The Ministry, as reconstructed, consisted of Lord North, First Lord of the Treasury; the Great Seal was in commission; Granby's places, the Ordnance and Commander of the Forces, were still unsupplied; so was the Duke of Manchester's old post of Lord of the Bed-Chamber. The Earl of Halifax became Lord Privy Seal; the Earl of Pembroke became a Lord of the Bed-Chamber; the Earl of Waldegrave, Master of the Horse to the queen; Sir Gilbert Elliot, Treasurer of the Navy; Charles James Fox became a junior Lord of the Admiralty; Admiral Holborne another; Mr. Welbore Ellis became one of the Vice-Treasurers of Ireland; and Thurlow was appointed Solicitor-General, in place of Dunning.
THREE:
FORE:There was grave discontent and suffering in France, and Marshal Saxe, through General Ligonier, made proposals for peace. The news of these overtures gave great delight in England, but the king and Cumberland were bent on continuing the war. Pelham and Chesterfield advocated acceptance of the terms, but Newcastle sided with the king, to gain favour with him. As the terms, however, could not with decency be bluntly rejected, Cumberland solicited and obtained the post of negotiator in the matter for England; but the Ministers, desirous of peace, foreseeing that the wishes or the hasty temper of Cumberland would[114] soon ruin every chance of accomplishing a treaty, the Earl of Sandwich was sent over to act as assistant to the duke; this meant that he was to overrule, if possible, the mischief Cumberland would be sure to make. Sandwich accordingly hastened over to Holland, and had a secret interview with the Marquis de Puisieulx, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, and, after much dodging on the part of the marquis, he managed to have the discussion removed from military negotiators to a congress at Aix-la-Chapelle.
Immediately after the termination of the armistice the Russians and Prussians joined the great army of the Austrians, which had been concentrated at Prague. Their plan was to fall upon Buonaparte's rear. Full of activity, that unresting man had been busy, during the whole armistice, in defending his headquarters at Dresden by fortifications. He had cut down all the trees which adorned the public gardens and walks, and used them in a chain of redoubts and field-works, secured by fosses and palisades. He was in possession of the strong mountain fortresses of the vicinity, as well as those of Torgau, Wittenberg, Magdeburg, and others, so that the valley of the Elbe was in his hands; and he had a bridge of boats at K?nigstein, extending his communications to Stolpe: thus guarding against an attack on the side of Bohemia. In the beginning of August he assembled two hundred and fifty thousand men in Saxony and Silesia. Of these, sixty thousand lay at Leipsic under Oudinot, and one hundred thousand in different towns on the borders of Silesia, under Macdonald; he himself lay at Dresden with his Imperial Guard. Eugene Beauharnais he had dispatched to Italy, where he had forty thousand men. Besides these, he had a reserve of Bavarians, under General Wrede, of twenty-five thousand men.WELFEN CASTLE, HANOVER.On the 10th of April, when Mr. Canning kissed hands as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, he found himself deserted by the Duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, Mr. Peel, Lords Bathurst, Melville, and Westmoreland. The members of the Cabinet who finally adhered to him were Lord Harrowby, Mr. Huskisson, Mr. Wynne, and Mr. Robinson, afterwards Lord Goderich, who had become Secretary of the Colonial Department, with the lead of the Government in the House of Lords. Having received the resignations, and presented them to the king, Mr. Canning said:"Here, sire, is that which disables me from executing the orders I have received from you respecting the formation of a new Administration. It is now open to your Majesty to adopt a new course; for no step has yet been taken in the execution of those orders that is irrecoverable." He added, that if he was to go on, his writ must be moved for that day, which was the last before the Easter recess. The king at once gave him his hand to kiss, and confirmed the appointment. Two hours afterwards the House was ringing with acclamations while Mr. Wynne was moving that a new writ be issued for the borough of Newport in consequence of the Right Honourable George Canning having accepted the office of First Lord of the Treasury. This was a result which Lord Eldon did not anticipate. He evidently expected that Canning would be foiled in his attempt to form a Ministry. He wrote, "Who could have thought it? I guess that I, Wellington, Peel, Bathurst, Westmoreland, and C. will be out." Again he says, "The whole conversation in town is made up of abusive, bitterly abusive, talk of people about each otherall fire and flame. I have known nothing like it." Elsewhere he remarks, "I think political enmity runs higher and waxes warmer than I ever knew it."[See larger version]The examination of the witnesses for the defence continued till the 24th of October, and then powerful speeches were delivered by the Attorney-General, Sir Robert Gifford, and by the Solicitor-General, Mr. Copley. The speech of the former was considered so effective, that William Cobbett threw off one hundred thousand copies of an answer to it. Sir Archibald Alison, the Tory historian, admits that it was not the evidence for the prosecution that told against the queen, "for it was of so suspicious a kind that little reliance could be placed on it, but what was elicited on cross-examination from the English officers on board the vessel which conveyed her Majesty to the Levantmen of integrity and honour, of whose testimony there was not a shadow of suspicion. Without asserting that any of them proved actual guilt against her Majesty, it cannot be disputed that they established against her an amount of levity of manner and laxity of habits, which rendered her unfit to be at the head of English society, and amply justified the measures taken to exclude her from it."
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