At the opening of the Session of 1836, as we have seen, the king stated in his Speech that a further report of the commission of inquiry into the condition of the poorer classes in Ireland would be speedily laid before Parliament. "You will approach this subject," he said, "with the[404] caution due to its importance and difficulty; and the experience of the salutary effect produced by the Act for the amendment of the laws relating to the poor in England and Wales may in many respects assist your deliberations." On the 9th of February Sir Richard Musgrave moved for leave to bring in a Bill for the relief of the poor in Ireland in certain cases, stating that he himself lived in an atmosphere of misery, and being compelled to witness it daily, he was determined to pursue the subject, to see whether any and what relief could be procured from Parliament. A few days later another motion was made by the member for Stroud for leave to introduce a Bill for the relief and employment of the poor of Ireland; and on the 3rd of March a Bill was submitted by Mr. Smith O'Brien, framed upon the principles of local administration by bodies representing the ratepayers, and a general central supervision and control on the part of a body named by the Government, and responsible to Parliament. On the 4th of May Mr. Poulett Scrope, a gentleman who had given great attention to questions connected with the poor and the working classes, moved a series of resolutions affirming the necessity for some provision for the relief of the Irish poor. Lord Morpeth was then Chief Secretary; and in commenting upon these resolutions in the House of Commons, he admitted "that the hideous nature of the evils which prevailed amongst the poorer classes in Ireland called earnestly for redress, and he thought no duty more urgent on the Government and on Parliament than to devise a remedy for them." On the 9th of June following, on the motion for postponing the consideration of Sir Richard Musgrave's Bill, Lord Morpeth again assured the House that the subject was under the immediate consideration of Government, and that he was not without hope of their being enabled to introduce some preparatory measure in the present Session; but, at all events, they would take the first opportunity in the next Session of introducing what he hoped to be a complete and satisfactory measure. Nothing, however, was done during the Session, Government seeming to be puzzled to know what to do with such conflicting testimony on a subject of enormous difficulty.
The year 1824 is memorable in Ireland for the establishment of the Catholic Association. The Catholic question had lain dormant since the union. Ireland remained in a state of political stupor. There was a Catholic committee, indeed, under the direction of a gentleman of property, Mr. John Keogh, of Mount Jerome, near Dublin. But his voice was feeble, and seldom heard. The councils of the Roman Catholics were much distracted. Many of the bishops, and most of the gentry, recommended prudence and patience as the best policy. Liberal statesmen in England were willing to make concessions, but the conscientious scruples of George III. had presented an insuperable barrier in the way of civil equality. There was an annual motion on the subjectfirst by Grattan, then by Plunket, and lastly by Burdett; but it attracted very little attention, till the formidable power of the Catholic Association excited general alarm for the stability of British institutions. Adverting to the past history of Irelandher geographical position, her social state in respect of the tenure of property, and the numbers of the respective religious denominations of her peoplethe ablest Conservative statesmen considered that it would be extremely difficult to reconcile the perfect equality of civil privilege, or rather the bona fide practical application of that principle, with those objects on the inviolable maintenance of which the friends and opponents of Catholic Emancipation were completely agreednamely, the Legislative union and the Established Church. There was the danger of abolishing tests which had been established for the express purpose of giving to the legislature a Protestant charactertests which had been established not upon vague constitutional theories, but after practical experience of the evils which had been inflicted and the dangers which had been incurred by the struggles for ascendency at periods not remote from the present. There was the danger that the removal of civil disabilities might materially alter the relations in which the Roman Catholics[249] stood to the State. Sir Robert Peel, in his "Memoirs," recites those difficulties at length, and in all their force. He fully admits that "the Protestant interest" had an especial claim upon his devotion and his faithful service, from the part which he had uniformly taken on the Catholic question, from the confidence reposed in him on that account, and from his position in Parliament as the representative of the University of Oxford.On the 11th of March, 1768, the Parliament, having nearly lived its term of seven years, was dissolved, and the most unprecedented corruption, bribery, and buying and selling of the people's right to their own House, came into play. The system originated by Walpole was now grown gigantic, and the sale and purchase of rotten boroughs was carried on in the most unblushing manner by candidates for Parliament, particularly aristocrats, who had managed to secure the old boroughs as their property, or to control them by their property. The Mayor and Aldermen of Oxford wrote to their members, long before the dissolution, to offer them the renewal of their seats for the sum of seven thousand five hundred pounds, which they meant to apply to the discharge of the debts of the corporation. The House arrested the Mayor and Aldermen, and clapped them in Newgate for five days; but on their humbly begging pardon at the bar of the House, they released them again to continue their base contract. Nay, whilst in prison, these corporation officials had sold their borough to the Duke of Marlborough and the Earl of Abingdon. Well might Chatham say this rotten part of the constitution wanted amputating. Where the people of corporations had votes, they were corrupted beyond all hope of resistance by the lavish bribes of the wealthy. The Earl Spencer spent seventy thousand pounds to secure the borough of Northampton for his nominee. There were attorneys acting then as now for such boroughs and such corrupt constituents, and they went about offering them to the highest bidders. One Hickey was notorious amongst this tribe; and above all, the borough of Shoreham distinguished itself by its venality, which assumed an aspect almost of blasphemy. The burgesses united in a club to share the proceeds of bribery equally amongst themselves, and styled themselves "the Christian Club," in imitation of the first Christians, who had all things in common! In the train of all this unprincipled corruption followed riots and tumults amongst the people, who were at once starving from the scarcity and dearness of bread, and infuriated with the drink with which they had been plied to serve the views of these base candidates. From the centre of this unholy chaos again rose the figure of John Wilkes, as the reputed champion of liberty.
