Five days after this, February 10th, the matter was made public by Lord Darnley rising in the Upper House, and moving for an inquiry into the conduct of the Ministry. This roused up Lord Grenville, who candidly avowed that, in consequence of their failure to introduce the question of Catholic emancipation, the Ministers had resigned and only held office till a new Cabinet was formed. On this, Lord Darnley postponed his motion. On the same day, in the Commons, a letter from Addington, the Speaker, was read, announcing his resignation of the Speakership in consequence of the king's proposal to nominate him to a situation incompatible with that post. Pitt then rose and confirmed this, and proposed an adjournment till the next day in order to prepare for the nomination of the new Speaker. The House adjourned accordingly, and next day, the 11th of February, elected Sir John Mitford, the Attorney-General, as Speaker. Before the House could resume business, it was announced that the king was illconfined to the house by a severe cold; but it was soon known that it was a return of his old malady, lunacy, in consequence of his extreme agitation on the proposal of the Catholic question and the resignation of Pitt. The report was soon augmented into the startling rumour that the king was dangerously ill, and that a regency must take placeif not superseded by his death. At this news Fox, who had for some time absented himself from Parliament, on the plea that all endeavours to carry sound and prudent measures were hopeless with Pitt's great martial majority, hastened up to town from St. Anne's Hill; and the Whig body was in a flutter of expectation that he would soon be the Minister of the prince regent, or of George IV. But all these hopes were speedily overthrown by the news of the rapid improvement of the king, and on the 12th of March the royal physicians announced him perfectly recovered. He attributed his illness to Pitt's conduct, and the ex-Premier thereupon wrote and promised never to re-open the question again.
ONE:During this year the Americans continued to hope for relief to themselves from the progress of the Armed Neutrality, but derived little good from it, though, through their exertions, they beheld Holland added to the open enemies of England. The Dutch Government, flattering themselves that, with nearly all the world against her, England must succumb, had long been secretly in negotiation with the insurgent subjects of England, and their treachery was now suddenly, by a singular circumstance, brought to light. Captain Keppel, cruising in the Vestal frigate off the banks of Newfoundland, in the month of September, captured one of the American packets. On the approach of the British boats to the packet, it was observed that something was hastily flung overboard. A sailor leaped from one of the boats into the sea, and succeeded in securing this something before it had sunk beyond reach. It turned out to be a box, which had been weighted with lead, but not sufficiently to render it so rapid in its descent as to prevent its seizure by the British tar. On being opened, it revealed a mass of papers belonging to an American emissary to the Court of Holland, and opened up a long course of negotiations, and an eventual treaty of peace and commerce between Holland and our American colonies. The bearer of these papers was discovered on board the packet, in the person of Henry Laurens, late president of the American Congress. These most important papers, together with their bearer, were sent with all speed to England. Copies were forwarded to Sir Joseph Yorke, our Ambassador at the Hague, who was instructed to demand from the States General the disavowal of the negotiations. The States General, confounded by the discovery of their clandestine negotiations, remained silent for a week, and then only replied by advancing complaints of violence committed by the British navy on their traders, and of its having insulted the Dutch flag by seizing some American privateers in the port of the island of St. Martin, under the very guns of the fort. Sir Joseph did not allow himself to be diverted from his demand, but again, on the 12th of December, a month after the presentation of his memorial, demanded an answer. No answer was returned. England was thus compelled to declare war against Holland on the 20th of December, Sir Joseph Yorke being recalled by the king, and Count Welderen receiving his passports in London.
