The secret of this wonderfully augmented boldness of tone on the part of France soon transpired. Choiseul had been endeavouring to secure the alliance of Spain, and saw himself about to succeed. Spain was smarting under many losses and humiliations from the English during the late war. Whilst General Wall, the Spanish minister at Madrid, urged these complaints on the Earl of Bristol, our ambassador there, Choiseul was dexterously inflaming the minds of the Spanish Court against Britain on these grounds. He represented it as the universal tyrant of the seas, and the sworn enemy of every other maritime state. He offered to assist in the recovery of Gibraltar, and to make over Minorca to Spain. By these means he induced Spain to go into what became the celebrated Family Compactthat is, a compact by which France and Spain bound themselves to mutually succour and support each other; and to admit the King of Naples, the son of the Spanish king, to this compact, but no prince or potentate whatever, except he were of the House of Bourbon.The British Government had employed the best portion of the Session of Parliament between the commencement of November and Christmas, 1797, in receiving the report of the insults of the French Commissioners at Lille to our Ambassador, and his summary dismissal from the place of meeting without any chance of peace, and in voting money to carry on the war at our own doors. Pitt called for the grant of twenty-five million five hundred thousand pounds, and for trebling all the assessed taxes. All this was readily granted. In April, 1798, he called for three millions, and that was as freely conceded. In fact, by that time, the Irish were on the very verge of appearing in arms to cast off the yoke of England and accept the boasted fraternity of France. Lord Edward Fitzgerald, brother of the Duke of Leinster, one of the leading members of the Society of United Irishmen, had spent some time in France during the Revolution. He had married Pamela, the daughter of Madame de Genlis. To him, on his return to Ireland, French emissaries of revolution were secretly sent over, and he introduced them to the leading members of the projected revolt. In 1794 a Jacobinised Irishman, the Rev. William Jackson, came over from Paris, at the time of the fiercest raging of the Reign of Terror, to concert with Wolfe Tone and his fellow-conspirators the plans of insurrection. At the very time that some of theseBond, Simon Butler, and Hamilton Rowanwere[461] tried as accomplices of the Scottish reformers, Muir and the rest, and acquitted as men only seeking reform of Parliament, they were deep in this scheme of French invasion. Jackson was arrested in Dublin, was tried and convicted of high treason, but anticipated his sentence by suicide. The most public display of sympathy with his views and mission was made by a vast attendance of carriages at his funeral, and the features of rebellion became so undisguised that a stop was put to all questions of political concession and amelioration.
FORE:In the midst of this constitution-making, famine was stalking through the country, and bankruptcy was menacing the exchequer. The first loan of thirty millions had proved a total failure; a second of eighty, according to a fresh plan of Necker's, was equally a blank. With the necessities of the Government, the necessities of the people kept pace. The whole country was revolutionising instead of working; destroying estates instead of cultivating them. Farmers were afraid of sowing what they might never reap; trade and manufactures were at an end, for there was little money and no confidence. The country was not become unfruitful, but its people had gone mad, and the inevitable consequence was an ever-increasing famine. This, instead of being attributed to the true causes, was ascribed by the mob orators to all kinds of devilish practices of the Court and the aristocracy.
THREE:Another successful expedition this year was one against the Cape of Good Hope. This settlement, so desirable for Britain, with her Indian possessions, had been yielded up by the Addington Administration, at the Peace of Amiens, most[522] imprudently. A body of five thousand men was dispatched for its recovery, under Sir David Baird, in a fleet commanded by Sir Home Popham. They arrived in January, and the Dutch soldiers fled at the first attack. Retiring into the interior, General Beresford was dispatched after them, whereupon they surrendered, on condition that they should be sent to Holland without being deemed prisoners of war.
FORE:[See larger version]
[See larger version]FATHER MATHEW AND THE FAMINE-STRICKEN POOR. (See p. 537.)On the 3rd of May Lord Cornwallis arrived on the coast with a squadron of transports, convoyed by Sir Peter Parker, with several ships of war. General Clinton arrived soon after, and took the command of the troops; and, in concert with Parker, he determined to attack Charleston, the capital of South Carolina. On the 4th of June they appeared off Charleston, and landed on Long Island. They found the mouth of the harbour strongly defended by fortifications on Sullivan's Island, and by others on Hadrell's Point on its north. On the point lay encamped the American General Lee. Clinton threw up two batteries on Long Island to command those on Sullivan island, whilst Parker, from the ships, was to assist in covering the landing of the troops on that Island. Clinton was informed that he could easily cross from one island to the other by a ford; and consequently, on the morning of the 28th of June,[225] Sir Peter Parker drew up his men-of-warthree vessels of fifty guns each, and six frigates of twenty-eight guns each, besides another of twenty-four guns and the Thunder bomb. But he had been deceived; what was called a ford, he found impassable. He was compelled to reimbark his troops, and meanwhile Parker's vessels, also unacquainted with their ground, ran upon a shoal, where one of them struck. In these unfortunate circumstances, the Americans, from the island and from Hadrell's Point, poured a tremendous fire into the ships, doing dreadful execution. Clinton sailed away, after this ignominious attempt to join General Howe, but some of the vessels were compelled to remain some time at Long Island to refit.CHAPTER VII. THE REIGN OF GEORGE IV. (concluded).
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