Director
"My lords and gentlemen," said his Majesty, "I have come to meet you for the purpose of proroguing this Parliament, with a view to its instant dissolution." The voice of the king rose, and became still more shrill and piercing, as he reached the last clause of the sentence; and a loud buzz and hum, the loudest such a presence permitted, immediately followed, and nearly drowned all the succeeding sentences. The dissolution speedily followed the prorogation, and a new Parliament was summoned to meet on the 14th of June.The release of Wilkes by the Court of Common[180] Pleas was a triumph over Ministers, which, had they been wise, would have induced them to take no further notice of him. They had only made a popular demigod of him. The people, not only in London, but all over the country, celebrated his exit from the Tower with the liveliest demonstrations, especially in the cider districts, still smarting under the new tax, and where they accordingly once more paraded the jack-boot and petticoat, adding two effigiesone of Bute, dressed in a Scottish plaid and with a blue ribbon, the other no less a person than the king, led by the nose by Bute.Mr. Canning had now attained the highest summit to which the ambition of a British subject can aspire. With the acclamation of the country and of the House of Commons, he had taken the first place in the Government of the empire, to which he had raised himself by his talents and his merit alone, surmounting as he rose the most formidable impediments, aristocratic antipathies, class interests, and royal dislike. He was the idol of the nation, and not only in Great Britain, but throughout the world, his fame shone brightest of all the public men of his age. His name was associated with the triumph of Liberal principles throughout Europe and America; he was at the head of a strong Government, and he had conciliated the good-will of his Sovereign. Such a combination of what are usually regarded as the elements of human happiness has rarely, if ever, been known in the history of England, where alone such a phenomenon could occur. As a man of genius, as an orator, as a political leader, he enjoyed a reputation and a degree of success which in any one of these capacities would be regarded by the majority of men as the acme of human felicity. But in addition to these he enjoyed a position and wielded a power with which many great men have been content, without the brilliant halo of glory with which, in Canning's case, they were surrounded. But it is a singular and humbling illustration of the vanity of human wishes and human glory, that this great man was, after all, unhappy, and that the political enemies he had vanquished had the power of bringing him to an early grave. The Whig and Tory lords studied in every way to wound the proud spirit, which they knew to be extremely sensitive. They scowled upon him with looks of resentment and vengeance. Old friends averted their eyes from the affectionate companion[260] of earlier days; the cordial pressure of his hand was not returned; his associates and supporters in office and in Parliament were, for the most part, his former opponents in many a political battlefield. The odium of being a convert to Liberal principles settled upon his noble spirit like a fatal blight, the animosity with which intolerance pursues the honest and generous lover of truth and right pierced his susceptible nervous system like a keen, pitiless, persistent east wind. This was more than his delicate organism could long bear. The state of his mind affected his bodily health. The charm of his conversation made him the delight of his friends in private society, in which he found a solace and a welcome relaxation from the toils of office. It was natural, though to be regretted, that with such a susceptible, enjoying, and genial temperament, delighting in wit and humour, and diffusing pleasure around him by the coruscations of his own genius, he should have lingered longer in convivial parties than was prudent for his health. The consequence was an inflamed and irritable state of the system. Thus predisposed to disease, he caught cold by sitting under a tree, after being heated with walking, while on a visit with Lord Lyndhurst at Wimbledon. Attacked with inflammation of the kidneys, he went to Chiswick, on the advice of his doctors, and there, on the 8th of August, after a brief period of intense suffering, he died in the villa of the Duke of Devonshire, and in the same room in which a man of kindred genius, the illustrious Charles James Fox, breathed his last.The silk trade received a great impulse by the erection of a silk-mill at Derby, in 1719, by John Lombe and his brothers. Lombe had smuggled himself into a silk-mill in Italy, as a destitute workman, and had then copied all the machinery. To prevent the operation of this new silk factory in Englandwhich was worked by a water-wheel on the river Derwent, had 97,746 wheels, movements, and individual parts, and employed three hundred personsthe King of Sardinia prohibited the exportation of the raw material, and thus, for a time, checked the progress of the manufacture. Parliament voted Sir Thomas Lombe[167] 14,000 as a compensation for loss of profits thus occasioned, on condition that the patent, which he had obtained for fourteen years, should expire, and the right to use the machinery should be thrown open to the public. By the middle of this period our silk manufactures were declared superior to those of Italy, and the tradesmen of Naples recommended their silk stockings as English ones. In 1755 great improvements were introduced by Mr. Jedediah Strutt in the stocking-loom of Lee.[18]