THREE:Circumstances appeared now to be growing serious. Meetings were held in defiance of the strict measures of Government throughout the manufacturing districts; and at Blackburn it was announced at such a gathering, on the 5th of July, that the women had also formed themselves into "Sister Reform Associations," and these called on their own sex everywhere to imitate their example, so as to co-operate with the men, and to instil into the minds of their children a hatred of tyrannical rulers. The men, at the same time, made another advance in the Reform agitation; this was drilling-a movement which gave great alarm to the magistrates of Lancashire, who wrote from various quarters to apprise Government of it. It was a circumstance that might well excite suspicion that something more than Reform was intended. But when it came to be explained by the parties themselves, it turned out to mean nothing more than that the Reformers in the neighbourhood of Manchester were intending to hold a great meeting in order to elect a representative, as the people of Birmingham had done, and that they wished to assemble in the utmost order and quiet. But the very means employed by them to avoid confusion, and enable them to meet and disperse with decorum, were just those most calculated to excite the fears of a magistracy and Ministry already suspicious.Walpole did not wait for a like humiliation.[38] The next morning he waited on the king, and tendered his resignation of his places as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The king, if he could be judged by his conduct, had formed no resolution of parting with Walpole. He handed again to him the seals, cordially entreating him to take them back, speaking to him in the kindest manner, and appearing as though he would take no refusal. But Walpole remained steady to his purpose, and, accordingly, his friends Methuen, Pulteney, Lord Orford, and the Duke of Devonshire, resigned a few days afterwards. Stanhope was then appointed First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sunderland and Joseph Addison were made Secretaries of State; Craggs, Secretary at War; Lord Berkeley, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Chamberlain; the Duke of Bolton, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Lord Cowper and the Duke of Kingston retaining their old places.
THREE:
THREE:Stood waiting too, for whom? Lord Chatham."
THREE:But his great measure, at this period, was the blow aimed at the commerce of Britain, and comprised in his celebrated Berlin Decrees, promulgated on the 21st of November. He had subjugated nearly the whole of the European Continent. Spain, Portugal, Italy to the south of France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Prussia to the north, with nearly the whole seaboard of Europe, were under his hand and his armies. He had found that he could not invade England; her fleet had risen triumphant, his own fleet had disappeared like a vapour at Trafalgar. As, therefore, he could not reach her soil, he determined to destroy her by destroying her commerce, on which he imagined not merely her prosperity but her very existence depended. As he was master of nearly all Continental Europe, he supposed it as easy for him to exclude by his fiat the merchandise of Britain, as to put down old dynasties and set up new ones. He had yet to[528] learn that commerce has a conquering power greater than that either of martial genius or of arms.
THREE: