ONE:The cider tax passed, opposed by thirty-nine Peers and a hundred and twenty Commoners; but it left a very sore feeling in the western counties, that cider, worth only five shillings a hogshead, the poor man's meagre beverage, should have a tax levied on it nearly doubling the price; whilst that at fifty shillings a hogshead, the rich man's luxury, only paid the same. The growers even threatened to let the apples fall and rot under the trees, rather than make them into cider, subject[179] to so partial a tax. No imposition had excited so much indignation since Sir Robert Walpole's Excise Bill, in 1733. In the cider counties bonfires were made in many places, and Bute was burnt emblematically as a jack-boot��Jack Bute��and his supposed royal mistress under that of a petticoat, which two articles, after being carried about on poles, were hurled into the flames.

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THREE:"Father clammed[3] thrice a week,This retreat had been made under great difficulties; the weather being excessively wet, the rivers swollen, and the roads knee-deep in mud. Provisions were scarce, and the soldiers found great difficulty in cooking the skinny, tough beef that they got, on account of the wet making it hard to kindle fires. The Spaniards, as usual,[31] concealed all the provisions they could, and charged enormously for any that they were compelled to part with. In fact, no enemies could have been treated worse than they treated us all the while that we were doing and suffering so much for them. The soldiers became so enraged that they set at defiance the strict system which Wellington exacted in this respect, and cudgelled the peasantry to compel them to bring out food, and seized it wherever they could find it. In fact, the discipline of the army was fast deteriorating from these causes, and Wellington issued very stern orders to the officers on the subject. Till they reached the Tormes, too, the rear was continually harassed by the French; and Sir Edward Paget, mounting a hill to make observations, was surprised and made prisoner.

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ONE:Such was the state of things with which the Duke of Wellington had to deal as British plenipotentiary when he left London on his mission early in September, taking Paris on his way. There he had some interesting conferences with the king and his Minister. The latter could hold out no hope that France would fulfil her engagements as to the slave trade. He spoke, indeed, of their African settlements as useless to the French people, and proposed to make them over to Britain in exchange for the Isle of France; but farther than this he declined to go, because there were too many interests, both public and private, engaged to thwart his efforts, should he be so unwise as to make any. His language with regard to South America was not less vague and unsatisfactory. He stated that France had not entered into relations with those provinces in any form, and did not intend to do so till they should have settled their differences with Spain one way or another. M. de Villele did not add, as he might have done, that France was feeling her way towards the severance of Spain from her colonies, and towards the establishment in the New World of one or two monarchies, with younger branches of the House of Bourbon at their head.

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THREE:

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THREE:On April 6th a great meeting was held in Westminster, avowedly to add weight to the county petitions for economical reform, which were now pouring into the House of Commons. Fox presided, and was supported by the Dukes of Devonshire and Portland. Government, to throw discredit on the meeting, affected alarm, and, at the request of the Middlesex magistrates, who were believed to have been moved by Ministers to make it, a body of troops was drawn up in the neighbourhood of Westminster Hall. The indignation of the Opposition was so much excited that Burke, in the House of Commons, commenting on this attempt to insinuate evil designs against the friends of reform, denounced the Middlesex magistrates as creeping vermin��the very "scum of the earth;" and Fox declared that if soldiers were to be let loose on the constitutional meetings of the people, then all who went to such meetings must go armed!

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THREE:

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THREE:

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ONE:This was no idle threat; the guards at Dublin castle and at the several barracks were doubled; Alborough House, commanding the road to Clontarf, was garrisoned; the streets on the north side of the city were patrolled by parties of soldiers during the night. Three war steamers were placed in the Liffey, with their guns run out, commanding the ground where the meeting was to be held; while the guns at the Pigeon House fort at the mouth of the river, right opposite Clontarf, were so placed as to sweep the road to it. The village was occupied by the 5th Dragoon Guards, the 60th Rifles, the 11th Hussars, the 54th Regiment of Infantry, and a brigade of Royal Horse Artillery; the infantry being commanded by Colonel Fane, the cavalry by Lord Cardigan, and the artillery by Colonel Higgins. The men and horses were provisioned for twenty-four hours, and each soldier was furnished with sixty rounds of ball cartridge. A crisis had now come; a collision between the troops and O'Connell's army of teetotallers was imminent, and even he could have no doubt of the[531] issue. He seemed to stand appalled on the edge of the precipice to which he had brought his deluded followers, and shrinking from the consequences, he made all possible haste to save them. As soon as the proclamation was issued, he called a special meeting of the Repeal Association, and announced that in consequence of the measures taken by the Government, which he denounced as "the most base and imbecile step ever taken," there would be no meeting at Clontarf the next day. He submitted a counter-proclamation, which was adopted and posted up that evening throughout the city beside the Government proclamation. It was also sent by special messengers to the neighbouring towns and villages. The preventive measures taken on both sides were completely successful. No mounted Repealers came in from the country, and though vast multitudes went out from Dublin to view the military demonstrations, their meeting with the Queen's forces was quite amicable. They were allowed to see the spectacle, but they were compelled to move on along the high road, which they did very good-humouredly.

