The great car which bore Feargus O'Connor and his fortunes was of course the central object of attraction. Everything about it indicated that some great thing was going to happen, and all who could get within hearing of the speakers were anxiously waiting for the commencement of the proceedings. But there was something almost ludicrous in the mode of communication between the tremendous military power which occupied the metropolis, waiting the course of events, in the consciousness of irresistible strength, and the principal leader of the Chartist convention. Immediately after the two cars had taken their position, a police inspector, of gigantic proportions, with a jolly and good-humoured expression of countenance, was seen pressing through the crowd toward Mr. O'Connor. He was the bearer of a message from the Police Commissioners, politely desiring Mr. O'Connor's attendance for a few minutes at the Horns Tavern. Mr. O'Connor immediately alighted and followed the inspector, whose burly form made a lane through the mass of people as if he were passing through a field of tall wheat. Murmurs were heard through the crowd. What could this mean? Was their leader deserting, or was he a prisoner? A rush was made in the direction which they had taken, and it was said that their faces were blanched with fear, and that at one time they were almost fainting. Protected by those who were near them, they reached Mr. Commissioner Mayne in safety. The commissioner informed Mr. O'Connor that the Government did not intend to interfere with the right of petitioning, properly exercised, nor with the right of public meeting; therefore they did not prevent the assemblage on the Common; but if they attempted to return in procession, they would be stopped at all hazards; and that there were ample forces awaiting orders for the purpose. The meeting would be allowed to proceed, if Mr. O'Connor pledged himself that it would be conducted peaceably. He gave the pledge, shook hands with the commissioner, and returned to his place on the car. He immediately announced to his colleagues the result of his interview, and the whole demonstration collapsed as suddenly as a pierced balloon. Some brief, fiery harangues were delivered to knots of puzzled listeners; but the meeting soon broke up in confusion. Banners and flags were pulled down, and the monster petition was taken from the triumphal car, and packed up in three cabs, which were to convey it quietly to the House of Commons. The masses then rolled back towards the Thames, by no means pleased with the turn things had taken. At every bridge[558] they were stopped by the serried ranks of the police and the special constables. There was much pressing and struggling to force a passage, but all in vain. They were obliged to move off, but after a while they were permitted to pass in detached parties of not more than ten each. About three o'clock the flood of people had completely subsided. Had the movement been successful to any extent, it would have been followed by insurrections in the provincial towns. Early on the morning of the 10th the walls of the city of Glasgow were found covered with a placard, calling upon the people, on receipt of the news from London, "to rise in their thousands and tens of thousands, and put an end to the vile government of the oligarchy which had so long oppressed the country." Another placard was issued there, addressed to soldiers, and offering 10 and four acres of land to every one of them who should join the insurgents. Strange to say, the printers' names were attached to both these treasonable proclamations. They were arrested, but not punished.The first Session of the National Assembly was opened by the king in person on the 22nd of[577] May, but it did not conduct itself in a manner to recommend universal suffrage, or to make the friends of orderly government enamoured of revolution. Eventually it was dispersed by force. The new Chambers were opened on the 26th of February by the king in person, Count Brandenburg having led him to the throne. He stated that circumstances having obliged him to dissolve the National Assembly, he had granted to the nation a Constitution which by its provisions fulfilled all his promises made in the month of March. This Constitution was modelled after that of Belgium. The House was to consist of two Chambers, both electivethe former by persons paying 24s. a year of direct taxes, and the latter by a process of double election: that is, the deputies were chosen by delegates, who had themselves been elected by universal suffrage, there being one deputy for every 750 inhabitants. All Prussians were declared equal in the eye of the law, freedom of the press was established, and all exclusive class privileges were abolished. The judges were made independent of the Crown, and no ordinance was to have the force of law without the sanction of the Assembly.
