The success of the Scottish courts in sentencing Reformers encouraged the Ministers to try the experiment in England; but there it did not succeed so well. First, one Eaton, a bookseller, of Bishopgate, was indicted for selling a seditious libel, called "Politics for the People; or, Hog's-wash." On the 2nd of April, Thomas Walker, a merchant of Manchesterwas, with six others, indicted at the Lancaster assizes; but Eaton, in London, and these Manchester men, were acquitted. Rather irritated than discouraged by these failures, Pitt and Dundas made a swoop at the leaders of the Corresponding Society, and the Society for Constitutional Information in London; and, in the month of May, Horne Tooke, John Thelwalla celebrated political lecturerThomas Hardy, Daniel Adams, and the Rev. Jeremiah Joyceprivate secretary to the Earl of Stanhope, and tutor to his son, Lord Mahonwere arrested and committed to the Tower on a charge of high treason. No sooner was this done, than, on the 12th of May, Dundas announced to the House of Commons that, in consequence of the Government having been informed of seditious practices being carried on by the above-named societies, they had seized their papers, and he now demanded that a committee of secrecy should be appointed to examine these papers. This was agreed to; and on the 16th Pitt brought up the report of this committee, which was so absurd in its results that nothing but the most blind political desperation could have induced the Government to make it known. The committee found nothing amongst these papers but the reports of the societies since the year 1791, which had been annually published and made known to every one. Yet on this miserable evidence Pitt called for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and it was accordingly granted, Burkewho now seems to have grown quite politically mad by dwelling on the horrors of the French Revolutionbelieving it the only measure to insure the safety of the country. Windham and others asserted that the mere suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was hardly[430] sufficient: there required yet more stringent measures. Similar language was held in the Lords, but did not pass without some severe comments from the Duke of Bedford, and the Lords Stanhope, Lauderdale, and Albemarle, who declared that Ministers, instead of suppressing, were creating a veritable reign of terror. The Bill was, notwithstanding, readily passed; and on the 13th of June an Address was carried to his Majesty, expressing the determination of their lordships to punish the men who had been concerned in the so-called conspiracy. Fox and Lambton condemned this course energetically in the Commons, declaring that, if there were any conspiracy, the ordinary laws and tribunals were amply sufficient for their punishment. Fox moved that all that part of the Address which expressed a conviction of the existence of a conspiracy should be struck out, but it was carried entire; and such was the alarm of the country at the reverses of the Allies on the Continent and the successes of France, that far more violent measures would have been readily assented to.
TWO:CHAPTER XXII THE GROUND CREW TAKES HOLDMeanwhile an expedition against Canada had been projected by Colonel Arnold and Ethan Allen at the taking of the forts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. The recommendations of Allen were taken up, and on the 27th of June, although they had on the first of that month declared their determination not to invade or molest Canada, the Congress passed other resolutions, instructing Philip Schuyler, one of their newly-made generals, to proceed to Ticonderoga, and thence, if he saw it practicable, to go on and secure St. John's and Montreal, and adopt any other measures against Canada which might have a tendency to promote the security of the colonies. It was autumn, however, before the American force destined for this expedition, amounting to two thousand men, assembled on Lake Champlain; and Schuyler being taken ill, the command then devolved on General Montgomery. General Carleton, the Governor of Canada, to whom the Americans, when it suited their purpose, were always attributing designs of invasion of the colonies, had not, in fact, forces sufficient to defend himself properly.