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ONE:Belgium, this summer, was the great battle-ground. In it were Austrians, Dutch, British, and Hanoverians. At the opening of the campaign the Allies had probably two hundred thousand men scattered along the frontiers, and the French upwards of three hundred thousand. But whilst the French were united in one object, and the Convention kept pouring fresh masses of men in, the Allies were slow and disunited. The Duke of York, who commanded the English and Hanoverians, about thirty thousand men, was completely tired of the sluggish formality of the Austrian general, Clairfait, and refused to serve under him. To remove the difficulty, the Emperor of Austria agreed to take the command of his forces in the Netherlands in person, so that the Duke of York would serve under him. Francis II. arrived in April, and great expectations were excited by his presence. Instead of urging all the different divisions of the allied armies to concentrate in large masses against the able generals, Pichegru and Jourdain, Francis sat down before the secondary fortress of Landrecies, though the Allies already held those of Valenciennes,[434] Cond��, and Quesnoy. This enabled Pichegru to advance on West Flanders, and take Courtrai and Menin in the very face of Clairfait. At the same time Jourdain had entered the country of Luxembourg with a large force, and whilst the Austrians were wasting their time before Landrecies, he was still further reinforced from the army of the Rhine, which the absence of the King of Prussia left at leisure, and he now fell upon the Austrian general, Beaulieu; and though Beaulieu fought bravely for two days, he was overwhelmed by successive columns of fresh troops, and driven from his lines. Jourdain then advanced upon the Moselle, where the Prussians ought to have been, and were not, in spite of the subsidy.

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THREE:The British Ministry was at length becoming aware of the mischief of allowing the Empress of Russia to make continual inroads on the Turkish Empire. The British Ambassador, Mr. Fawkener, had been instructed to inform Catherine that Britain could not quietly acquiesce in these usurpations, which were seriously disturbing the balance of power in Europe. Catherine replied, haughtily, that she did not recognise the right of Britain to interfere, and that she should keep possession of Oczakoff, and all her conquests between the Bug and the Dniester. On the 28th of March Pitt communicated this answer to the House, in a message from his Majesty, and that he had deemed it necessary to come to an understanding with his allies, Prussia and Austria, on the subject, and to maintain the fleet in its augmented condition. He moved, the next day, an address to his Majesty, thanking him for his care in these respects. The Whigs, almost to a man, condemned this policy. Coke of Norfolk, Lord Wycombe, Mr. Lambton, afterwards Earl of Durham, and others, stoutly opposed it. Fox treated the idea of Russia having become a power formidable to the peace of Europe as ludicrous. Both he and Burke contended that there was nothing in the aggressions of Russia to occasion any alarm; that Turkey was a decaying nation, which it was useless to attempt to support; and that to bolster it up was only to maintain a barbarous people in domination over Christian populations. Fox upbraided the Government with their folly and inconsistency, if such were their fears of Russia, in having till recently encouraged her in her plan of aggressions in that direction. He reminded them that, twenty years ago, Great Britain, on war breaking out between Russia and the Porte, had aided Catherine in sending a fleet to the Mediterranean, and had thus enabled her to acquire a maritime force in the Black Sea. The truth, however, was that it was not the present Ministry that had committed this folly, but a Whig Ministry, of which Fox was one. He confessed to this, and also to the fact that in 1782, when Catherine seized more completely on the Crimea and Kuban Tartary, France and Spain had urged us to unite with them in preventing this, but that we had declined, and these countries had become permanently united to Russia. Now all this was, in truth, a simple confession of the incapacity of the Whigs, and of Fox himself included, to see the dangerous tendency of the Russian policy, and the only circumstance on which he could justly condemn the Ministry of Pitt was for not strenuously supporting Turkey and Sweden, the ally of Turkey against Russia, when they did see this tendency. By mean and parsimonious conduct they had allowed Sweden to be driven out of her territories on the eastern shore of the Baltic by Russia, when, had they given her but moderate support, that Power would have become a permanent check on the aggressive spirit of Russia. The motion of Pitt was carried by a large majority. A few days afterwards Mr. Grey renewed the subject in a series of resolutions, condemning all interference on behalf of Turkey, and contending that Russia was only weakening instead of strengthening herself by extending her dominions. But Pitt, in reply, showed the very obvious facts that the retention of Oczakoff opened the way to Constantinople, and that the possession of Constantinople prepared the way for the seizure of Egypt, and the supremacy of the Mediterranean, with the most formidable consequences to our commerce. The resolutions of Grey were negatived; but twice again during the session the Whigs returned to the charge��on the 15th of April and on the 25th of May,��but with no better success. The armament was maintained, but the isolated threats of England had little effect on Catherine. Pitt was accordingly compelled to change his policy, and acquiesce in a peace by which she retained the territory between the Bug and the Dniester, and the fortress of Oczakoff.