THREE:The name of the prisoner was Edward Oxford. He was about eighteen years of age, and of an[472] unprepossessing countenance. He was a native of Birmingham, which town he had left nine years before. He was last employed at a public-house, "The Hog in the Pond," at the corner of South Molton Street and Oxford Street. His trial for high treason was begun in the Central Criminal Court on Thursday, July 9th, and ended next day. The judges were Lord Denman, Baron Alderson, and Justice Patteson. The jury returned the following special verdict:¡ª"We find the prisoner, Edward Oxford, guilty of discharging the contents of two pistols, but whether or not they were loaded with ball has not been satisfactorily proved to us, he being of unsound mind at the time." An argument followed between counsel as to whether this verdict amounted to an absolute acquittal, or an acquittal on the ground of insanity. Lord Denman said that the jury were in a mistake. It was necessary that they should form an opinion as to whether the pistols were loaded with bullets or not; but it appeared they had not applied their minds to that point, and therefore it would be necessary that they should again retire, and say aye or no. Did the prisoner fire a pistol loaded with ball at the Queen? After considerable discussion upon the point, the jury again retired to consider their verdict. During their absence the question was again argued, and it appeared to be the opinion of the judges that the jury were bound to return a verdict of "Guilty" or "Not Guilty" upon the evidence brought before them. After an absence of an hour they returned into court, finding the prisoner "guilty, he being at the same time insane." The sentence was that he should be imprisoned during her Majesty's pleasure, according to the Act 40 George III., providing for cases where crimes were committed by insane persons.
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THREE:Sir John Stuart did not long remain idle at Palermo. At the suggestion of Lord Collingwood, he sent out an expedition to seize on a number of the Ionian Isles, which had been taken possession of by the French, who were calculating on further conquests in that direction¡ªnamely, in continental Greece itself. The Warrior, commanded by Captain Spranger, attended by other vessels, carried over one thousand six hundred troops, under command of Brigadier-General Oswald. The troops were half of them British, and half Corsicans, Sicilians, Calabrians, and other foreigners in British pay. They carried with them Signor Foresti and an Ionian Greek as interpreters and agents with their countrymen, many of whom, they were aware, had an indignant hatred of the French domination. They arrived off Cephalonia on the 28th of September, and on the 1st of October, being joined by their transports and gunboats, they anchored in the bay of Zante, and the following morning commenced a landing, under the cover of a brisk fire from some of the ships and gunboats. The land-batteries were soon silenced, and before night the French commander had not only surrendered the castle, but the islands of Zante, Cephalonia, Ithaca, and Cerigo. Two of the seven islands remained for the time in the hands of the French¡ªSanta Maura and Corfu. But Santa Maura, after a sharp contest, was carried, in the following April, by General Oswald, most brilliantly supported by Lieutenant-Colonel Hudson Lowe, Major Church, and other officers. General Camus, the French commandant, surrendered with his garrison of one thousand men. There remained only Corfu, but this, the most important island of the group, would have required a much stronger force to reduce it; and as it was completely useless to the French, being cut off from all communication with France by our ships, it remained under France till 1814, when, at the Congress of Paris, it was made over by Louis XVIII., and the whole seven islands were declared a republic, under the protection of Great Britain. Such was the origin of our connection with the Ionian Islands, where we maintained a Commissioner and a body of troops, much to the discontent of a party in the islands, who desired to join the kingdom of Greece.