TWO:The ruinous expenditure of the war, and the continual difficulties into which the Civil List had fallen, now roused throughout the country a strong demand for economical reform. The Duke of Richmond introduced the subject into the Upper House by moving, on the 7th of December, that an Address be conveyed to his Majesty representing the distress of the country, the heavy demands upon it for the complicated war, and recommending a reduction of all useless expenses; it also set out that profusion, so far from being strength, was weakness; that it behoved all classes of officials to consent to a curtailment of the lavish salaries; and that it would be a noble example in the Crown to take the lead, which could not fail of enhancing the love of the people, and diffusing an excellent influence throughout every department of the State. His grace represented that the vast military establishment by sea and land could not include less than three hundred thousand men; that, since the beginning of the American war the expenditure had added sixty-three millions of pounds to the Debt, and its interest, eight millions, to our annual payments. The interest of the Debt had now become of itself equal to the whole of our expenditure in years of peace before. He laid much stress on the belief that the example of the king would induce all orders of men to make equal sacrifices to the needs of their country. Richmond declared that he had no wish to curtail the pensions of those who had wasted their fortunes in the service of their country, as the Pelhams, for the Duke of Newcastle was said to have sunk five hundred thousand pounds during the years that he so fondly adhered to office. He gave the Ministers and the aristocracy credit for a disinterestedness which they did not possess. They admitted the vastness of the expenditure, and that there was wastefulness, and that they were desirous of economy; but they could not believe that any reduction of the Civil List would be sensibly felt, whilst it would reflect dishonour on the country, as if it were incapable of maintaining the Crown in due credit. Lord Chancellor Thurlow affected not to believe in the distress, or that any case of public extravagance had been made out. The Duke of Richmond's motion was negatived by seventy-seven votes against thirty-six.CHAPTER XXIV A PUZZLING DEVELOPMENT
In 1765 Clive embarked for India for the third and last time. He went out with the firm determination to curb and crush the monster abuses that everywhere prevailed in our Indian territories. He had made a fortune of forty thousand pounds a year, and he was, therefore, prepared to quash the system by which thousands of others were endeavouring to do the same. No man was sharper than Clive in perceiving, where his own interest was not concerned, the evils which were consuming the very vitals of our power, and making our name odious in Hindostan. The first and most glaring abuse of power which arrested his attention was as regarded his old puppet, Meer Jaffier. He had lately died, and his own court had proposed to set up his legitimate grandson; but the Council preferred his natural son, Nujeem-ul-Dowlah, a poor spiritless youth, who agreed that the English should take the military defence of the country, and also appoint a Prime Minister to manage the revenue and other matters of government. The Council agreed to this, and received a present from the nabob of their creation of one hundred and forty thousand pounds, which they divided amongst themselves. This was directly in opposition to the recent order of the Court of Directors, not to accept any presents from the native princes; but, as Clive states, he found them totally disregarding everything but their own avarice.The Duke of Richmond made a feeble reply, and then Chatham rose, in the deepest indignation, to answer the Duke, but the violence of his feelings overcame him; he staggered and fell in a swoon, and would have been prostrated on the[252] floor but for the assistance of some friendly hands. He lay apparently in the agonies of death. The whole House was agitated; the Peers crowded round him in the greatest commotion; all except the Earl of Mansfield, who beheld the fall of his ancient rival almost as unmoved, says Lord Camden, "as the senseless body itself." His youngest son, John Charles Pitt, was there, and exerted himself to render all possible assistance. The insensible orator was carried in the arms of his friends to the house of Mr. Sargent, in Downing Street. By the prompt aid of a physician, he was in some degree recalled to consciousness, and within a few days was conveyed to his own dwelling at Hayes. There he lingered till the morning of May 11th, when he died in the seventieth year of his age.They had been doing that for three days. They came down the chimney, made across the floor in a line that never changed direction, nor straggled, nor lessened, up the wall and out a crack in the window. They did no harm, but followed blindly on in the path the first one had taken. And the minister had said they should not be smoked back or thwarted.On the retirement of Townshend, Walpole reigned supreme and without a rival in the Cabinet. Henry Pelham was made Secretary at War; Compton Earl of Wilmington Privy Seal. He left foreign affairs chiefly to Stanhope, now Lord Harrington, and to the Duke of Newcastle, impressing on them by all means to avoid quarrels with foreign Powers, and maintain the blessings of peace. With all the faults of Walpole, this was the praise of his political system, which system, on the meeting of Parliament in the spring of 1731, was violently attacked by Wyndham and Pulteney, on the plea that we were making ruinous treaties, and sacrificing British interests, in order to benefit Hanover, the eternal millstone round the neck of England. Pulteney and Bolingbroke carried the same attack into the pages of The Craftsman, but they failed to move Walpole, or to shake his power.
