Prorogation of ParliamentAgitation against the House of LordsO'Connell's CrusadeInquiry into the Orange LodgesReport of the CommitteeMr. Hume's MotionRenewed Attack in 1836The Lodges dissolvedLord Mulgrave in IrelandHis ProgressesWrath of the OrangemenProsperity of the CountryCondition of CanadaA Commission appointedViolence of the KingLord Gosford in CanadaHis Failure to pacify the CanadiansUpper CanadaPepys becomes Lord ChancellorOpening of ParliamentThe King's SpeechO'Connell and Mr. RaphaelThe Newspaper DutyThe Irish PoorAppointment of a CommissionIts numerous ReportsThe Third ReportPrivate Bills on the SubjectMr. Nicholls' ReportLord John Russell's BillAbandonment of the MeasureDebate on AgricultureFinanceThe Ecclesiastical CommissionIts first ReportThe Commission made permanentThe Tithe Commutation ActThe Marriage ActThe Registration ActCommercial PanicsForeign AffairsRussian AggressionOccupation of CracowDisorder in SpainRevolution in PortugalPosition of the MinistryA Speech of Sheil'sThe Church Rates BillDeath of the KingHis Treatment of the Ministry.During the time that Malcolm, Keir, Hislop, and other officers were running down the Pindarrees, Major-General Smith, who had received reinforcements at Poonah, was performing the same service against Bajee Rao, the Peishwa who had furnished Cheetoo with funds. He marched from Poonah at the end of November, 1817, accompanied by Mr. Mountstuart Elphinstone. They encountered the army of the Peishwa on the Kistnah, where his general, Gokla, had posted himself strongly in a ghaut. The pass was speedily cleared, and the army of the Peishwa made a rapid[140] retreat. The chase was continued from place to place, the Peishwa dodging about in an extraordinary manner, till, at length, he managed to get behind General Smith, and, passing between Poonah and Seroor, he was joined by his favourite Trimbukjee, whom he had long lost sight of, with strong reinforcements of both horse and infantry. General Smith, so soon as he could discover the route of the Peishwa, pursued it, but soon after the Mahrattas showed themselves again in the vicinity of Poonah. To secure that city from the Peishwa's arms, Captain F. F. Staunton was dispatched from Seroor on the last day of the year with six hundred sepoys, three hundred horse, and two six-pounders; but he was not able to reach Poonah. The very next day, the 1st of January, 1818, he found his way barred by the whole army of the Peishwa, consisting of twenty thousand horse and several thousand foot. Could they have remained a little longer, General Smith, who was on the track of the Peishwa, would have been up to support them. But in the night of the 2nd of January, having no provisions, Staunton fell back, carrying with him all his wounded and his guns, and reached Seroor by nine o'clock on the morning of the 3rd of January.
ONE:Windham, on the 3rd of April, proposed his plan for the improvement of the army. Till this time enlistments had been for life, which gave men a strong aversion to enter it, and made it the resort chiefly of such as were entrapped in drink, or were the offscouring of society, who became soldiers to enjoy an idle life and often to escape hanging for their desperate crimes. He said that we could not have recourse to conscription in this country, and to get men, and especially a better class of men, we must limit the term of service and increase the pay. To prepare the way for his contemplated regulations, he first moved for the repeal of Pitt's Additional Force Bill. This was strongly opposed by Castlereagh and Canning, who contended that nothing could be better or more flourishing than the condition of the army; and that the repeal of Pitt's Bill was only meant to cast a slur on his memory. Notwithstanding this,[519] the Bill was repealed by a majority, in the Commons, of two hundred and thirty-five against one hundred and nineteen, and in the Lords by a majority of ninety-seven against forty. Windham then moved for a clause in the annual Mutiny Bill, on the 30th of May, for limiting the terms of service. In the infantry, these terms were divided into three, of seven years each; and in the cavalry and artillery three also, the first of ten, the second of six, and the third of five years. At the end of any one of these terms, the soldier could demand his discharge, but his privileges and pensions were to be increased according to the length of his service. Notwithstanding active opposition, the clause was adopted and inserted. He then followed this success by a series of Bills: one for training a certain number of persons liable to be drawn from the militia, not exceeding two hundred thousand; a Bill suspending the ballot for the militia for England for two years, except so far as should be necessary to supply vacancies in any corps fallen below its quota; a Bill, called the Chelsea Hospital Bill, to secure to disabled or discharged soldiers their rightful pensions; a Bill for augmenting the pay of infantry officers of the regular line; and one for settling the relative rank of officers of troops of the line, militia, and yeomanry. To these Bills, which were all passed, was added a vote for the increased pay of sergeants, corporals, and privates of the line, and an augmentation of the Chelsea pensions, and the pensions of officers' widows. Lord Howick moved that the same benefits should be extended to the officers, petty officers, and seamen of the navy, and to the Greenwich pensioners, which was carried. These were, undoubtedly, most substantial measures of justice to the two services; and the results of them soon became apparent enough in their beneficial effects on the condition of the army and navy.
