had been insulted and torn down. On the 8th of February a body of Austrian troops, under General Haynau, entered Ferrara, to avenge the death of three Austrian soldiers, and an insult offered to an Austrian consul. He required that the latter should be[587] indemnified, that the Papal colours should be again displayed, that the murderers of the soldiers should be given up, and that the city should support 10,000 Austrian troops. This was a state of things not to be endured by the French Republic, and its Government determined to interpose and overreach Austria, for the purpose of re-establishing French ascendency at Rome, even though based upon the ruins of a sister republic. The French Republicans, it is well known, cared very little for the Pope, but they were ready to make use of him to gratify their own national ambition. Their attack on the Roman Republic would therefore be fittingly described by the language which Pius IX. applied to that republic itself, as "hypocritical felony."
TWO:Nothing could exceed the indignation of the public at the attempt that was being made by the Court, in league with an intriguing faction, to resist the national will. All classes, high and low, rich and poor, nobles and commoners, Churchmen and Dissenters, were roused into a state of wild excitement and fierce determination. Indignation meetings were everywhere held and threatening resolutions passed. The House of Commons was called upon to stop the supplies; placards were put up in the windows of shops expressing the determination of the inhabitants to pay no taxes. This determination was not confined to the middle classes; men of the highest rank and largest property, such as Lord Milton, told the tax-collector not to call again. A complete and active organisation existed in London for the purpose of stimulating and directing public[351] feeling in the provinces, and obtaining from the people vehement petitions, which poured in to both Houses rapidly, especially to the House of Commons. The political unions were everywhere preparing for actual insurrection. In London meetings were held by day and by night, at which the most violent language was used even by persons of property and rank. The Common Council of London met, and passed resolutions denouncing those who had advised the king not to create peers as enemies of their Sovereign, who had put to imminent hazard the stability of the Throne and the security of the country. A standing committee was appointed to watch the course of events. The feeling excited by these extraordinary proceedings proved, beyond the possibility of doubt, that the whole mercantile and trading classes in the metropolis were prepared to adopt revolutionary measures, if such were necessary, for the attainment of the Reform Bill. Immense numbers of persons who had hitherto considered the proceedings of the National Political union in London too violent, were now, says the Times of the 11th of May, at their own solicitation, admitted members. Similar excitement prevailed throughout the provinces.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 interestthat burden on posterity which Napoleon had, with such satisfaction, at St. Helena, pronounced permanentthis 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!