荣誉榜
THREE:Granville being got rid of, and the Opposition bought up with place, the only difference in the policy which had been pursued, and which had been so bitterly denounced by the noblemen and gentlemen now in office, was that it became more unequivocally Hanoverian and more extravagant. "Those abominably Courtly measures" of Granville were now the adopted measures of his denouncers. The king had expressed, just before his fall, a desire to grant a subsidy to Saxony; but Lord Chancellor Hardwicke had most seriously reminded his Majesty of the increased subsidy to the Queen of Hungary, which made it impracticable: now, both the increased subsidy to Maria Theresa and the subsidy to Saxony were passed without an objection. A quadruple alliance was entered into between Britain, Austria, Holland, and Saxony, by which Saxony was to furnish thirty thousand men for the defence of Bohemia, and to receive a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, two-thirds of which were to be paid by England, and one-third by Holland. The Elector of Cologne received twenty-four thousand pounds, the Elector of Mayence eight thousand pounds. Nay, soon discovering that, as there was no opposition, there was no clamour on the subject, Ministers the very next year took the Hanoverians into their direct pay again, and in 1747 increased the number of them from eighteen thousand to twenty thousand.
THREE:In such circumstances closed the year 1789. The intense excitement which the rapid course of these French events had produced in England had nearly superseded all other topics of interest. At first there was an almost universal jubilation over this wonderful revolution. The dreadful state of misery and oppression to which France had been reduced; the fearful exactions; the system of popular ignorance maintained by priestcraft; the abominable feudal insolence; the abuse of lettres de cachet; and the internal obstructions of customs and barriers between one province and another, made every friend of freedom desirous of seeing all these swept away. The early progress of their destruction was hailed with enthusiasm in England. Even the retired and timid poet, Cowper sang a triumphal note on the fall of the Bastille; but soon the bloody fury of the populace, and the domineering character of the Assembly, which did not deign to stop at the proper constitutional limits, began to create distrust and alarm. Amongst the first to perceive and to denounce this work of anarchy rather than of reform, was Burke. In common with Fox and Pitt, and many other statesmen, he had rejoiced in the fall of the corrupt government of France; but he soon began to perceive that the people were displaying the same ferocious character as in all their former outbreaks. "If," he wrote to M. Menonville, a moderate Member of the Assembly, "any of these horrid deeds were the acts of the rulers, what are we to think of the armed people under such rulers? But if there be no rulers in reality, and the chiefs are driven before the people rather than lead them; and if the armed corps are composed of men who have no fixed principle of obedience, and are moved only by the prevalence of some general inclination, who can repute himself safe amongst a people so furious and so senseless?" As he continued to gaze, he was compelled to confess that he saw no great and wise principles of legislation displayed by the Assembly; but that it went on destroying, without knowing how to rebuild in a manner likely to last or to work any one any good. The whole of the constitution-making, which annihilated the royal power, which erected no second chamber, but absorbed all authority into the Assembly, a mixed and heterogeneous body, he declared to be a bungling and monstrous performance. On the other hand, Dr. Price, Dr. Priestley, and numbers of equally enthusiastic men, saw nothing but what was animating in the progress of the French Revolution. "The Revolution Society," including many of the highest names of the Whig aristocracy, which was accustomed to meet on the 5th of November, to celebrate the anniversary of the landing of William III., and the English Revolution of 1688, this year presented a glowing address of congratulation to the French National Assembly, which was carried over by Lord Stanhope and Dr. Price. Of course, they and the address were received with great acclamation by the Assembly. The admiration of the French Revolution spread over Britain. Clubs were established, both in London and in the country, in sympathy with it, and the press became very Gallican and Republican in its tone, and there was much corresponding with admirers of the revolution in France, especially with Thomas Paine, who had now transferred himself from America, with a political fanatic destined to acquire considerable attention, calling himself Anacharsis Clootz, the "orator of mankind," and with many others.
