A leader in innovation for more than 100 years
FORE:[See larger version]Unfortunately, however, for the continuance of the popularity of Mrs. Clarke, it appeared that she was now actually living in the keeping of this virtuous Colonel Wardle, who was thus chastising royal peccadilloes. The whole of the circumstances did not come out whilst the question was before the House of Commons, but enough to injure the credit irreparably of Colonel Wardle, and make Mrs. Clarke's evidence more than ever suspicious. The full information was brought out by a trial instituted by a Mr. Wright, an upholsterer, in Rathbone Place, for furnishing a new house for her in Westbourne Place. She had now quarrelled with Colonel Wardle, and he refused to pay the bill. Wardle, it appeared, had done his best to stop the coming on of the[572] trial, but in vain; Mrs. Clarke appeared against him, and not only deposed that he had gone with her to order the goods, but told her it was in return for her aid in prosecuting the Duke of York's case. Wardle was cast on the trial, with costs, having about two thousand pounds to pay, and losing all the popularity that he had gained by the investigation. He had been publicly thanked by public meetings, both in the City and the country, and now came this rueful expos. But it was too late now to save the Duke's reputation. The House of Commons had concluded its examination in March. It acquitted the Duke of any participation with his artful mistress in the vile profits on the sale of commissions, but that she had made such there was no question. The Duke did not await the decision of the Commons, but resigned his office. Lord Althorp, in moving that, as the Duke had resigned, the proceedings should go no further, said that the Duke had lost the confidence of the country for ever, and therefore there was no chance of his returning to that situation. This was the conclusion to which the House came on the 21st of March, and soon afterwards Sir David Dundas was appointed to succeed the Duke as Commander-in-chief, much to the chagrin of the army, and equally to its detriment. The Duke, though, like some of his brothers, very profligate, and, like themaccording to a statement made during the debates on his casecapable, as a youth, of learning either Greek or arithmetic, but not the value of money, seems to have discharged his duty to the army extremely well, of which old General Dundas was wholly incapable.
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FORE:CHAPTER VII. THE REIGN OF GEORGE IV. (concluded).
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FORE:The majority obtained on their Irish policy was about the number the Ministry could count upon on every vital question. It was not sufficiently large to exempt them from the imputation of holding office on sufferance; but if they were defeated, and were succeeded by the Conservatives, the new Government, it was plain, could not hope to exist even on those terms; while Lord Melbourne had this advantage over Sir Robert Peel, that he was cordially supported by the Sovereign. Having escaped the Irish ordeal, it might be supposed that he was safe for a considerable time. But another question arose very soon after, on which the Cabinet sustained a virtual defeat. The Assembly in Jamaica had proved very refractory, and, in order to avoid the evil consequences of its perversity, Mr. Labouchere, on the 9th of April, brought forward a measure which was a virtual suspension of the constitution of the island for five years, vesting the government in the Governor and Council, with three commissioners sent from England to assist in ameliorating the condition of the negroes, improving prison discipline, and establishing a system of poor laws. This measure was denounced by the whole strength of the Opposition. The question may be thus briefly stated. Before the Act of Emancipation in 1833, all punishments were inflicted on slaves by the domestics of the master, who was unwilling to lose the benefit of their services by sending them to prison. But when emancipation took place, that domestic power was terminated, and new prison regulations became necessary. The Colonial Legislature, however, persistently refused to adopt any, and continued a course of systematic resistance to the will of the supreme Government, whose earnest and repeated recommendations had been utterly disregarded. Under the apprenticeship system negroes were treated worse than they were under the old condition of slavery, because the planters knew that the time of enfranchisement was at hand. But though, when the hour of liberty, August 1st, 1840, was seen to be very near, the Jamaica Assembly voluntarily brought the apprenticeship system to a termination, they accompanied the measure with an angry protest against any interference by the British Parliament. It was contended, on the part of the Government, that if such a state of things were permitted to exist, the authority of Great Britain over its colonies would speedily be lost, and every little island that owed its political existence to the protection afforded by the Imperial Government, would, without scruple, set its power at defiance. Such being the state of the case, it might be supposed that no serious objection would be raised to the course adopted, in the interests of humanity and good government. But the Conservatives seized the opportunity for another party contest, and became quite vehement in their defence of the constitutional rights of the Jamaica planters. The debate was protracted for several nights, and counsel against the Bill were heard at great length. Eventually the division took place at five in the morning on the 6th of May, when the numbers were 294 to 289, giving the Government a majority of only five, which was regarded as tantamount to a defeat. On the 7th of May, therefore, Lord John Russell announced that Ministers had tendered their resignation, which was accepted by the Queen. He assigned as the reason for this step that the vote which had passed must weaken the authority of the Crown in the colonies, by giving support to the contumacy of Jamaica, and encouraging other colonies to follow its bad example. This obvious consideration rendered more painfully apparent the weakness of the Government, arising from division among its supporters; for if anything could have induced the different sections of the Liberal party to suppress their differences, it would have been the necessity of interposing, in the manner proposed by the Government, to shield the unhappy negroes from the oppression of their exasperated taskmasters. Indeed, in spite of various attempts to patch up the Cabinet, its members were at hopeless cross-purposes.
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FORE:[See larger version]We have stated that the spirit rising again in Germany called Buonaparte suddenly from Spain, even before Soult had pursued Sir John Moore to Corunna. At Valladolid he met the Abb de Pradt, who had risen high in Buonaparte's favour. To De Pradt, he said he began to suspect that he had made his brother Joseph a grander present in Spain than he was aware of. "I did not know," he said, "what Spain was; it is a finer country than I imagined. But you will see that, by-and-by, the Spaniards will commit some folly which will place their country once more at my disposal. I will then take care to keep it to myself, and divide it into five great viceroyships." Such were the soaring notions of Napoleon at the very moment that the man was ready who was to drive the French from Spain for ever. In England, at last, almost every one had now awoke to the consciousness that Sir Arthur Wellesley was the only man to cope with the French in the Peninsula. There were a few individuals, like Lord Folkestone, who were blinded enough by party to oppose this general conviction; but before the close of March Sir Arthur was selected by the Government for this command. On the 15th of April he sailed from Portsmouth, and on the 22nd he arrived safely at Lisbon. Some regiments of both horse and foot soon followed him, and he assumed the command of the British army in Portugal, which had been some time in the hands of General Sir J. Cradock. The command of the Portuguese troops had been placed in the hands of General Beresford, who had been actively drilling them; and thus General Sir Arthur Wellesley found himself at the head of an effective army of[574] British and Portuguese numbering twenty-five thousand men.
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FORE:These resolutions may be taken as expressing the feelings of the landed gentry as a body against the Melbourne Administration and the agitators. But the latter were not idle. O'Connell had then his "Precursor Association" in full operation. It received its name from the idea that it was to be the precursor of the repeal of the union. On the 22nd of January a public dinner was given in honour of the "Liberator" in a building then called the Circus, in Dublin, for which one thousand tickets were issued. Two days later a similar banquet was given to him in Drogheda, and there he made a significant allusion to the murder of Lord Norbury, insinuating that he had met his death at the hands of one who was bound to him by the nearest of natural ties, and had the strongest interest in his removal. Mr. O'Connell volunteered the assertion that the assassin of Lord Norbury had left on the soil where he had posted himself, "not the impress of a rustic brogue [a coarse rough shoe, usually made of half-dressed leather], but the impress of a well-made Dublin boot." There was no ground whatever for the malignant assertion, which was one of those errors of judgment and of taste that too often disfigured the great "Liberator's" leadership.
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