FORE:We must return from victory abroad to discontent at home. On the 28th of January, 1817, the Prince Regent opened the fifth Session of Parliament. In his speech he expressed indignation at "the attempts which had been made to take advantage of the distresses of the country for the purpose of exciting a spirit of sedition and violence;" and he declared himself determined to put down these attempts by stern measures. The seconder of the Address in the Commons had the good sense to believe that the demagogues and their acts would die of themselves. Certainly, if the demagogues had no cause on which to base their efforts, those efforts must have proved fruitless; and the wisdom of Government consisted in seriously inquiring whether there were such causes. To attempt to insure peace by smothering distress is the old remedy of tyrants, and is like heaping fuel on fire to put it out. Whilst this debate was proceeding, a message arrived from the Lords to announce that the Regent, on his return from the House, had been insulted, and some missile thrown through the windows of his carriage. The House agreed upon an Address to the Regent on this event, and then adjourned.Meanwhile, Buonaparte was preparing to descend like an avalanche on this absurdly inflated nation. To set himself at ease with the North, whilst thus engaged in the Peninsula, he deemed it first necessary, however, to have an interview with the Emperor of Russia in Germany. The spirit of the Germans was again rising; and notwithstanding the spies and troops of Buonaparte, his paid literatilike Johannes Müller,and his paid princeslike those of the Rhenish Confederation, Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg,the Germans were beginning to blush at their humiliation, and to lament the causes of it, their effeminacy, and their division into so many States, with all the consequent prejudices and intestine feuds. Prussia, which had suffered so severely for its selfish policy, and had been so cut down in territory and insulted in its honour by Napoleon, began to cherish the hope of yet redeeming itself, by a more manly spirit and a more cordial co-operation with the rest of Germany. In this work of regenerationwhich is sure to take place sooner or later, when nations have been well beaten and humiliated, and which then, in their renewed manhood, require no foreign aid for the accomplishment of their freedomall classes laboured. The king, under the inspiration of his patriotic Minister, Von Stein, began most essential reforms. He abolished the feudal servitude and forced labour under which the peasantry groaned; he made a thorough moral re-organisation of the army, admitting of promotion from the ranks; he allowed any man that had the money to purchase baronial estates; and he deprived the higher nobility of the exclusive right of possessing landed property, and of appointment to the higher civil and military posts. Von Stein, too, commenced the work of inspiring the mass of the people with a new soul of patriotism. He established a secret society, called the Tugend Bund, or union of Virtue, which was to unite nobles, statesmen, officers, and literati in one common confederation for the rescue of the country. Amongst those who entered the most enthusiastically were Colonel Schill, who had headed with great effect his troop of volunteer cavalry, Jahn, a professor at Berlin, and Moritz Arndt, a professor of Bonn, the author of the famous national song, "Was ist der Deutschen Vaterland?" in which he maintained that it was not Prussia, nor Austria, nor any other particular State, but all Germany, so far as the language extended. Scharnhorst, the commander of the Prussian army, though restricted to the prescribed number of troops, created a new army by continually exchanging trained soldiers for raw recruits, and secretly purchased an immense quantity of arms, so that, on emergency, a large body of men could be speedily assembled. He had also all the brass battery guns converted into field-pieces, and replaced by iron guns. But Napoleon's spies were everywhere. They discovered the existence of the Tugend Bund, and of the secret societies of the students, which they carried on under the old name of the Burschenschaft, or association of the students. Though Napoleon pretended to ridicule these movements, calling it mere ideology, he took every means to suppress them. The Minister, Von Stein, in consequence[566] of the contents of an intercepted letter, was outlawed; Scharnhorst, and Grüner, the head of the police, were dismissed from their offices; but it was all in vainthe tide of public feeling had now set in the right way. The same spirit was alive in Austria. Abuses were reformed; a more perfect discipline was introduced. John Philip von Stadion, the head of the Ministry, encouraged these measures; the views of the Archduke Charles were carried out on a far wider basis. A completely new institution, that of the Landwehr, or armed citizens, was set on foot. The Austrian armies were increased greatly. In 1807 the Hungarian Diet voted twelve thousand recruits; in 1808, eighty thousand; while eighty thousand organised soldiers, of whom thirty thousand were cavalry, constituted the armed reserve of this warlike nation. Napoleon remonstrated, and received very pacific answers, but the movement went on. Von Stein, now a refugee in Austria, fanned the flame there, and he and Count Münster, first Hanoverian Ambassador, and afterwards British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, were in constant correspondence with each other and with the Government of Great Britain.
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry.
FORE:
FORE:The supplies and the Mutiny Bill were now passed without much difficulty, but Ministers did not venture to introduce an Appropriation Bill. On the 23rd, Lord North, stating that the dissolution of Parliament was confidently asserted out of doors, declared that such a dissolution, without passing an Appropriation Bill, would be an unparalleled insult to the House. He expressed his astonishment that the Minister did not condescend to utter a syllable on the subject of the proposed change. Pitt, now confident of his position, replied that gentlemen might ask as many questions as they pleased; that he had adopted a course which was advantageous to the country, and did not feel bound to enter then into any explanations. All mystery, however, was cleared up the next day, for the king went down to the House of Lords and prorogued Parliament, announcing that he felt it his duty to the Constitution and the country to convoke a new Parliament. Accordingly, on the following day, the 25th of March, he dissolved Parliament by proclamation.
