THREE:This letter, though marked "private and confidential," was, like the Duke's letter to the same prelate, made public, and became the subject of comment in the Association and in the press, which tended still more to embarrass the question by irritating the king and the Duke, and furnishing exciting topics to the enemies of the Catholic cause. The Marquis of Anglesey, indeed, from the time he went to Ireland, held the strongest language to the Government as to the necessity of carrying the measure. At a subsequent period he expressed a wish that his opinions should be made fully known to the king and his Ministers, because they could then better judge of his fitness for carrying into effect the measures they might decide upon adopting. On the 31st of July he wrote:"I will exert myself to keep the country quiet, and put down rebellion under any circumstances; but I will not consent to govern this country much longer under the existing law."[See larger version]
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THREE:The British Ministry adopted the advice most cordially. Lord Liverpool, in the House of Lords, and Lord Castlereagh, in the Commons, on the 6th of April, announced the astounding fact of the escape of Buonaparte, and proposed addresses from both Houses to the Prince Regent, recommending the most energetic measures of co-operation with the Allies now finally to crush this lawless man. Whitbread vehemently opposed this measure, declaring that it was not our business "to commence a new crusade to determine who should fill the throne of France." This was true enough; but it was a truth, in the then temper of the Government or public, which was not likely to be attended to. The addresses were carried in both Houses without any division, and Lord Wellington was nominated to command the forces which should take the field for Great Britain; and these were to amount to no fewer than one hundred and fifty thousand, and to consist of a moderate number of British soldiers, and the rest to be paid Hanoverians, Belgians, Dutch, and Germans. Parliament immediately voted the enormous sum of ninety million pounds for supplies, knowing the vast subsidies which would be required by the Allied monarchs, besides the large sum necessary to pay our own quota of troops.
THREE:FREE TRADE HALL, MANCHESTER. (From a Photograph by Frith and Co., Reigate.)
THREE:As he made these professions, he was, from the very commencement of the year 1812, and nearly six months before the avowal of hostilities, drawing the invading force nearer to the frontiers near Detroit. General Hull had a body of two thousand five hundred men ready for the enterprise, well supplied with artillery and stores; and scarcely was the declaration of war made than he hastened over the frontier line and seized on the British village of Sandwich. There he issued a bragging proclamation, calling on the "oppressed" Canadians to abandon the despotism of kingship and become free citizens of free America. To meet the invasion, the British had in Canada only about four thousand regulars, and the militia might number as many more. To make worse of the matter, the Commander-in-Chief, Sir George Prevost, was a very inefficient officer. But Major-General Brock sent orders to the British officers at Fort St. Joseph to attack the American port of Michilimachimac, which he did on the 17th of July, a month after the American declaration of war. The place was taken, with sixty prisoners and seven pieces of artillery. This raised the courage of the Indians in that quarter, who had long thirsted for revenge of the continual injuries received from the Americans, and they called on their different tribes to arm and support the British. At the news of the capture of Sandwich by Hull, Brock sent Colonel Procter to Fort Amherstberg to operate against him. He also followed quickly himself, and found Procter besieging Hull in Fort Detroit, to which he had retreated across the border. By the 10th of August he compelled Hull to surrender with his two thousand five hundred men and thirty pieces of artillery. Not only Fort Detroit and a fine American vessel in the harbour were taken, but, by the capitulation, the whole of the Michigan territory, which separated the Indian country from Canada, was ceded to us, much improving our frontier.The poets who most retained the robes of the past, without disguising the divine form within, were the Rev. George Crabbe and Cowper. The poetry of Crabbe, all written in the metre of Pope, is, nevertheless, instinct with the very soul of nature. It chooses the simplest, and often the least apparently lofty or agreeable topics, but it diffuses through these, and at the same time draws from them, a spirit and life that are essentially poetry. Nothing at the time that it appeared could look less like poetry. The description of a library, the dirty alleys, the pothouses, the sailors, and monotonous sea-shores in and about a maritime borough, struck the readers of the assumed sublime with astonishment and dismay. "Can this be poetry?" they asked. But those who had poetry in themselvesthose in whom the heart of nature was strong, replied, "Yes, the truest poetry." Nature smiles as the rude torch flickers past, and shows its varied forms in its truest shape. In his "Tales of the Hall" Crabbe entered on scenes which are commonly deemed more elevated; he came forward into the rural village, the rectory,[184] and the manor-house; but everywhere he carried the same clear, faithful, analytical spirit, and read the most solemn lessons from the histories and the souls of men. Crabbe has been styled the Rembrandt of English poetic painting; but he is not merely a painter of the outward, he is the prober of the inward at the same time, who, with a hand that never trembles, depicts sternly the base nature, and drops soothing balm on the broken heart.