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ONE: TWO:
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ONE:RETREAT OF THE HIGHLANDERS FROM PERTH. (See p. 31.)These debates were immediately followed by the opening of the Budget on the 23rd of Februaryan opening which was enough to have made any men but such as were then at the head of British affairs pause in their ruinous career. There was a call for one hundred thousand seamen, for one hundred and sixty thousand regulars, and fifty-six thousand militiatotal, two hundred and sixteen thousand soldiers, besides volunteers, fencibles, and foreign troops in British pay, amounting, by land and sea, to at least four hundred thousand men! For their support there were demanded sixteen million and twenty-seven thousand pounds, in addition to other taxes to make up deficiencies and interest on the Debt; the whole revenue demanded was twenty-seven million five hundred thousand pounds. Besides this there was an annual subsidy to the King of Sardinia of two hundred thousand pounds, although there was no prospect whatever of saving him. To raise all this, new duties had to be laid on tea, coffee, raisins, foreign groceries and fruits, foreign timber, insurances, writs, affidavits, hair-powder, licences, etc., and the revenue from the Post Office, while the privilege of franking had to be abridged. The only tax that the compliant aristocracy protested against was that on the powdered pates of their menials; but the country cried lustily and in vain against the increase of taxation, which, gross as it was, was but the beginning of their burdens and of the burden of posterity. TWO:
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ONE:[See larger version] TWO:This result was due to important negotiations behind the scenes. For many months the more extreme section of the Cabinet had urged Lord Grey to recommend the king to swamp the hostile majority by a creation of peers. Both he and Althorp objected to this course, and fresh overtures were made to the waverers, while the king undertook to convert the Bishops. Both attempts[348] failed, and then the Cabinet was nearly rent in twain. Lord Durham attacked his father-in-law in language which Althorp declared to be "brutal," and for which, said Lord Melbourne, he deserved to be knocked down. At last the king resolved to agree to a creation of peers on condition that the new creations should not exceed the number of 24. This alarmed the waverers, and with the aid of Charles Greville they came to terms with the Government. Lord Harrowby and Lord Wharncliffe secured a majority on the second reading, on condition that no new peers should be created.
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ONE: TWO:[See larger version]In the meantime, General Lake had made a march on Delhi, continuing, as he went, his correspondence with M. Perron. As General Lake approached the fortress of Allyghur, the stronghold of Perron, the Frenchman came out with fifteen thousand men, but again retreated into the fortress. This was on the 29th of August. Perron made a strong resistance, and held out till the 4th of September, when the place was stormed by a party headed by Colonel Monson and Major Macleod. The success was somewhat clouded by the surprise[492] and surrender of five companies of General Lake's sepoys, who had been left behind to guard an important position, but with only one gun. This accident, however, was far more than counterbalanced by the withdrawal of Perron from the service of the Mahrattas. He had found so much insubordination amongst his French officers, and saw so clearly that there was no chance of competing with the British, that he had at length closed with General Lake's offers, and, abandoning his command, had obtained a passport for himself, family, suite, and effects, and retired to Lucknow. This being accomplished, General Lake continued his march on Delhi, in order to release Shah Allum, the Mogul, and drew near it on the 11th of September. He there found that the army previously commanded by Perron, but now by Louis Bourquien, nineteen thousand strong, had crossed the Jumna and was posted between him and the city. Bourquien had posted his army on a rising ground, flanked on both sides by swamps, and defended in front by strong entrenchments and about seventy pieces of cannon. As Lake had only four thousand five hundred men, to attack them in that position appeared madness. The British were briskly assailed before they could pitch their tents, and General Lake, feigning a retreat, succeeded in drawing the enemy down from their commanding situation and out of their entrenchments; he then suddenly wheeled, fired a destructive volley into the incautious foe, and followed this rapidly by a charge with the bayonet. The enemy fled, and endeavoured to regain their guns and entrenchments; but Lake did not leave them timeanother volley and another bayonet charge completely disorganised them, and they fled for the Jumna and the road by which they had come. The troops of Scindiah, which had held the Mogul prisoner, evacuated the city, and on the 16th General Lake made a visit of state to the aged Shah Allum, who expressed himself as delighted at being delivered from his oppressors and received under the protection of the British.