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THREE:Here, had the Government been wise, they would have stopped; but they were not contented without experiencing a third defeat. The next morning, the 20th of December, they returned to the charge with an indictment against Mr. Hone for publishing a parody on the Athanasian Creed, called "The Sinecurist's Creed." The old Chief Justice was again on the bench, apparently as resolved as ever, and this time the defendant, on entering the court, appeared pale and exhausted, as he well might, for he had put forth exertions and powers of mind which had astonished the whole country and excited the deepest interest. The Attorney-General humanely offered to postpone the trial, but the defendant preferred to go on. He only begged for a few minutes' delay to enable him to put down a few notes on the Attorney-General's address after that was delivered; but the Chief Justice would not allow him this trifling favour, but said, if the defendant would make a formal request for the purpose, he would put off the trial for a day. This would have injured the cause of the defendant, by making it appear that he was in some degree worsted, and, fatigued as he was, he replied, promptly, "No! I make no such request." William Hone, on this third trial, once more seemed to forget his past fatigues, and rose with a strength that completely cowed the old and fiery judge. He did not desist till he had converted his dictatorial manner into a suppliant one. After quoting many eminent Churchmen as dissentients from the Athanasian Creed, and amongst them Warburton and Tillotson, he added, "Even his lordship's father, the Bishop of Carlisle, he believed, took a similar view of this creed." This was coming too near; and the judge said, "Whatever that opinion was, he has gone, many years ago, where he has had to account for his belief and his opinions. For common delicacy, forbear." "O, my lord," replied the satisfied defendant, "I shall certainly forbear." The judge had profited by the lesson to-day: he gave a much more temperate charge to the jury, and they required only twenty minutes to return the third and final victory of Not Guilty. Never had this arbitrary Government suffered so withering a defeat. The sensation throughout the country was immense. The very next day Lord Ellenborough sent in his announcement of retiring from[131] the bench, and in a very short time he retired from this world altogether (December 13, 1818), it being a settled conviction of the public mind that the mortification of such a putting-down, by a man whom he rose from his sick-bed to extinguish, tended materially to hasten that departure.Well-disposed people happily comprised the great mass of the population of all ranks and classes, who responded with alacrity to the appeal of the Government for co-operation. Great alarm was felt in the metropolis lest there should be street-fighting and plundering, and it might be said that society itself had taken effective measures for its own defence. The 10th of April, 1848, will be a day for ever remembered with pride by Englishmen, and posterity will read of it with admiration. In the morning nothing unusual appeared in the streets, except that the shops were mostly closed, the roar of traffic was suspended, and an air of quiet pervaded the metropolis. No less than 170,000 men, from the highest nobility down to the humblest shopkeeper, had been enrolled and sworn as special constables¡ªa great army of volunteers, who came forward spontaneously for the defence of the Government. In every street these guardians of the peace might be seen pacing up and down upon their respective beats, and under their respective officers. Among them was Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, acting as a private, under the command of the Earl of Eglinton. No soldiers appeared in the streets; but, during the previous night, the Duke of Wellington had taken the most effective measures to prevent any violation of the peace. Strong bodies of foot and horse police were placed at the ends of the bridges, over which the Chartists must pass from Kennington Common to Westminster, and these were assisted by large numbers of special constables, posted on the approaches at each side. And lest these should be overpowered by the Chartists in attempting to force a passage, a strong force of military¡ªhorse, foot, and artillery¡ªwas kept concealed from view in the immediate neighbourhood. The public buildings were all occupied by troops and strongly fortified. Two regiments of the line were stationed at Millbank Penitentiary. There were 1,200 infantry at the Deptford Dockyards. At the Tower 30 pieces of heavy field ordnance were ready to be shipped by hired steamers to any spot where their services might be required. The public offices at the West-end, Somerset House, and in the City, were occupied by troops and stored with arms. The Bank of England was strongly fortified, sandbags being piled all round upon the roof, as parapets to protect the gunners, while the interior was filled with soldiers. There were also similar barricades to the windows, with loopholes for muskets. In the space of Rose Inn Yard, at the end of Farringdon Street, a large body of troops was posted ready to move at a moment's notice, and another in the enclosure of Bridewell Prison. At several points immediately about Kennington Common, commanding the whole space, bodies of soldiers were placed out of view, but ready for instant action. The Guards¡ªhorse and foot¡ªwere all under arms, in Scotland Yard and in other places.