TWO:On the evening of the very day that Louis[91] quitted Paris Buonaparte arrived in it. He had slept on the night of the 19th at Fontainebleau, where, in the preceding April, he had signed his abdication. No sooner had the king departed than the Buonapartists, who were all ready for that event, came forth from their hiding-places. Lavalette resumed his position at the post-office, and thus managed to intercept the proclamations of Louis, and to circulate those of Buonaparte. Exelmans took down the white flag from the Tuileries and hoisted the tricolour, and a host of the adherents of the old Imperial Government, hurrying from all quarters, thronged the avenues to the palace, and filled the court of the Carrousel. There were ex-Ministers of Buonaparte, ex-councillors, ex-chamberlains, in imperial costumein short, every species of officers and courtiers, down to cooks, and butlers, and valets, all crushing forward to re-occupy their places.But the most discouraging feature of this war was the incurable pride of the Spaniards, which no reverses, and no example of the successes of their allies could abate sufficiently to show them that, unless they would condescend to be taught discipline, as the Portuguese had done, they must still suffer ignominy and annihilation. Blake, who had been so thoroughly routed on every occasion, was not content, like the British and Portuguese, to go into quarters, and prepare, by good drilling, for a more auspicious campaign. On the contrary, he led his rabble of an army away to the eastern borders of Spain, encountered Suchet in the open field on the 25th of October, was desperately beaten, and then took refuge in Valencia, where he was closely invested, and compelled to surrender in the early part of January next year, with eighteen thousand men, twenty-three officers, and nearly four hundred guns. Such, for the time, was the end of the generalship of this wrong-headed man. Suchet had, before his encounter with Blake, been making a most successful campaign in the difficult country of Catalonia, which had foiled so many French generals. He had captured one fortress after another, and in June he had taken Tarragona, after a siege of three months, and gave it up to the lust and plunder of his soldiery.
THREE:After a lengthened and toilsome Session Parliament was at length prorogued by the king in person on the 10th of September. Several important measures which had passed the Commons were rejected by the Lords. Their resistance had caused great difficulty in carrying through the imperatively demanded measures of Municipal Reform; and they had deprived the Irish Church Temporalities Act of one of its principal features. But their obstructive action was not confined to great political measures of that kind. They rejected the Dublin Police Bill, and other measures of practical reform. The consequence was that the Liberal party began to ask seriously whether the absolute veto which the Lords possessed, and which they sometimes used perversely and even factiously, was compatible with the healthful action of the legislature and the well-being of the country. It was roundly asserted that the experience of the last two years had demonstrated the necessity of reform in the House of Lords. The question was extensively agitated, it was constantly discussed in the press, public meetings were held throughout the country upon it, and numerous petitions were presented to Parliament with the same object. On the 2nd of September Mr. Roebuck, while presenting one of these petitions, announced his intention of introducing early in the next Session a Bill to deprive the House of Lords of its veto upon all measures of legislation, and to substitute for it a suspense of power, so that if a Bill thrown out by the Lords should pass the Commons a second time, and receive the Royal Assent, it might become law without the concurrence of the Peers. Mr. Ripon also gave notice of a motion to remove the bishops from the House of Peers; while Mr. Hume indignantly denounced the humiliating ceremonials observed in the intercourse between the Commons and the Lords. Although the whole proceeding at a conference between the two Houses consists of the exchange of two pieces of paper, oral discussions not being permitted, the members of the House of Commons are obliged to wait upon the Lords, standing with their hats off, the members of the Upper House, as if they were masters, remaining seated with their hats on. The state of feeling among the working classes on this subject was expressed in the strongest language in an address to Mr. O'Connell from the "non-franchised inhabitants of Glasgow." They warmly deprecated the unmanly and submissive manner in which the Ministers and the Commons had bowed bare-headed to the refractory Lords. They demanded that responsibility should be established in every department of the State; and they said, "As the House of Lords has hitherto displayed a most astounding anomaly in this enlightened age by retaining the right to legislate by birth or Court favour, and being thereby rendered irresponsible, it follows it must be cut down as a rotten encumbrance, or be so cured as to be made of some service to the State, as well as amenable to the people."To give to this action greater importance in the eyes of the world, Buonaparte called it the Battle of the Pyramids. He then marched to Cairo, which surrendered without opposition. Napoleon called together a council of about forty of the most distinguished sheiks, who were to continue the government of all Lower Egypt, as before his arrival. He professed to listen to their counsels, and in fact to be a Mahometan; he said he was not come to destroy the practice of the doctrines of the Koran, but to complete the mission of Mahomet; he celebrated the feast of the Prophet with some sheik of eminence, and joined in the litanies and worship enjoined by the Koran.
