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TWO:The Government and Parliament which, with so lavish a hand, had enabled the Continental monarchs to fight their battles, which had spent above two thousand millions of money in these wars, of which eight hundred millions remained as a perpetual debt, with the perpetual necessity of twenty-eight millions of taxation annually to discharge the interestthat burden on posterity which Napoleon had, with such satisfaction, at St. Helena, pronounced permanentthis same Government and Parliament, seeing the war concluded, were in great haste to stave off the effects of this burden from the landed aristocracy, the party which had incurred it, and to lay it upon the people. They saw that the ports of the world, once more open to us, would, in exchange for our manufactures, send us abundance of corn; and, that the rents might remain during peace at the enormous rate to which war prices had raised them, they must keep out this foreign corn. True, this exclusion of foreign corn must raise the cost of living to the vast labouring population to a ruinous degree, and threatened fearful convulsions from starving people in the manufacturing districts; but these considerations had no weight with the land-holding Government and its Parliamentary majority. In 1814 they were in haste to pass a Corn Law excluding all corn except at famine prices; but the lateness of the season, and an inundation of petitions against it, put it off for that Session. But in 1815 it was introduced again and carried by a large majority. By this all corn from abroad was excluded, except when the price was eighty shillings per quarter. By this law it was decreed that the people who fought the battles of the world, and who would bear the bulk of the weight of taxation created by these wars, were never, so long as this law continued, to eat corn at less than four pounds per quarter. This was, in fact, not only a prohibition of cheap bread, but a prohibition of the sale of the labours of the people to foreign nations to the same extent. It was an enactment to destroy the manufacturing interest for the imagined benefit of land-owners; and it was done on this plea, as stated by Mr. Western, one of the leading advocates of the Bill"That, if there is a small deficiency of supply, the price will rise in a ratio far beyond any proportion of such deficiency: the effect, indeed, is almost incalculable. So, likewise, in a surplus of supply beyond demand, the price will fall in a ratio exceeding almost tenfold the amount of such surplus." The avowed object, therefore, was to prevent the manufacturing population from reaping the benefit of that Continental peace which they had purchased at such a cost, and consequently to repress the growth of their trade to the same degree. Mr. Tooke, in his "History of Prices," confirms this view of the matter, asserting that "the price of corn in this country has risen from one hundred to two hundred per cent., and upwards, when the utmost computed deficiency of the crops has not been more than between one-sixth and one-third below an average, and when that deficiency has been relieved by foreign supplies." Mr. Western candidly showed that, to the farmer, years of deficiency were the most profitable, from this principle of enormous rise from a small cause; that if the produce of an acre of wheat in a good year is thirty-three bushels at six shillings, the amount realised would be only nine pounds eighteen shillings; but, if the produce were reduced by an unfavourable season one-sixth, and the price raised from six shillings to twelve shillings, the produce of twenty-seven and a half bushels would realise sixteen pounds ten shillings, the difference being profit!

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THREE:English cookery, even in the greatest houses, had not yet been much affected by French art. The dinners were remarkably solid, hot, and stimulating. Mulligatawny and turtle soups came first, then at one end of the table was uncovered the familiar salmon, and at the other the turbot surrounded by smelts. Next came a saddle of mutton, or a joint of roast beef, and for the fourth course came fowls, tongue, and ham. French dishes were placed on the sideboard, but for a long time such weak culinary preparations were treated with contemptuous neglect. The boiled potato was then very popular, and vegetables generally were unaccompanied with sauce. The dessert, which was ordered from the confectioner's, was often very costly. The wines used at dinner were chiefly port, sherry, and hock. "A perpetual thirst seemed to come over people, both men and women," says Captain Gronow, "as soon as they had tasted their soup, as from that moment everybody was taking wine with everybody else till the close of the dinner, and such wine as produced that class of cordiality which frequently wanders into stupefaction. How this sort of eating and drinking ended was obvious from the prevalence of gout; and the necessity of every one making the pill-box a constant bedroom companion."But the English measures detained the Russian fleet in the Baltic with Greig at its head, and Russia was saved from her due chastisement. The King of Sweden, indeed, landed an army of thirty-five thousand men in Finland; and his brother, the Duke of Sudermania, appeared in the[352] Baltic at the head of a strong fleet. Nothing could have prevented Gustavus from marching directly on the Russian capital, and St. Petersburg was consequently thrown into the wildest alarm. But Gustavus was only bent on recovering the provinces which Russia had reft from Sweden. He advanced successfully for some time, the Russians everywhere flying before him; but Russian gold and Russian intrigue soon altered all this. Catherine ordered her fleet, which was in the Gulf of Finland, with Greig at its head, to bear down on the Swedish fleet, and, at the same time, emissaries were despatched amongst the officers of Gustavus's army with plenty of gold, and letters were sent to the States of Sweden, calling on them to disavow the proceedings of the king. Before Gustavus had left Sweden with his army, her Minister, passing over the king himself, had made similar communications to Gustavus's proud and disaffected nobles, and Gustavus had ordered him out of the country. The Russian and Swedish fleets now came to an engagement in the straits of Kalkbaden. The battle was desperate; the Swedes fought with their wonted valour; and the Russians, under the management of Greig and the British officers, showed that they were apt scholars. The two fleets separated, after doing each other great mischief, each claiming the victory. Catherine immediately rewarded Greig with a letter of thanks, written by her own hand, and with the more substantial present of a large sum of money, and a good estate in Livonia. Moreover, the partial success of Russia by sea had the effect of encouraging the corrupted officers of Gustavus to refuse to proceed farther in Finland.
FORE:The Duke of Richmond read a paragraph from a newspaper in which the report was stated, naming Lord Temple without any disguise. On this Temple rose, and admitted that he had given certain advice to the king, but would neither admit nor deny that it was of the kind intimated in the report. That the rumour was founded on truth, however, was immediately shown by the division. Numbers of lords who had promised Ministers to vote for the Bill withdrew their support; the Prince of Wales declined voting; and the Opposition carried a resolution for adjournment till the next day, in order to hear evidence in defence of the East India Company. It was clear that the Bill had received its death-blow, and would never pass the Lords after this expression of the royal will, and on the 17th of December it was lost by nineteen votes.

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FORE:From the moment that Russia was called in, under the pretext of maintaining order, she became, or aimed to become, the dominant power there. She pressed on the whole line of the Polish frontier with her armies, inundated the kingdom with her troops, and levied contributions for their support as if she had been in a conquered country. From that hour, too, the kings were elected rather by foreign armies than by the Poles themselves.[207] Stanislaus Poniatowski, the present king, was the nominee of Catherine of Russia, whose lover he had been till superseded by Orloff. She had placed him on the throne by force of arms, and he was incapable of doing anything except through her power.

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FORE:

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