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FORE:In London, notwithstanding, there was considerable alarm, but rather from fear of the Papists and Jacobites at home than of any danger from abroad. Every endeavour had been used, in fact, to revive the old Popery scare. There were rumours circulated that the Papists meant to rise, cut everybody's throats, and burn the City. There was fear of a run on the Bank of England, but the merchants met at Garraway's Coffee-house, and entered into engagements to support the Bank. They also opened a subscription to raise two hundred and fifty thousand pounds to enlist troops, and many of them gave as much as two thousand pounds apiece. A camp was formed in Hyde Park of the Household Troops, horse and foot, a regiment of horse grenadiers, and some of the battalions that came over from Flanders. In the provinces many of the great nobility proposed to raise regiments at their own expense, and this act of patriotism was loudly applauded. In some instances the patriotism was real. But the main body of the Whig nobility and some others cut a very different figure. No sooner did Parliament meet on the 18th of October, and whilst the Jacobites were in the highest spirits, and opposing both the Address and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, than the Dukes of Devonshire, Bedford, Rutland, Montague, the Lords Herbert, Halifax, Cholmondeley, Falmouth, Malton, Derby, and others, moved, contrary to their splendid promises, that their regiments should be paid by the king, and should be put upon the regular establishment. The king was as much disgusted as the most independent of his subjects, but he found himself unable to prevent the measure.These mischiefs it was proposed wholly to remove by enacting that "the charge for primary distribution��that is to say, the postage on all letters received in a post town, and delivered in the same or in any other post town in the British Isles��shall be at the uniform rate of one penny for each half-ounce; all letters and other papers, whether single or multiple, forming one packet, and not weighing more than half an ounce, being charged one penny, and heavier packets to any convenient limit being charged an additional penny for each additional half-ounce." And it was further proposed that stamped covers should be sold to the public at such a price as to include the postage, which would thus be collected in advance. By the public generally, and preeminently by the trading public, the plan was received with great favour. By the functionaries of the Post Office it was at once denounced as ruinous, and ridiculed as fanciful. Lord Lichfield, then Postmaster-General, said of it in the House of Lords, "Of all the wild and visionary schemes I ever heard, it is the most extravagant." On another occasion, he assured the House that if the anticipated increase of letters should be realised, "the mails will have to carry twelve times as much in weight, and therefore the charge for transmission, instead of ��100,000, as now, must be twelve times that amount. The walls of the Post Office would burst; the whole area in which the building stands would not be large enough to receive the clerks and the letters." In the course of the following year (1838) petitions were poured into the House of Commons. A select Committee was appointed, which held nearly seventy sittings, and examined nearly eighty-three witnesses in addition to the officers of the department. Its report weakly recommended the substitution of a twopenny for a penny rate, but this was overruled by the Cabinet. During the Session of Parliament that followed the presentation of[465] this report, about 2,000 petitions in favour of penny postage were presented to both Houses, and at length the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought in a Bill to enable the Treasury to carry it into effect. The measure was carried in the House of Commons by a majority of 100, and became law on the 17th of August, 1839. A new but only temporary office under the Treasury was created, to enable Mr. Hill to superintend (although, as it proved, with very inadequate arrangements) the working out of his plan. The first step taken was to reduce, on the 5th of December, 1839, the London district postage to one penny, and the general inland postage to fourpence, the half ounce, except as respected places to which letters were previously carried at lower rates, these rates being continued. On the 10th of January, 1840, the uniform penny rate came into operation throughout the United Kingdom; the scale of weight advancing from one penny for each of the first two half-ounces, by gradations of twopence for each additional ounce or fraction of an ounce, up to sixteen ounces. The postage was to be prepaid, or charged at double rates, and Parliamentary franking was abolished. Postage stamps were introduced on the 6th of May following. The facilities of despatch were soon afterwards increased, especially by the establishment of day mails. But on the important points of simplification in the internal economy of the Post Office, with the object of reducing its cost without diminishing its working power, very little was done. For the time being the loss incurred by the change was more than ��1,000,000.

FORE:Immediately after this engagement Blucher was joined by part of the grand army, under the Prince of Würtemberg; he therefore determined to attack Napoleon, and on the 1st of February drew out his forces. Napoleon would have declined the engagement; but he had the deep river Aube in his rear, and only the bridge of Lesmont by which to pass it. He preferred, on this account, to risk the battle, rather than retreat in such circumstances. Blucher attacked at once from the villages of La Rothi��re, Dienville, and Chaumont. The battle was severely contested for the whole day, the Prince of Würtemberg greatly distinguishing himself in it. In the end Buonaparte was wholly defeated, lost four thousand prisoners and seventy-three guns, and must have been captured himself, had not the Austrians, by surprising slowness, allowed him to escape over the bridge. He then retreated towards Troyes, where he was joined by his Imperial Guard; but his losses had been very heavy. Had Blucher and Schwarzenberg, who had now met, marched on united, they must have been in Paris in a very short time; but, with the German fatality of dividing, they had no sooner experienced the benefit of a powerful union than they called a council at the chateau of Brienne, and agreed to separate again. Blucher, joining to his own the divisions of Yorck and Kleist, proceeded towards Paris by the Marne, and Prince Schwarzenberg followed the course of the Seine.

FORE:Meanwhile difficulties thickened daily about the king. His Cabinets resigned in rapid succession; there were no less than five of them between March and October; till at last he got a man of nerve for Prime Minister, in the person of Count von Brandenburg. The Ministry addressed a document to the king for the purpose of disclaiming on his behalf the desire to become German Emperor, stating that his assuming the German colours, and putting himself at the head of the movement for German unity, and proposing to summon a meeting of the Sovereigns and States did not justify the interpretation it had received; that it was not his intention to anticipate the unbiassed decision of the sovereign princes and the people of Germany by offering to undertake the temporary direction of German affairs. Thus the king was obliged to back quietly out of a position which he had rashly assumed. The United Diet acted as being itself only a temporary institution, having established the electoral law on the basis of universal suffrage in order to prepare the way for a constituent Assembly, by which means the revolutionary spirit penetrated to the very extremities of Prussian society.TROOPS ESCORTING THE STAMPED PAPER TO THE CITY HALL, NEW YORK. (See p. 188.)

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