THREE:Next came the enactments regarding fasting. By 5 Elizabeth every person who ate flesh on a fish day was liable to a penalty of three pounds; and, in case of non-payment, to three months' imprisonment. It was added that this eating of fish was not from any superstitious notion, but to encourage the fisheries; but by the 2 and 3 Edward VI. the power of inflicting these fish and flesh penalties was invested in the two Archbishops, as though the offence of eating flesh on fish days was an ecclesiastical offence. Lord Stanhope showed that the powers and penalties of excommunication were still in full force; that whoever was excommunicated had no legal power of recovering any debt, or payment for anything that he might sell; that excommunication and its penalties were made valid by the 5 Elizabeth and the 29 Charles II.; that by the 30 Charles II. every peer, or member of the House of Peers, peer of Scotland, or Ireland, or member of the House of Commons, who should go to Court without having made the declaration against transubstantiation, and the invocation of saints therein contained, should be disabled from holding any office, civil or military, from making a proxy in the House of Lords, or from sueing or using any action in law or equity; from being guardian, trustee, or administrator of any will; and should be deemed "a Popish recusant convict." His Lordship observed that probably the whole Protestant bench of bishops were at that moment in this predicament, and that he had a right to clear the House of them, and proceed with his Bill in their absence. He next quoted the 1st of James I., which decreed that any woman, or any person whatever under twenty-one years of age, except sailors, ship-boys, or apprentices, or factors of merchants, who should go over sea without a licence from the king, or six of his Privy Council, should forfeit all his or her goods, lands, and moneys whatever; and whoever should send such person without such licence should forfeit one hundred pounds; and every officer of a port, and every shipowner, master of a ship, and all his mariners who should allow such person to go, or should take him or her, should forfeit everything they possessed, one half to the king, and the other half to the person sueing.The year 1757 opened amid very gloomy auspices. War, of a wide and formidable character, was commencing in Europe, and the House of Commons was called on to vote no less than eight million three hundred thousand pounds for the supplies of the year, and to order fifty-five thousand men for the sea service, and forty-five thousand for the land. The National Debt had now reached seventy-two million pounds, and was destined to a heavy and rapid increase. Pitt commenced the admirable plan recommended years before by Duncan Forbes, of raising Highland regiments from the lately disaffected clans. The militia was remodelled, it was increased to thirty-four thousand, and it was proposed to exercise the men on Sunday afternoons, to facilitate their progress in discipline; but an outcry from the Dissenters put a stop to this. Serious riots, moreover, were the consequences of forcing such a number of men from their homes and occupations in the militia ranks; and the public discontent was raised to a crisis by the voting of two hundred thousand pounds, avowedly for the protection of Hanover. A measure which the nation beheld with astonishment Pitt himself introduced, notwithstanding his many thunderings against the Hanover millstone.
FORE:Whilst the French were seizing on Portugal, the Spanish royal family was convulsed by quarrels. Ferdinand, the Prince of Asturias, and heir to the throne, hated Godoy, as usurping the power which he himself ought to enjoy, and, stimulated by his friends, who shared in his exclusion, appealed to Napoleon for his protection, and to win his favour requested him to choose a wife for him out of his own family. This[550] at one time would have been a subject of the highest pride to Buonaparte, that a member of the Bourbon family, and future King of Spain, should solicit a personal alliance with his; but that day was gone by. Buonaparte had determined to make himself master of Spain, and he left the request of the Prince without any answer. Urged on by his party, the Prince seems to have determined to do without Buonaparte, and to depose his father, but the plot was discovered, and the person of the Prince secured. The imbecile king, instead of contenting himself by the exercise of his own authority, appealed to Napoleon; and at the same time, to make the disgrace of his family as public as possible, he appealed to the Spanish people, by a proclamation against the conduct of his son, and informing them that he had put the Prince under arrest. But the appeal to Buonaparte did not succeed; for his own purposes, the French Emperor appeared to take part with the Prince, and caused his Ambassador, Beauharnais, to remonstrate with the king on his severity towards him. Charles IV. wrote again to Napoleon, and ventured to mention the Prince's private application to him for a wife, hoping, the king said, that the Emperor would not permit the Prince to shelter himself under an alliance with the Imperial family. Buonaparte professed to feel greatly insulted by such allusions to his family, and the poor king then wrote very humbly, declaring that he desired nothing so much as such an alliance for his son. Ferdinand, through this powerful support, was immediately liberated. But these mutual appeals had greatly forwarded Buonaparte's plans of interference in Spain. He levied a new conscription, and avowed to Talleyrand and Fouch that he had determined to set aside the royal family of Spain, and to unite that country to France. Both those astute diplomatists at once disapproved, and endeavoured to dissuade him from the enterprise. They reminded him of the pride of the Spanish character, and that he might rouse the people to a temper of most stubborn resistance, which would divide his attention and his forces, would be pretty certain to bring Britain into the field for their support, and unite Britain again with Russia, thus placing himself between two fires. Talleyrand, seeing that Buonaparte was resolutely bent on the scheme, dropped his opposition, and assisted Napoleon in planning its progress; thus enabling the Emperor afterwards to charge Talleyrand with the responsibility of this usurpation, as he had before charged him with counselling the death of the Duke d'Enghien. In after years, Napoleon used to denounce his own folly in meddling with Spain, calling it "that miserable war" and describing it as the origin of his ruin.But the loss of the Allies had also been perfectly awful. The Prussians, besides the great slaughter at Ligny, had been engaged in a bloody struggle at Planchenoit, and the British and their Allies had lost in the battle of Waterloo two thousand four hundred and thirty-two killed, and nine thousand five hundred and twenty-eight wounded; these, added to the numbers killed and wounded at Quatre Bras, raised the total to fifteen thousand. Of British and Hanoverian officers alone six hundred were killed or wounded at Waterloo. The Duke of Brunswick fell at the head of his troops at Quatre Bras, without having the satisfaction of witnessing the final ruin of Buonaparte. So many of Wellington's staff were disabled that he had at one time no officer to dispatch with a pressing order. A young Piedmontese, of the family of De Salis, offered himself. "Were you ever in a battle before?" asked the Duke. "No, sir," he replied. "Then," said the Duke, "you are a lucky man, for you will never see such another." When the Duke, who had witnessed so many bloody battles, saw the carnage of Waterloo, and heard, one after another, the losses of so many companions in arms, he was quite overcome. In his despatches he says: "I cannot express the regret and sorrow with which I look round me, and contemplate the losses that we have sustained." And again, "The losses I have sustained have quite broken me down, and I have no feeling for the advantages we have gained."
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