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ONE:On the 6th of January there landed at Greenwich an illustrious visitor to the Court on an unwelcome errand¡ªnamely, Prince Eugene. The Allies, justly alarmed at the Ministerial revolution which had taken place in England, and at the obvious design of the Tories to render abortive all the efforts of the Whigs and the Allies through the war, from mere party envy and malice, sent over Eugene to convince the queen and the Government of the fatal consequences of such policy. Harley paid obsequious court to the prince as long as he hoped to win him over. He gave a magnificent dinner in his honour, and declared that he looked on that day as the happiest of his life, since he had the honour to see in his house the greatest captain of the age. The prince, who felt that this was a mean blow at Marlborough, replied with a polite but cutting sarcasm, which must have sunk deep in the bosom of the Lord Treasurer, "My lord, if I am the greatest captain of the age, I owe it to your lordship." That was to say, because he had deprived the really greatest captain of his command. The queen, though she was compelled to treat Eugene graciously, and to order the preparation of costly gifts to him as the representative of the Allies, regarded him as a most unwelcome guest, and in her private circle took no pains to conceal it. The whole Tory party soon found that he was not a man to be seduced from his integrity, or brought to acquiesce in a course of policy which he felt and knew to be most disgraceful and disastrous to the peace of Europe; and being fully convinced of this, they let loose on the illustrious stranger all the virulence of the press. Eugene returned to the Continent, his mission being unaccomplished, on the 13th of March.
ONE:[267]On the whole, there was a fair amount of religious activity throughout the British islands, and as a consequence drunkenness and vulgar amusements were on the decline. Of the lights of the Establishment, Archbishop Manners Sutton was Primate until his death in 1828, when he was succeeded by the amiable Dr. Howley. Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter was undoubtedly the hardest hitter on the Episcopal bench, and zeal for the welfare of the Church was admirably represented by Bishop Blomfield of London. He was one of the most staunch supporters of King's College, and an earnest advocate of Church extension. It is hardly necessary to mention the name of the witty Canon of St. Paul's, Sydney Smith. During the earlier years of this period the tone of the Church was distinctly evangelical, but a reaction which had its origin in Oxford University had already begun, whose supporters were known as the "Tractarian party," from a series of publications, called "Tracts for the Times," written by Oxford divines, advocating patristic theology, contending for apostolic succession as necessary to the validity of the sacraments, for baptismal regeneration, and the real presence in the eucharist, condemning the Reformation as a great evil, and claiming for the Anglican Church the right to be regarded as the only true orthodox church in England. The growing strength of the party had manifested itself on the occasion of the appointment of Dr. Hampden to the Regius Professorship of Divinity at Oxford in 1836. Dr. Pusey and Dr. Newman were among the most vigorous of the protesters against that unfortunate divine, against whom the charge was made that his Bampton Lectures contained doctrines which savoured of Socinianism. The outcry was great, and the Hampden controversy threatened to break up the Establishment. Lord Melbourne, however, who had recommended Dr. Hampden on the advice of Archbishop Whately and Bishop Coplestone, declined to cancel the appointment, and the excitement died away for the time, though it was renewed in a milder form when in 1847 Dr. Hampden was created Bishop of Hereford.
ONE:By means of the classification of offences, which took place for the first time in 1834, it was possible to ascertain the effects of education upon crime; and the result was most satisfactory, falsifying the evil prognostications of the enemies of popular instruction, and proving that, instead of stimulating the faculties merely to give greater development to criminal propensities, and greater ingenuity to offenders, it really operated as an effective restraint; insomuch that crime was confined almost entirely to the uneducated. In 1835 returns were first obtained of the degree of instruction that had been imparted to persons committed for trial¡ªdistinguishing, 1st, Persons who can neither read nor write; 2ndly, Persons who can read only, or read and write imperfectly; 3rdly, Persons who can read and write well; and, 4thly, Persons who have received instruction beyond the elementary branches of reading and writing. The result of a comparison upon this point, during thirteen years from that date, was all that the most sanguine friends of popular education could desire, and more than they could have anticipated. Out of 335,429 persons committed, and whose degrees of instruction were ascertained, the uninstructed criminals were more than 90 out of every 100; while only about 1,300 offenders had enjoyed the advantages of instruction beyond the elementary degree, and not 30,000 had advanced beyond the mere art of reading and writing. Then, with regard to females, among the 30,000 that could read and write there were only about 3,000, or 10 per cent. of the female sex; and among those who had received superior instruction there were only 53 females accused of crimes, throughout England and Wales, in thirteen years¡ªthat is, at the rate of four persons for each year. In the year 1841 not one educated female was committed for trial out of nearly 8,000,000 of the sex then living in this part of the United Kingdom. In the disturbances which took place in Cheshire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire, as appeared by the trials that were held in 1842, out of 567 persons tried, there were only 73 who could read and write well, and only one person who had received a superior education¡ªa fact full of instruction as to the duty of the State in respect to the education of the people.
