THREE:At length, after every clause of the Bill, and every word and every place in each of the schedules had been the subjects of all possible motions and discussionsafter a warfare which, for animosity and duration, was unparalleled in our Parliamentary history, the Bill was read a third time on the 21st of September, and passed by a majority of 109, the numbers being 345 to 236. The result was received with loud and long-continued cheering by the Reformers in the House. The anxious and impatient multitude in the streets caught up the sounds of triumph with exultant enthusiasm; the acclamations of all classes of the people rang throughout the agitated metropolis. The news spread like wildfire through the country, and was everywhere received with ringing of bells and other demonstrations of joy. As soon as the Bill passed an illumination of London was proposed, and an application was made to the Lord Mayor, in order to obtain his sanction, which was granted. The illumination was extensive, and those who refused to comply had their windows broken by the populace. In many places the people, whose patience had been so severely tested, began to lose their self-control, and were betrayed into riotous conduct. Mr. Macaulay, and other leading Reformers in Parliament, had warned the Opposition of this danger, and it turned out that their apprehensions were not altogether visionary.
THREE:He waited on Sir Spencer Compton with the royal command. This gentleman was confounded at the proposal to draw up the declaration to the Privy Council, and begged Walpole to do it for him. Walpole instantly recovered his spirits. He saw that such a man could never be his rival, and he advised his colleagues, if they went out of office, not to engage in any violent opposition, as they would soon be wanted again. He knew, too, that he had the queen in his favour, who was too clear-headed not to see that Walpole was alone the man for the time. To complete his favour with her he offered to procure her a jointure from Parliament of one hundred thousand pounds a year, whilst the impolitic Compton had proposed only sixty thousand pounds. The queen did not oppose the king's attempt to change the Ministry, but she impressed him with the danger of disturbing an already powerful and prosperous Cabinet, and she made him aware of the fact that Compton had been compelled to get Walpole to draw up the Declaration. Besides the liberal jointure which he promised she added that he intended to add one hundred thousand pounds to the Civil List. Horace Walpole, arriving from Paris, threw his whole weight into the scale, representing difficulties which must beset foreign negotiations in new hands. These combined circumstances told strongly on George; but the finish was put to Compton's government by his feeling overwhelmed by his own incompetence, and resigning the charge. The king had, therefore, nothing for it but to reappoint the old Ministry again. Some slight modifications took place. Lord Berkeley, who had joined the opposition of Carteret and Roxburgh, was replaced by Lord Torrington, and Compton received the title of Lord Wilmington, the Order of the Garter, and the Presidency of the Council. The coronation took place on the 11th of October, 1727.
THREE:Parliament met on the 16th of November, when the king told them that he had augmented the British forces in the Low Countries with sixteen thousand Hanoverians and six thousand Hessians. In fact, it had been his design, accompanied by his son, the Duke of Cumberland, to go over and take the command of the combined army of English, Hanoverians, Austrians, and Dutch; but the arrival of the Earl of Stair, who had been the nominal commander of these troops, and the return of Lord Carteret from the Hague, with the news that the Dutch could not be moved, had caused him to give up the idea and order his baggage on shore again. He assured Parliament, however, that the spirit and magnanimity of the Queen of Hungary, and the resolute conduct of the King of Sardinia in Italy, had produced the most beneficial effect. The usual address, proposed by the Marquis of Tweeddale, met with considerable opposition, especially in the Upper House, from the Earl of Chesterfield. Lyttelton again introduced the Place Bill, but it was rejected by the very men who had formerly advocated it. There was another motion made for inquiry into the administration of Walpole, on the plea that inquiry had been shamefully stifled on the former occasion; but it met with the same fate. But on the 10th of December the Opposition mustered all its strength on the motion of Sir William Yonge, the new Secretary at War, that we should pay for the sixteen thousand Hanoverians and the six thousand Hessians, and that a grant of six hundred and fifty-seven thousand pounds should be made for their maintenance from August, 1742, to December, 1743. It was the hard task of Sandys, as the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, to defend this monstrous grant and the interests of Hanover, after so many years of attack on these topics in opposition. Pitt answered Sandys in the most caustic style of his eloquence, and Sir John Aubyn and others followed as indignantly; but the Ministers carried the motion by two hundred and sixty votes against one hundred and ninety-three. Their ablest supporter on this occasion was Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield, who made his first parliamentary speech on the occasion, and showed the delighted Cabinet that the man whom they had just made their Solicitor-General was capable of contending with that "terrible comet of horse," Pitt.