TWO:But on the 15th of December, only eight days later, Lord Shelburne followed up the question by moving that the alarming additions annually made to the Debt, under the name of extraordinaries incurred in different services, demanded an immediate check; that the distresses of landed and mercantile interests made the strictest economy requisite, and that the expenditure of such large sums without grants from Parliament was an alarming violation of the Constitution. He showed that these expenses bore no proportion to those of any former wars as to the services performed for them, and stated plainly that the cause was notoriousthat the greater part of the money went into the pockets of the Ministers' contracting friends. Lord Shelburne's motion was also rejected. He then gave notice for a further motion of a like nature on the 8th of February.
THREE:On the 7th of March the House of Commons went into committee on the establishment of the Duke of York, on account of his marriage. Fox united with Pitt in supporting the recommendation that twenty-five thousand pounds per annum should be added to the twelve thousand pounds which the duke already had; besides this the duke had a private yearly revenue of four thousand pounds, making altogether forty-one thousand a year, in addition to the bishopric of Osnaburg, in Germany, which had been conferred on the duke, though a layman and a soldier. Notwithstanding the union of Whigs and Tories on this occasion, the vote did not pass without some sharp remarks on the miserable stinginess of the King of Prussia, who only gave his daughter the paltry sum of twenty-five thousand pounds as a dowry, and stipulated that even that should be returned in case of the duke's death, though in that case his daughter was to have a permanent allowance of eight thousand pounds a year.
TWO:The growth of material wealth during this reign had in no degree improved the condition of the working class in any proportion to that of other classes. Landlords had greatly raised their rents, and farmers, by the high price of corn and other provisions, had grown comparatively rich, many very rich. The merchants and master manufacturers had shared liberally in the benefits of a vastly increased commerce, and the wonderful spread of manufactures; but the working manufacturers, between the high price of corn and meat, and the lowness of their wages, were in a miserable condition, and frequently, as we have seen, were driven to riot and insurrection. The handloom weavers were swamped by machinery, and those working the machinery were living in wretched houses, and in a most neglected and insanitary condition. Before the first Sir Robert Peel introduced his Bill for reforming the hours and other regulations of cotton mills, many of these worked night and day, one gang, as it was called, succeeding another at the spinning-jenny, in hot, ill-ventilated rooms. Apprentices were purchased of parishes, either children of paupers, or orphans of such, and these were kept by mill-owners, and worked long hours, one gang having to quit their beds in the morning for another gang of these poor unfortunates to turn into them. The agricultural labourers were little better off. Their habitations were of the worst description, though squires' kennels on the same estates were equal, in all sanitary conditions, to tolerable mansions. Their wages remained only some eight or ten shillings a weekwhen the wheat which they had raised was one hundred and thirty shillings per quarter, and a stone of flour of fourteen pounds cost a gold seven-shilling piece. This drove them in shoals to the workhouse, and produced a state of things that is hardly credible. Their mental and moral condition was equally deplorable. Education, either in town or country, was scarcely known. There was not a school in all the swarming region[158] of Whitechapel, and many another equally poor and populous region of London, much less in country towns and agricultural parishes. It was a settled maxim amongst the landed gentry, that education, even of the most elementary kind, would totally destroy the supply of servants; and it was gravely stated in Parliament that the plot of Thistlewood was owing to the working classes being able to read.
TWO:On the 14th of September the Russian army filed through the streets of their beloved but doomed city, with sad looks, furled banners, and silent drums, and went out at the Kolomna gate. The population followed them. Rostopschin had encouraged vast numbers already to transplant all their wealth and stores from the place, and, as his last act, he called up two prisonersa Russian traitor, and a Frenchman who had dropped hostile expressions. The Russian he ordered, with the consent of the culprit's own father, to be put to death; the Frenchman he set at liberty, telling him to go to Buonaparte and say that but one traitor had been found in Russia, and him he had seen cut to pieces. Rostopschin then mounted his horse and rode after his countrymen, having first[47] ordered all the gaols to be set open, and their wretched inhabitants to be allowed to make their escape.