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ONE:At sea he was somewhat more fortunate. He took care to have his war-ships, such as they were, in readiness for sea at the very instant that war was proclaimed. The declaration took place on the 18th of June, and on the 21st Commodore Rogers was already clear of the harbour of New York in his flag-ship, the President, which was[36] called a frigate, but was equal to a seventy-four-gun ship, and attended by a thirty-six-gun frigate, a sloop of war, and a brig-sloop. His hope was to intercept the sugar fleet from the West Indies, which was only convoyed by a single frigate and a brig-sloop. Instead of the West India merchantmen, about one hundred sail in number, he fell in with the British frigate, the Belvedere, commanded by Captain Richard Byron. Though the two other vessels of war were in sight, Byron did not flinch. He commenced a vigorous fight with the President, and held on for two hours, pouring three hundred round shot into her from his two cabin guns alone. By the explosion of a gun, Commodore Rogers and fifteen of his men were severely wounded. About half-past six in the evening the President was joined by the Congress frigate, and then Captain Byron cut away several of his anchors, started fourteen tons of water, and otherwise lightening his ship, sailed away, and left the President to repair her damages. By thus detaining Rogers for fifteen hours the West India fleet was out of all danger. Rogers then continued a cruising sail towards Madeira and the Azores, and captured a few small merchantmen, and regained an American one, and he then returned home without having secured a single British armed vessel, but having been in great trepidation lest he should fall in with some of our ships of the line. TWO:The chief governor of Ireland, at that time, was no timid civilian. He was a brave and distinguished soldiera man of chivalrous honour himself, and therefore not prone to entertain doubts injurious to the honour of the profession of which he was an ornament. But Lord Anglesey was also capable of estimating the force of popular contagious influences on military discipline and fidelity in an extraordinary national crisis; and he was so alarmed at the state of things developed by the Clare election, that he wrote confidentially to Mr. Peel, cautioning him against supposing that Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, from vexation and disappointment, should exaggerate the danger of the crisis, and telling him that he would send Major Warburton on a secret mission, known only to his private secretary, to explain to the Government in London the state of affairs. Major Warburton, a very intelligent and trustworthy officer, was at the head of the constabulary, and commanded the force at Clare during the election. He testified, as the result of his observation there, that, even in the constabulary and the army, the sympathies of a common cause, political and religious, could not be altogether repressed, and that implicit reliance could not long be placed on the effect of discipline and the duty of obedience. On the 20th of July Lord Anglesey wrote as follows:"We hear occasionally of the Catholic soldiers being ill-disposed, and entirely under the influence of the priests. One regiment of infantry is said to be divided into Orange and Catholic factions. It is certain that, on the 12th of July, the guard at the Castle had Orange lilies about them." On the 26th of July the Viceroy wrote another letter, from which the following is an extract:"The priests are using very inflammatory language, and are certainly working upon the Catholics of the army. I think it important that the dep?ts of Irish recruits should be gradually removed, under the appearance of being required to join their regiments, and that whatever regiments are sent here should be those of Scotland,[279] or, at all events, of men not recruited from the south of Ireland. I desired Sir John Byng to convey this opinion to Lord Hill."Burke proceeded amidst constant interruption to review the many scenes and debates in which Fox and himself had acted, as well as those on which they had differed, especially their difference of opinion on the Royal Marriage Act; but no difference of opinion had ever before affected their friendship. He alluded to his own long services and his grey hairs, and said that it was certainly an indiscretion, at his time of life, to provoke enemies, or induce his friends to desert him; but that, if his firm and steady adherence to the British Constitution placed him in that dilemma, he would risk all, and, as public duty required, with his last breath exclaim, "Fly from the French Constitution!" Here Fox whispered that there was no loss of friends; that there could be no loss of friendship between them; but Burke said"Yes, there was a loss of friends: he knew the penalty of his conduct; he had done his duty at the price of his friendsthere was an end of their friendship." It was some time before Fox could answer; he was completely overcome by his emotion; and it was only after a free flow of tears that he could proceed. He then said: "Painful as it was to listen to such sentiments as those just delivered by one to whom he owed so many obligations, he could never forget that, when little more than a boy, he had been in the habit of receiving instructions and favours from his right honourable friend. Their friendship had grown with their life; it had continued for upwards of five-and-twenty years; and he hoped, notwithstanding what had happened that day, that his right honourable friend would think on past times, and would give him credit for not intending anything unkind. It was quite true that they had before now differed on many subjects, without lessening their friendship, and why should they not now differ on the French Revolution without a severance of friendship? He could not help feeling that the conduct of his right honourable friend tended to fix upon him the charge of Republican principles, whereas he was far from entertaining such principles. His friend had heaped very ignominious terms upon him that day." Here Burke said aloud, he did not recollect having used such terms; and Fox promptly observed that "if his friend did not recollect those epithetsif they are out of his mind, then they were for ever out of his mind, too; they were obliterated and forgotten." He then denied that there was any marshalling of a party on this subject; that not one gentleman who had risen to call his right honourable friend to order had done it by his desire; on the contrary, he had entreated his friends not to interrupt him. After again dwelling for some time on the merits of the French Revolution, he once more lamented the breach in the unanimity of his friend and[380] himself, and said he would keep out of the way of his right honourable friend till he had time to reflect and think differently, and that their common friends might bring them together again; that he would endeavour to discuss the question on some future day, with all calmness, if his friend wished, but for the present he had said all that he desired to say.
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