ONE:Mr. J. F. Maguire, who writes as an eye-witness of the scenes he describes, referring to the spring of 1847, says:"The famine now raged in every[541] part of the afflicted country, and starving multitudes crowded the thoroughfares of the cities and large towns. Death was everywherein the cabin, on the highway, in the garret, in the cellar, and even on the flags or side-paths of the most public streets of the city. In the workhouses, to which the pressure of absolute starvation alone drove the destitute, the carnage was frightful. It was now increasing at prodigious pace. The number of deaths at the Cork workhouse in the last week of January, 1847, was 104. It increased to 128 in the first week in February, and in the second week of that month it reached 164; 396 in three weeks. During the month of April as many as thirty-six bodies were interred in one day in that portion of Father Mathew's cemetery reserved for the free burial of the poor; and this mortality was entirely independent of the mortality in the workhouse. During the same month there were 300 coffins sold in a single street in the course of a fortnight, and these were chiefly required for the supply of a single parish. From the 27th of December, in 1846, to the middle of April, in 1847, the number of human beings that died in the Cork workhouse was 2,130! And in the third week of the following month the free interments in the Mathew cemetery had risen to 277as many as sixty-seven having been buried in one day. The destruction of human life in other workhouses of Ireland kept pace with the appalling mortality in the Cork workhouse. According to official returns, it had reached in April the weekly average of twenty-five per 1,000 inmates; the actual number of deaths being 2,706 for the week ending the 3rd of April, and 2,613 in the following week. Yet the number of inmates in the Irish workhouses was but 104,455 on the 10th of April, the entire of the houses not having then been completed.
TWO:Other English artists of this period were John Riley, an excellent and original painter, who died in 1691; Murray, a Scotsman; Charles Jervas, the friend of Pope, a man much overrated by his acquaintance; and Jonathan Richardson, a much superior artist to Jervas, and author of the valuable "Essay on the Art of Criticism, as it relates to Painting." Thomas Hudson, a pupil of Richardson, and his son-in-law, was an admirable painter of heads, and had the honour of being the instructor of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Henry Cook, like Thornhill, was a decorator, and painted the choir of New College Chapel, at Oxford, and the ceiling of a large room at the New River head. Among other artists of repute there may be named Luke Cradock, a flower and fruit painter; John Wootton, an animal painter; Francis Hayman, an historical painter and designer for book-platesthose for "Don Quixote" being his best; and George Lambert, one of the first English landscape painters of any mark.
TWO:Early in the following year the mayor and the commanding officer, Colonel Brereton, were brought to trial for neglect of duty. The mayor was acquitted, as not having been adequately supported by the military; but Colonel Brereton's humanity led to the most painful consequences. His trial began on the 9th of January following, and lasted four days, during which, as the proofs against him accumulated, he was overwhelmed with agony of mind. On the night of the 12th he did not visit, as was his custom, the chamber of his two motherless daughters. He was heard walking for hours about his room during that night, and in the morning, when the court assembled, it was announced that the prisoner had shot himself through the heart.
TWO:Mar had left London on the 2nd of August to raise the Highlands. In order to blind the agents of Government he ordered a royal leve on the 1st, and on the following night got on board a collier bound for Newcastle, attended by Major-General Hamilton and Colonel Hay. From Newcastle they got to the coast of Fife in another vessel. On the 6th of September he raised the standard of the Chevalier at Kirkmichael, a village of Braemar. He was then attended by only sixty men, and the Highland chiefs, extremely alive to omens, were startled by the gilt ball falling from the summit of the pole as it was planted in the ground. The standard was consecrated by prayers, and he was in a few days joined by about five hundred of his own vassals. The gentlemen who came on horseback, only about twenty at first, soon became several hundreds, and were named the Royal Squadron. The white cockade was assumed as the badge of the insurgent army, and clan after clan came in; first the Mackintoshes, five hundred in number, who seized on Inverness. James was proclaimed by Panmure at Brechin, by the Earl[29] Marshal at Aberdeen, by Lord Huntly at Gordon, and by Graham, the brother of Claverhouse, at Dundee. Colonel Hay, brother of the Earl of Kinnaird, seized Perth, and in a very short time the country north of the Tay was in the hands of the insurgents.
