The Archbishop of Canterbury moved the rejection of the Bill; and was supported by the Archbishops of York and Armagh, the Bishops of London, Durham, and Salisbury; Lords Winchilsea, Berkeley, Tenterden, and Eldon. The chief defenders of the measure were Lords Grey, Lansdowne, Plunket, Goderich, and Lyndhurst. On a division, the second reading was carried by 217 against 112. On the 10th of April the Bill was read a third time, by a majority of 104; the numbers being 213 for it, and 109 against it. The sweeping majorities in the Lords were still more astounding than those in the Commons; and they spread the utmost consternation through the ranks of the Conservatives, who felt as if the very foundations of society were giving way, and the pillars of the Constitution were falling. The Lords had hitherto thrown out the Emancipation Bills as fast as they came to them, by majorities varying from forty to fifty. Lord Eldon was their prophet, and the old Conservative peers had followed his guidance implicitly for a quarter of a century; but during that time a generation of hereditary legislators had grown up, who had as thorough a contempt for the ex-Chancellor's antiquated prejudices as he had for their youth and[298] inexperience. Lord Eldon had, however, some compensation for being thus deserted in the House of Peers by many of his followers, and having his authority as a statesman disregarded, as well as for the marked neglect of him by the Ministry, in the sympathy and confidence of the distressed king, who was shocked beyond measure at the conduct of the House of Lords. When a reluctant consent was wrung from his Majesty to have the measure brought forward by the Cabinet, he felt, after all, that he was doing nothing very rash; he had the strongest assurance that the Bill would never pass the Lords. He told Lord Eldon that, after the Ministers had fatigued him by many hours' conversation on the painful subject, he simply said, "Go on." But he also produced copies of letters which he had written, in which he assented to their proceeding with the Bill, adding, certainly, very strong expressions of the pain and misery the consent cost him. In his perplexity he evidently wished to avail himself of Eldon's casuistry to get out of the difficulty by retracting; but the latter was constrained to tell him "it was impossible to maintain that his assent had not been expressed, or to cure the evils which were consequential."
Besides the truths drawn by cross-examination from the witnesses for the slave-dealing merchants, who contended that even Sir William Dolben's Bill would nearly ruin Liverpool, Captain Parry, who had been sent by Pitt to Liverpool to examine some of the slave-ships, brought the directest proofs that the representations of these witnesses were false, and the accommodation for the slaves was most inhuman; Sir William Dolben himself had examined a slave-ship then fitting out in the Thames, and gave details which horrified the House. This Bill went to prohibit any ship carrying more than one slave to a ton of its register; the only matter in which the House gave way was that none should carry more than five slaves to every three tons, and a very few years proved that this restriction had been the greatest boon to the dealers as well as the slaves in the preservation of the living cargoes. The Bill met with some opposition in the Lords, and there Admiral Rodney and Lord Heathfield, both naturally humane men, were amongst its strongest opponents. The measure, however, passed, and received the Royal Assent on the 11th of July. Some well-meaning people thought that by legalising the freightage of slaves, England had acknowledged the lawfulness of the trade; but the advocates of the abolition made no secret of their determination to persevere, and this victory only quickened their exertions.The production of copper during this period was so plentiful, that, though the great mines in Anglesea were not yet discovered, full liberty was given to export it, except to France. From 1736 to 1745 the mines of Cornwall alone produced about 700 tons annually, and the yearly amount was constantly increasing. A manufactory of brassthe secret of which mixture was introduced from Germany, in 1649was established in Birmingham, in 1748; and, at the end of this period, the number of persons employed in making articles of copper and brass was, probably, not less than 50,000. The manufacture of tinned iron commenced in Wales about 1730, and in 1740 further improvements were made in this process. Similar improvements were making in the refinement of metals, and in the manufacture of silver plate, called Sheffield plate. English watches acquired great reputation, but afterwards fell into considerable disrepute from the employment of inferior foreign works. Printing types, which we had before imported from Holland, were first made in England in the reign of Queen Anne, by Caslon, an engraver of gun-locks and barrels. In 1725 William Ged, a Scotsman, discovered the art of stereotyping, but did not introduce it without strong opposition from the working printers. Great strides were made in the paper manufacture. In 1690 we first made white paper, and in 1713 it is calculated that 300,000 reams of all kinds of paper were made in England. An excise duty was first laid on paper in 1711. Our best china and earthenware were still imported, and, both in style and quality, our own pottery was very inferior, for Wedgwood had not yet introduced his wonderful improvements. Defoe introduced pantiles at his manufactory at Tilbury, before which time we imported them from Holland. The war with France compelled us to encourage the manufacture of glass; in 1697 the excise duty, imposed three years before, was repealed, but in 1746 duties were imposed on the articles used in its manufacture, and additional duties on its exportation. The manufacture of crown glass was not introduced till after this period.
Director
CHAPTER X. REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. (continued).About a week before the king died the physician delicately announced to him the inevitable catastrophe, when he said, "God's will be done." His sufferings were very great, and during the paroxysms of pain his moans were heard even by the sentinels in the quadrangle. On the night of the 25th of June his difficulty of breathing was unusually painful, and he motioned to his page to alter his position on the couch. Towards three o'clock he felt a sudden attack of faintness, accompanied by a violent discharge of blood. At this moment he attempted to raise his hand to his breast, and ejaculated, "O God, I am dying!" Two or three seconds afterwards he said, "This is death." The physicians were instantly called, but before they arrived the breath of life was gone. A post mortem examination showed ossification of the heart, which was greatly enlarged, and adhering to the neighbouring parts. The liver was not diseased; but the lungs were ulcerated, and there were dropsical symptoms on the skin, on various parts of the body. The king was an unusually large and, at one time, well-proportioned man; but he afterwards became very corpulent. He died on the 26th of June, in the sixty-eighth year of his age and the eleventh of his reign, having been Prince Regent for ten years. During his last illness the bulletins had been unusually deceptive. The king was anxious to put away the idea of dissolution from his own mind, and unwilling that the public should know that his infirmities were so great; and it was said that he required to see the bulletins and to have them altered, so that he was continually announced as being better till the day of his death. His message to both Houses on the 24th of May, however, put an end to all delusion on the subject. He wished to be relieved from the pain and trouble of signing Bills and documents with his own hand. A Bill was therefore passed to enable him to give his assent verbally, but it was jealously guarded against being made a dangerous precedent. The stamp was to be affixed in the king's presence, by his immediate order given by word of mouth. A memorandum of the circumstances must accompany the stamp, and the document stamped must be previously endorsed by three members of the Privy Council; the operation of the Act was limited to the existing Session. The three Commissioners appointed for affixing his Majesty's signature were Lord Farnborough, General Sir W. Keppel, and Major-General A. F. Barnard.Whilst these gigantic armies were drawing towards each other, in the early part of August, for what was afterwards called "the grand battle of the peoples," the weather seemed as though it would renew its Russian miseries on the French. They had to march in constantly deluging rains, up to the knees in mud, and to risk their lives by crossing flooded rivers. Amid these buffetings of the elements the conflict began, on the 21st of August, between Walmoden and Davoust, at Vellahn. A few days afterwards, in a skirmish with Walmoden's outposts at Gadebusch, Korner, the youthful Tyrt?us of Germany, fell.