FORE:[45]
FORE:
FORE:The motion of Mr. Yorke, afterwards First Lord of the Admiralty, for the exclusion of strangers during the debate on the Walcheren Expedition, gave great offence to the Reformers, who were now beginning to co-operate in societies, and to keep a keen watch on the Ministerial tendency to curb the liberty of the Press and carry things with a high hand. At a debating society, called the British Forum, the president, Mr. Gale Jones, delivered a strong oration against it, and proposed for the discussion of the following evening the question, "Which was the greater outrage upon public feeling: Mr. Yorke's enforcement of the standing order, or Mr. Windham's attack on the liberty of the press on the same occasion?" This proposal being agreed to, the intended debate was made known by placards posted in the streets. Yorke complained of this as a breach of the privileges of the House of Commons, and the printer was immediately summoned before the House, when he gave the name of the author, Mr. Gale Jones, who was thereupon, on the morrow, the 21st of February, brought before the House, and committed to Newgate.On the 9th of June, when the House of Commons went into committee on the Bill, a large number of merchants desired to be heard against it. For several days their statements were heard, and the Portuguese Ambassador also presented a memorial declaring that should the duties on French wines be lowered to those of Portugal, his master would renew the woollen and other duties on the products of Great Britain. This seemed to enforce the mercantile opinions; the sense of the whole country was against the treaty, and the speech of Sir Thomas Hanmer, a Tory, made a deep impression. There was, however, a growing rumour, during the latter days of the debate, that Oxford had given the treaty upa rumour probably not without foundation, for Oxford and Bolingbroke were no longer in unity. The latter, ambitious and unprincipled, was intriguing to oust his more slow and dilatory colleague; and, as the Bill was ostensibly the work of Bolingbroke, probably Oxford was by no means unwilling that it should be thrown out to damage him. When the question, therefore, was put on the 18th of June,[11] that the Bill be engrossed, it was negatived by a majority of one hundred and ninety-four to one hundred and eighty-five. Thus the commercial treaty was lost, much to the joy of the nation, and certainly to its immediate benefit.
FORE:In this Session the first step was taken in one of the greatest achievements of humanity which adorn the name of Britain. It was the grand preliminary towards annihilating the slave trade. The spirit of revolt against this odious trade had been gaining rapidly in the British mind. One of the earliest stabs given to it was by the pathetic story of Inkle and Yarico, in the "History of Barbadoes," by Lygon, which was taken up and amplified in the Spectator, and afterwards elaborated into an effective drama by Colman. Defoe, Dr. Johnson, Warburton in his "Divine Legation of Moses," and in his sermons so early as 1766, Voltaire, and other writers, had diffused a strong and sound feeling on the subject. It had been early attempted to establish the legal maxim, that a slave becomes a freed man in England; but in 1729 this had been positively pronounced against by Talbot and Yorke, then the highest legal authorities. But a more successful essay was made by Granville Sharp in 1772, in the case of James Somerset, and the principle was established, that the moment a slave set his foot on English ground he became free. In 1782 the Friends presented a petition to Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade. In 1785 Thomas Clarkson, then a student at the University of Cambridge, competed for and won the first prize for an essay on "The Slavery and Commerce in the Human Species," and this, which was undertaken as an academical exercise, led him to devote himself to the great work of the utter extinction of this evil. Mr. Ramsay, a clergyman of Kent, who had lived in St. Kitts, published a pamphlet on the same subject. The friends of Ramsay, Lady Middleton and Mrs. Bouverie, became zealous advocates of the cause, and finally Wilberforce resolved to make it the great object of his life. A society was now established in London, consisting only originally of twelve individuals, including the benevolent Mr. Thornton, and having Granville Sharp for its chairman. The members, however, were opulent merchants and bankers, and they set agents to work to collect information on the subject. The feeling rapidly spread; committees were formed in Manchester and other provincial towns for co-operation.The treaty between Russia, Prussia, and Austria for the first division of Poland was signed at St. Petersburg on the 5th of August, 1772. The three robber powers now promised to rest satisfied with their booty; to respect the rights and remaining territories of Polandwords hollow and worthless as they who used them. The invaders divided at this time about one-third of Poland between them. Prussia appropriated the whole of Pomerania, part of Great Poland, the bishopric of Warmia, and the palatinates of Marienburg and Culm; with complete command of the lower part of the Vistula. The whole of this territory did not exceed eight hundred square miles, but it was a territory of vast importance to Prussia, as it united Pomerania with the rest of that kingdom. Russia and Austria acquired immensely more in extent. Russia took nearly the whole of Lithuania, with the vast country between the rivers Dwina and Dniester. Austria secured the country along the left bank of the Vistula from Wieliczka to the confluence of the Vistula and the Viroz. But Russia had Galicia, the palatinate of Belz, and a part of Volhynia. Unsupported by France, England had no course but to acquiesce in the arrangement.
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