THREE:Burgoyne was now in a condition which demanded all the talents of a great general. His forces were heavily reduced, those of the enemy much increased, and he was amongst bogs and wildernesses, which Barrington and Barr had from the first declared would be fatal to any army. He had sent express after express to Howe to urge a movement in co-operation, but no news of it arrived, and every day he was becoming more and more cut off from advance or retreat. Whilst these circumstances were operating against him, Burgoyne collected his artillery and provisions for about a month, and, forming a bridge of boats, passed his army, on the 13th and 14th of September, over the Hudson, and encamped on the heights and plains of Saratoga. Just at this juncture Schuyler had been superseded by his successor Gates, yet he himself remained to give his assistance in the campaign. The day after Gates assumed the command, Morgan had marched in with his rifle corps, five hundred strong, and Major Dearborn with two hundred and fifty other picked men. Arnold, too, had returned from pursuit of St. Leger, with two thousand men. The Americans numbered, with militia continually flocking in, nearly eight thousand, whilst Burgoyne's force did not exceed half that number. To approach the Americans it was necessary to cross the low ground, seamed with watercourses and rugged with scrub and stones, and to lay down bridges and causeways. This being completed, on the 19th the British army took position at Bemus's Heights in front of the American left. Gates, stimulated by the presence of Arnold, began the attack by sending out a detachment to turn Burgoyne's right flank, but they soon perceived the covering division of Fraser, and retreated. Gates then put Arnold at the head of a still stronger detachment to fall directly on Burgoyne's position, and a severe fight commenced about three o'clock in the afternoon, which lasted until sunset. Arnold made the most impetuous[243] assaults on the British line to break it, but everywhere in vain, although the whole weight of the attack fell on three or four of our regiments, the rest being posted on some hills, and the Germans on the left at a greater distance. Whenever they advanced into the open field, the fire of the American marksmen from their concealment drove them back in disorder; but whenever the Americans ventured out, the British rushed forward and committed havoc amongst them; so the contest continued till night. The British remained in the field and claimed the victory; but it was a victory severely won, and far from decisive. The losses on both sides had been from five hundred to six hundred killed and wounded.But it was not to Great Britain only that this want of generosity was shown. No people rejoiced more vehemently than they didnone, indeed, so muchover the fall and execution of Louis XVI. of France, the one monarch of Europe who had been their chief benefactor, without whose powerful aid they would have fought and struggled in vain, and who had, in fact, lost his crown and his head, and his empire to his family, by sending his soldiers to learn Republicanism amongst them. There were feasts and public rejoicings in the United States to commemorate the death of Louis, who was, in fact, the martyr of America. What was equally extraordinary, whilst they exulted in the French Republic, they followed with an equal admiration the career of Buonaparte, who crushed that Republic, and raised up a despotism opposed in its principles to all the political professions of Americans. But it was the idea that he was born to humble and, perhaps, blot out Great Britain from the list of nations, which served to render Napoleon so especially the object of their unbounded eulogies. His victories were celebrated nowhere so vociferously as in the United States, through the press, the pulpit, and in general oratory. With them he was the Man of Destiny, who was to overthrow all kings but himself, and drive Great Britain from her dominion of the seas.
THREE:In the midst of the excitement at Pesth, Count Lamberg was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial army in Hungary; and a decree appeared at the same time ordering a suspension of hostilities. The Count immediately started for Pesth without a military escort. In the meantime Kossuth had issued a counter-proclamation, in which the appointment of Lamberg was declared to be illegal and null, as it was not countersigned by the Hungarian Minister, according to the Constitution, and all persons obeying him were declared to be guilty of high treason. Unknown assassins, translating this language into action, stabbed the Count to death in the public street (September 28, 1848). The Government of Vienna resolved now to crush the Hungarian insurrection at any cost. A decree was issued by the emperor, who had lately returned to the capital, dissolving the Diet, declaring all its ordinances and acts illegal and void, constituting Jellacic Commander-in-Chief in Hungary and Transylvania, with unlimited powers, and appointing also a new Hungarian Ministry. Kossuth met this by a counter-proclamation, asserting the entire independence of Hungary, and denouncing the Ban and the new Prime Minister as traitors. The power given to Jellacic excited the indignation not only of all Hungarians, but of the citizens of Vienna. They rose the second time, and again forced the Emperor to fly, this time to Olmütz.[334]
