THREE:Next morning Mr. Denman spoke nearly two hours for the queen, strongly maintaining her right of recrimination against the king, who, when seeking for a divorce, should come into court with clean hands. He commented on the several clauses of the Bill as he went along. He said the person who framed it had worked himself up into an ebullition of moral zeal, and used expressions for the full support of which the bribes and schemes of the prosecutors would produce witnesses. Referring to a former investigation, he called the attention of the House to the letter of Mrs. Lisle, in 1806, when flirting and familiarity were the worst things alleged against her Royal Highness. On the subject of familiarity he referred to a note addressed by a waiter to the Prince of Wales"Sam, of the Cocoanut Coffeehouse, presents his compliments to his Royal Highness, and begs" so and so. That illustrious person remarked, "This is very well to us, but it won't do for him to speak so to Norfolk and Arundel." He concluded by apologising to the queen for putting even the hypothesis of her guilt, which he never could believe would be established; and whatever might be enacted by means of suborned perjury or foul conspiracy, he never would pay to any one who might usurp her situation the respect to which the laws of God and man entitled her alone.Taking this view of his Continental neighbours, George was driven to the conclusion that his only safety lay in firmly engaging France to relinquish the Pretender. The means of the attainment of this desirable object lay in the peculiar position of the Regent, who was intent on his personal aims. So long as the chances of the Pretender appeared tolerable, the Regent had avoided the overtures on this subject; but the failure of the expedition to the Highlands had inclined him to give up the Pretender, and he now sent the Abb Dubois to Hanover to treat upon the subject. He was willing also to destroy the works at Mardyk as the price of peace with England. The preliminaries were concluded, and the Dutch included in them; but the Treaty was not ratified till January, 1717.
THREE:On the 23rd, the day fixed for the rising, the insurgents turned out in many places, notwithstanding the arrest of their leaders. They did not succeed at Carlow, Naas, and Kilcullen. But, on the 25th, fourteen thousand of them, under one Father Murphy, attacked Wexford, defeated the garrison which came out to meet them, took a considerable number of prisoners, whom they put to death, and frightened the town into a surrender on the 30th. They treated such Protestants as remained in the place with the utmost barbarity. They took Enniscorthy and, seizing some cannon, encamped on Vinegar Hill. On the 31st they were attacked by General Lake, who drove them from their camp, made a great slaughter of them, and then retook Wexford and Enniscorthy. General Johnson attacked another party which was plundering the town of New Ross, killing and wounding two thousand six hundred of them. On this news reaching Scullabogue, the insurgents there massacred about one hundred Protestant prisoners in cold blood. These massacres of the Protestants, and the Presbyterians in the north having been too cautious to rise, after the betrayal of the plot, caused the whole to assume the old character of a Popish rebellion. Against this the leading Catholics protested, and promptly offered their aid to Government to suppress it. Of the leaders, MacCann, Byrne, two brothers named Sheares, the sons of a banker at Cork, were executed. The success of the soldiers was marked by worse cruelty than that of the rebels; for instance, at Carlow about 200 persons were hanged or shot. Arthur O'Connor, Emmet, MacNevin, Sampson, and a number of others, were banished. Lord Cornwallis was appointed Lord-Lieutenant in place of Lord Camden, and pardons were assured to those who made their submission. All now seemed over, when in August there appeared at Killala three French frigates, which landed nine hundred men, who were commanded by General Humbert. Why the French should send such a mere handful of men into Ireland, who must inevitably be sacrificed or made prisoners, can perhaps only be accounted for by the assurances of the disaffected Irish, that the whole mass of the people, at least of the Catholics, were ready to rise and join them. But if that were trueif, as Wolfe Tone assured them, there were three hundred thousand men already disciplined, and only in need of arms, it would have been sufficient to have sent them over arms. But then Tone, who had grown as utterly reckless as any sansculotte Frenchman, described the riches of Ireland, which were to repay the invaders, as something prodigious. In his memorial to the Directory he declared that the French were to go shares with[464] the nation whom they went to liberate, in all the church, college, and chapter lands, in the property of the absentee landlords, which he estimated at one million pounds per annum, in that of all Englishmen, and in the income of Government, which he calculated at two millions of pounds per annum. General Humbert, who had been in the late expedition, and nearly lost his life in the Droits de l'Homme, no doubt expected to see all the Catholic population flocking around him, eager to put down their oppressors; but, so far from this, all classes avoided him, except a few of the most wretched Catholic peasants. At Castlebar he was met by General Lake, with a force much superior in numbers, but chiefly yeomanry and militia. Humbert readily dispersed thesethe speed of their flight gaining for the battle the name of the Castlebar Racesand marched on through Connaught, calling on the people