THREE:But the Queen's Bench was by no means disposed to surrender its own privileges, even to the House of Commons. On the 24th of January Sir William Gossett, Serjeant-at-Arms, appeared at the bar of the House, and said that he had last[470] evening been served with a writ of Habeas Corpus, commanding him to bring up the bodies of the sheriffs, William Evans, Esq., and John Wheelton, Esq., then in his custody. The Attorney-General rose, and said he had no hesitation in advising the House to direct the Serjeant-at-Arms to return answer to the Court of Queen's Bench that he held these two individuals in custody by the warrant of the Speaker. He then moved a resolution to that effect, which was adopted, and the Court of Queen's Bench acquiesced.
THREE:On the 22nd of January, 1801, the first Imperial Parliament met, and Addington was re-elected Speaker. The king did not meet this Parliament till the whole of its members had been sworn; his opening of it for business took place on the 2nd of February, and his speech had no cheering topics to give spirit to its first proceedings; on the Continent there had been nothing but defeat on the part of the Allies, of triumph on that of France. Our late ally, Paul, had not only seized our merchant vessels in the ports of the Baltic, and the property of our merchants in the Russian towns, but he had entered into a league with Sweden and Denmark to close the Baltic altogether to us, and to compel us to relinquish the right of search. This confederacy, by stopping the supplies of corn from the North, threatened us with great aggravation of the distresses at home; and some members advocated the surrender of the right of search, or the acceptance of the principles of an armed neutrality, such as Catherine of Russia had endeavoured to establish. But Pitt plainly showed that to allow neutral vessels to carry arms, ammunition, and commodities of life into the ports of our enemies would render all blockades of their forts useless, and enormously increase our difficulties during war. Orders were immediately issued to send a powerful fleet into the Baltic to chastise the insane Czar.As the wind was light, the British vessels set their studding-sails, and bore down steadily on the enemy. There were of the British twenty-seven sail of the line, four frigates, one schooner, and one cutter. Of the French and Spaniards there were thirty-three sail of the line, five frigates, and two brigs; but the French vessels were in far superior condition to the old weather-worn ones of Nelson. The French had two thousand six hundred and twenty-six guns, Nelson two thousand one hundred and forty-eight. Collingwood's line first came into contact with the enemy in the Royal Sovereign, and was speedily in the midst of a desperate conflict. It was some time before Nelson's line got up, and Collingwood, amid the din of cannon and the crash of spars, turned to his captain, and said, "Rotherham, what would not Nelson give to be here?" It was just past twelve o'clock at noon as Collingwood's vessel came to close quarters with the Spanish flagship, Santa Anna, and it was more than a quarter of an hour before Nelson's ship came close up to the stupendous four-decker Spaniard, the Santissima Trinidad. He was soon in a terrible contest not only with this great ship, but with the Bucentaure, of eighty guns, the Neptune, of eighty guns, and the Redoubtable, of seventy-four guns. The Victory and Redoubtable were fast entangled together by their hooks and boom-irons, and kept up the most destructive fire into each other with double-shotted cannon. Both ships took fire; that in the Victory was extinguished, but the Redoubtable finally went down. But it was from the mizen top-mast of this vessel that one of the riflemen marked out Nelson by his stars, and shot him down. He fell on the deck, on the spot where his secretary, John Scott, had fallen dead just before. Captain Hardy, to whom Nelson had shortly before said, "Hardy, this is too warm work to last long," stooped, and observed that he hoped that he was not severely wounded. He replied, "Yes, they have done for me at last, Hardy." Hardy said he hoped not. "Yes," he answered; "my back-bone is shot through." He was carried down to the cock-pit, amongst the wounded and the dying, and laid in a midshipman's berth. The ball was found to have entered the left shoulder and to have lodged in the spine; the wound was mortal. For an hour the battle went on in its terrible fury, as the dying hero lay amid those expiring or wounded around him. He often inquired for Captain Hardy, but Hardy found it impossible, in the midst of one of the fiercest and most mortal strifes that ever was wagedthe incessant cannonades sweeping away men, masts, tackle at every momentto go down. When he was able to do it, Nelson asked how the battle went. Hardy replied, "Well, fourteen or fifteen vessels had struck." "That is well," said Nelson; "but I bargained for twenty." He then told Hardy to anchor, foreseeing that a gale was coming on; and Hardy observed that Admiral Collingwood would now take the command. At this the old commander blazed forth in the dying man for a moment. He endeavoured to raise himself in the bed, saying, "Not while I live, Hardy! No, do you anchor!" And he bade Hardy signal to the fleet this order. His last words were again to recommend Lady Hamilton and his daughter to his country, and to repeat several times, "Thank God, I have done my duty!"