ONE:On the 3rd of February the Commons attended to hear the commission read at the bar of the Lords, which was done by Earl Bathurst, in the absence of Thurlow. On returning to their House now as an authorised Parliament, the Commons read the Bill for the first time without a division, but on the second reading, on the 6th of February, Burke attacked it with unabated ferocity. He wanted to know how they were to determine when the king was sane again. Who was to inform them of it? Who was to certify it? He asserted the utter impossibility of adducing proof whether a person who had been insane were perfectly recovered or not. If this doctrine had been established, the regency must have become permanent. But this mode of reasoning was too metaphysical for the House of Commons; the debate passed on, and the Bill was committed. The clause providing against the non-residence of the prince, and against his marrying a papist, again brought up Mr. Rolle. He said that he had given his assent to the appointment of the prince regent on the assurance of his friends, that he was not married to a certain lady, either in law or in fact; but that he had since read a famous pamphlet, which affirmed that the facts were in opposition to those avowals. This was a brochure of Horne Tooke's, in the shape of a letter to a friend, in which he declared his positive knowledge of the prince's marriage with "the late Mrs. Fitzherbert," who, he contended, in spite of the Marriage Act, was his lawful wife. Rolle was answered by Lord North, who declared that the object of the pamphleteer was simply to make mischief by throwing out assertions that he never meant to prove, and Welbore Ellis called for the reading of the Royal Marriage Act, and showed that no royal marriage could be valid without the king's consent, and that, therefore, whatever was the case, all those objections were a mere waste of words. Rolle did not press the question to a division. The other clauses of the Bill raised much debate, but were all passed, and on the 10th of February the council was appointed to assist the queen in her charge, and Pitt named as members of it[347] the four principal officers of the household, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Steward, the Master of the Horse, and the Groom of the Stole, with the addition of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor Thurlow, the Archbishop of York, and Lord Kenyon. The names of the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, several of the other princes, the Lord Mayor of London, and the Speaker of the House of Commons, were all strongly urged upon Parliament as persons who ought to be members of this council, but they were, to a man, rejected by a majority of about fifty.
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THREE:On the 6th of March, Sir William Molesworth, with a view to bringing the whole colonial administration of the empire before the House of Commons, moved that an Address be presented to her Majesty, expressing the opinion of the House that in the present critical state of many of her foreign possessions "the Colonial Minister should be a person in whose diligence, activity, and firmness the House and the public may be able to place reliance;" and declaring that "her Majesty's present Secretary of State for the Colonies does not enjoy the confidence of the House or the country." The honourable baronet made a speech of two hours' duration, which was a dissertation on colonial policy, containing a survey of the whole of her Majesty's dominions in both hemispheres. He disclaimed all party considerations in bringing forward his motion, or any intention to make an invidious attack on Lord Glenelg. But as the colonies were so numerous, so diversified in races, religions, languages, institutions, interests, and as they were unrepresented in the Imperial Parliament, it was absolutely necessary that the colonial administration should be vigilant, prompt, sagacious, energetic, and firm. Lord Glenelg was wanting in these qualities, and the colonies were all suffering more or less from the errors and deficiencies of this ill-fated Minister, "who had, in the words of Lord Aberdeen, reduced doing nothing to a system." Lord Glenelg was defended by Lord Palmerston, who regarded the attack upon him as an assault upon the Cabinet, which would not allow one of its members to be made a scapegoat. The House divided, when the numbers wereayes, 287; noes, 316; majority for Ministers, 29. Nevertheless the Ministry were greatly damaged by the debate, which emphasised the growing Radical revolt. In the following year Lord Glenelg, having declined to exchange his office for the Auditorship of the Exchequer, resigned.