to rise, but calling in vain. He had made this fruitless advance for about seventeen days when he was met by Lord Cornwallis with a body of regular troops, and defeated. Finding his retreat cut off, he surrendered on the 8th of September, and he and his followers became prisoners of war. But the madness or delusion of the French Government had not yet reached its height; a month after this surrender Sir John Warren fell in with a French line-of-battle ship and eight frigates, bearing troops and ammunition to Ireland. He captured the ship of the line and three of the frigates, and on board of the man-of-war was discovered the notorious Wolfe Tone, the chief instigator of these insane incursions, and who, before sailing, had recorded in his diary, as a matter of boast, that every day his heart was growing harder, that he would take a most dreadful vengeance on the Irish aristocracy. He was condemned to be hanged, but he managed to cut his throat in prison (November 19, 1798). And thus terminated these worse than foolish attempts of France on Ireland, for they were productive of great miseries, both at sea and on land, and never were conducted on a scale or with a force capable of producing any permanent result.On the 6th of October Sir John Moore received instructions from Lord Castlereagh that his army was to advance into Spain, and co-operate with the Spanish armies for the expulsion of the French. He was informed that his twenty-five thousand men would receive a reinforcement of ten thousand men under Sir David Baird, who was on his voyage to Corunna. When Sir John prepared to march, the most serious difficulties presented themselves. Even at Lisbon it was found impossible to procure conveyance for the necessary baggage, and therefore the supplies of provisions and stores were cut down extremelya great mistake. There was one species of baggagewomen and childrenwho, according to the wretched practice of the time, were allowed to accompany the troops, and would not be left behind, though the army was going into immediate active service against the enemy. Sir John directed the commanding officers to order that as many as possible of these should stay behind, especially such women as had very young children, or infants at the breast, as there would not be found sufficient carts for them; and in the mountainous tracks at that season, and the horrible roads, they must suffer the most exhausting fatigues and hardships. But Sir John had not the commanding firmness of Wellesley, and his orders in this respect were, for the most part, neglected. Very proper orders were also issued by Sir John regarding the behaviour of the soldiers towards the natives. They were informed that the Spaniards were a grave and very proud people, readily offended by any disrespect towards their religion or customs; and the soldiers were desired to behave courteously, and to wear the cockade of King Ferdinand VII. as well as their own.
THREE:
TWO:Parliament met on the 15th of November, and the very first object which engaged the attention of both Houses was Wilkes. In such fiery haste were Ministers, that Lord Sandwich, in the Peers, started up, before the king's speech could be considered, and declared that he held in his hand a most filthy and atrocious libel, written by Wilkes, called "An Essay on Woman." Wilkes never had published the filth. He had written, as it appeared, by the assistance of a profligate and now deceased son of Archbishop Potter, this "Essay on Woman;" but he had never published it. It had lain in his desk, and had only been read to two personsone of whom was Sandwich himself. When Wilkes, however, was driven to set up a printing press in his own house, he had printed a dozen copies of the "Essay on Woman," to give to his dissolute friends, whom he used to meet at the Dilettanti Club, in Palace Yard. Sandwich, aware of the existence of the essay, had bribed one of Wilkes's printers, named Curry, to lend him a copy of it, and had paid him five guineas as a guarantee for its safe return. The whole thing was a stupid parody of Pope's "Essay on Man;" in which, instead of the inscription to Bolingbroke, commencing "Awake, my St. John!" there appeared an invocation beginning, "Awake, my Sandwich!" and there were also ridiculous notes attributed to Warburton.[See larger version]
TWO:Out of these troubles arose a new state of things, a new era of peace and prosperity. Lord Durham saw that disaffection and disturbance had arisen from the animosity of race and religion, exasperated by favouritism in the Government, and the dispensation of patronage through "a family compact." He recommended a liberal, comprehensive, impartial, and unsectarian policy, with the union of the two provinces under one legislature, and this, after several failures, became law in 1840. It was a revolution quite unexpected by both parties. The disaffected French Catholics feared, as the consequence of their defeat, a rule of military repression; the British Protestants hoped for the firm establishment of their ascendency. Both were disappointedthe latter very painfully, when, notwithstanding their efforts and sacrifices for the maintenance of British power, they saw Papineau, the arch-traitor, whom they would have hanged, Attorney-General in the new Government. However, the wise government of Lord Sydenham soon reconciled them to the altered state of affairs. The new Constitution was proclaimed in Canada on the 10th of February, 1841; and the admirable manner in which it worked proved that Lord Durham, its author, was one of the greatest benefactors of the colony, though his want of tact had made his mission a failure.ROTTEN ROW IN 1830. (See p. 442.)