The Treaty of Amiens did not for a moment, even in appearance, interrupt the unlimited plans of aggression which Buonaparte had formed. Whether these plans tended to alarm Britain or not gave him no concern whatever. The encroachments on Italy never paused. Before the signing of the Peace of Amiens, Buonaparte had made himself President of the Cisalpine Republic; and though he had pledged himself to Alexander of Russia that he would not interfere further with Piedmont, because Alexander would not entertain the scheme of co-operating with France in the march to India, as his father had done, Buonaparte seized on all Piedmont in September of this year, annexed it to France, and divided it into six Departments. Charles Emmanuel, the King of Piedmont, retired to his island of Sardinia, and then abdicated in favour of his brother Victor Emmanuel. But Victor Emmanuel would not have been left long king, even of that small territory, had it not been for the protection of Britain. In October he annexed Parma and Placentia. He next made an agreement with the[487] King of Naples for Elba, and took possession of it. Every movement of this restless being showed his intention to drive Britain out of the Mediterranean, and convert it into a French lake. But on the mainland he was equally active. There was no country on the Continent in which Buonaparte did not presume to dictate, as if he already were universal monarch. In the Diet of Germany his influence was prominently conspicuous, and he prevailed to have towns and districts transferred as he pleased. To have all the territory on the left bank of the Rhine secured to France, Prussia received valuable compensation at the expense of the German empire for the cession of the Duchy of Cleves and other provinces transferred to France. Bavaria and other minor States were benefited in the same way, because Napoleon already meant to use these States against Austria and Russia, as he afterwards did. Every endeavour was made, contrary to the articles of the Peace of Amiens, to shut out the trade of Britain, not only with Franceas he had a right to dobut with Holland, Belgium, and Germany. It was in vain that Britain remonstrated. Buonaparte, through his official organ, the Moniteur, declared that "England should have the Treaty of Amiens, the whole Treaty of Amiens, and nothing but the Treaty of Amiens"; but he interpreted this treaty to give every advantage to France to the exclusion of Britain. Half Europe was closed to British trade. It was a condition of the Treaty of Lunville that the independence of Switzerland should be respected, and this was guaranteed by the Batavian, Cisalpine, and Ligurian Republics, as well as by France and Austria. But Buonaparte had already absorbed all these republics into France, and Austria he set at defiance. He had never withdrawn the French troops from Switzerland, but whilst they remained French emissaries had continued to foment the feuds between the people and the nobles, between one canton and another. He now declared this state of things must end, and he assumed the office of umpire, to settle the affairs of the Swiss for them. He had no right to assume this officeif needed, it belonged to the other Powers of Europe as well as France; but he knew that he had the mightand he used it. At the end of September he sent General Rapp to issue a manifesto announcing that Napoleon was determined to put an end to all their differences. This manifesto was immediately followed by the appearance of General Ney at the head of forty thousand men, in addition to those already in the country. Thus Switzerland was invaded, and its constitution trodden out by an armed occupation. Buonaparte assumed the title of Mediator of the Helvetic League, and dictated his own terms to the deputies of the French party who were sent to Paris.[See larger version][See larger version]
荣誉榜
THREE:[See larger version]CHAPTER XVII. THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued).
THREE:Another topic of the speech was the mental derangement of the king, which was now asserted, on the authority of the physicians, to be more hopeless; Mr. Perceval argued, therefore, the necessity of arranging the Royal Household so as to meet the necessarily increased expenditure. Resolutions were passed granting an addition of seventy thousand pounds per annum to the queen towards such augmented expenditure, and to provide further income for the Prince Regent. Two Courts were to be maintained, and the Regent was to retain his revenue as Prince of Wales. The Civil List chargeable with the additional seventy thousand pounds to the queen was vested in the Regent; and no sooner were these particulars agreed to than he sent letters to both Houses, recommending separate provision for his sisters; so that the Civil List was at once to be relieved of their maintenance and yet increased, simply on account of the charge of a poor blind and insane old man, who could only require a trusty keeper or two. The separate income agreed to for the princesses was nine thousand pounds a-year each, exclusive of the four thousand pounds a-year each already derived from the Civil Listso that there was needed an annual additional sum of thirty-six thousand pounds for the four princesses, besides the sixteen thousand pounds a-year now being received by them. Some members observed that the grant to the Regent, being retrospective, removed altogether the merit of his declaration during the last Session of Parliament that, "considering the unexampled contest in which the[23] kingdom was now engaged, he would receive no addition to his income." In fact, little consideration was shown by any part of the royal family for the country under its enormous demands. It was understood that there was once more a deficiency in the Civil List, which would have to be made up.