THREE:But fresh light continued to break on the all-pervading corruption. The Commissioners of Naval Inquiry presented a fresh report, abounding with proofs of the villainies that had been going on in that department. The Military Commissioners had a like frightful exposure to make of frauds and peculations which had been going on wholesale, especially in the West Indies. The same result followed the investigations of the committee that inquired into the appointment of cadets to the East India Service. There was abundance of proofs of the sale of such places, and even Lord Castlereagh was implicated. It was found that as President of the Board of Controlthe Minister, in fact, for Indian Affairshe had presented a writership to his friend, Lord Clancarty, which Clancarty had bartered with a Mr. Reding for a seat in Parliament, and which Reding immediately sold for three thousand pounds. Lord Archibald Hamilton immediately moved that Lord Castlereagh had been guilty of an abuse of his authority as President of the Board of Control. Castlereagh replied that, when he presented his friend, Lord Clancarty, with the writership, he had no notion that Reding was a regular broker in parliamentary seats, though he did not deny that Reding had told him that he meant to make over the place to a Member of Parliament who had a nephew whom he wished to send to India, and that this Member of Parliament would vote accordingly. The virtuous Wilberforce seemed to hold this easy-going morality, for he voted for Lord Castlereagh, and, in spite of the denunciations of Sir Francis Burdett, Mr. W. Smith, and others, Lord Archibald Hamilton's motion was rejected by two hundred and sixteen against a hundred and sixty-sevenand Lord Castlereagh walked away scathless. There was immediately another charge brought against him, in company with the Honourable Henry Wellesley, the brother of General Wellesley, and late Secretary of the Treasury, for corrupt practices in the election of members of Parliament; but the ministerial majority outvoted Mr. Madox, the mover. About the same time Mr. Curwen brought in a Bill to prevent such practices, and to obtain purity of Parliament by extinguishing bribery, and this was suffered to pass when all vitality had been taken out of it. On the 15th of June Sir Francis Burdett also made a motion for extensive parliamentary Reform; but the greater part of the members of Parliament had already left town, and the motion was rejected by seventy-four against fifteen. On the 21st the Session was closed with a speech which took a hopeful view of the war in Spain, and also of that which Austria had again commenced. We may now return to the details of these great contests on the Continent.The other side of the city was only defended by the Seine, but the Allies, who had first to cross that river, feared that Buonaparte might come up and attack their rear while they were doing so. They determined, therefore, to attack the line of fortifications. The most lying proclamations were issued by the ex-King Joseph to assure the inhabitants that the bodies of the enemy who came in view were only stragglers who had managed to get past the army of the Emperor, who was dispersing the Allies most triumphantly. The forces in Pariseight thousand troops of the line and thirty thousand of the National Guardwere reviewed in front of the Tuileries on a Sunday, to impress the people with a sense of security; but on the morning of the 29th the Empress and her child quitted the palace, attended by a regiment of seven hundred men, and fled to Blois, carrying with her the crown jewels and much public treasure, and followed by nearly all the members of Government. The populationunlike their fathers, who stopped Marie Antoinette in her attempt to escapesuffered this departure with murmurs, but without any attempt to prevent it. When she was gone they began heartily to curse Buonaparte for the trouble and disgrace he had brought upon them. That very morning Joseph issued a most flaming proclamation, assuring the Parisians that the Emperor was at hand[82], and would annihilate the last traces of the audacious enemy. But already the assault had commenced, and the next day, the 30th of March, it was general all along the line. The Parisians fought bravely, especially the boys from the Polytechnic schools; and as the Allies had to attack stone walls and batteries, their slaughter was great. Joseph rode along the line to encourage them in this useless, because utterly hopeless, waste of life. The Allied monarchs had, before commencing the assault, issued a proclamation, promising that all life and property should be strictly protected if the city quietly opened its gates; and, in the midst of the storming, they sent in again, by a French prisoner, the same offer, adding that, should the city be carried by assault, no power on earth could prevent it from being sacked by the enraged soldiers, and probably destroyed. Yet Joseph did not give the order for capitulation till the whole line was in the hands of the Allies, except Montmartre. The Cossacks were already in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and bombs flying into the Chausse d'Antin. Then King Joseph, whose lying proclamation was still selling on the boulevards at a sou each, ordered Marmont to capitulate; and though he had vowed in his proclamation to stand by the Parisians to the last gasp, he then fled after the Empress to Blois. In this defence four thousand French were killed and wounded, and double that number of the Allies, as they had to face the towers and batteries crowded with soldiers and to fight their way up hill.
THREE:In 1783 the English carriage-builders, who had before been considered inferior in elegance to the French makers, began to receive large orders from Paris itself. In 1759 Walter Taylor and son introduced machinery for cutting blocks, sheaves, and pins for ships. Saw-mills were also introduced into Great Britain, in 1767, by Mr. Dingley, of Limehouse.
