ONE:The irritation which this note caused was increased by the fact that before it was communicated by Sir Henry Bulwer to the Spanish Minister, the Duke de Sotomayor, a copy of it had got into print in one of the Opposition journals. In replying to it the Duke reminded our representative that when Lord Palmerston sent the despatch in question the Spanish Cortes were sitting, the press was entirely free, and the Government had adopted a line of conduct admitted to be full of kindness and conciliation. He asked, therefore, what motive could induce the British Minister to make himself the interpreter of the feelings and opinions of a foreign and independent nation in regard to its domestic affairs, and the kind of men that should be admitted to its councils. The Spanish Cabinet, which had the full confidence of the Crown and the Cortes and had been acting in conformity with the constitution and the laws, could not see "without the most extreme surprise the extraordinary pretensions of Lord Palmerston, which led him to interfere in this manner with the internal affairs of Spain, and to support himself on inexact and equivocal data, and the qualification and appreciation of which could not, in any case, come within his province." They declined to give any account of their conduct at the instigation of a foreign Power, and declared that all the legal parties in Spain unanimously rejected such a humiliating pretension. And, he triumphantly asked, "What would Lord Palmerston say if the Spanish Government were to interfere in the administrative acts of the British Cabinet, and recommend a modification of the rgime of the State; or if it were to advise it to adopt more efficacious or more liberal measures to alleviate the frightful condition of[575] Ireland? What would he say if the representative of her Catholic Majesty in London were to qualify so harshly as your Excellency has done, the exceptional measures of repression which the English Government prepares against the aggression which threatens in the midst of its own States? What would he say if the Spanish Government were to demand, in the name of humanity, more consideration and more justice on behalf of the unfortunate people of Asia? What, in fine, would he say if we were to remind him that the late events on the Continent gave a salutary lesson to all Governments, without excepting Great Britain?"[See larger version]
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ONE:On the 1st of March Mr. Villiers, adhering to his principle, brought forward the last of those annual motions for immediate repeal which had contributed so powerfully to undermine the Corn Laws. After a spirited debate of two evenings, in the course of which Mr. Cobden warned the monopolist party that a protracted resistance would compel the Anti-Corn-Law League to maintain its agitation and concentrate its energies, the House rejected the motion by a majority of 267 to 78.At the time of this armistice, Napoleon, by the great battles of Lützen and Bautzen, had recovered his prestige sufficiently to induce the German Confederates of the Rhine to stand by him; but he was by no means what he had been. The[67] opinion of his invincibility had been irreparably damaged by the Russian campaign, and the success in these battles was not of a character to give confidence to his own army. They saw that the Allies had lost all superstitious fear of him. To assist in the negotiations of this armistice, Buonaparte sent for his two ablest heads, Fouch and Talleyrand, whom he had so long thrown from him for their sound advice. If Buonaparte could have heard, too, what was really going on in France, what were the growing feelings there, he would have been startled by a most ominous condition of things. But he had thoroughly shut out from himself the voice of public opinion, by his treatment of the press and of liberty, and he now was to suffer for it. Great Britain, on the 14th of June, had concluded an alliance with Russia and Prussia, and promised to send ample materials of assistance, even an army to the north of Prussia; and many British officers of the highest rank repaired to the headquarters of the Allies. When Great Britain was asked to take part in this negotiation she refused, declaring it useless, as Napoleon would not grant the only demands which the Allies ought to make.
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ONE:Such being the facts of the case, the Liberals came to the conclusion that a reform was inevitable. In order to adapt the Establishment to the requirements of the Protestant population, there must be a large reduction, and the surplus funds that remained ought to be applied to some object by which the moral and religious instruction of the people would be promoted. The least objectionable mode in which the money could be applied was the general education of the poor under the National Board, by which children of all denominations could be educated in harmony together, as they had been ever since its establishment. The reformers denied that there was any analogy between the revenues of the Established Church and private property. The Acts of Parliament securing those revenues had all treated them as being held in trust for the benefit of the nation; and after leaving ample means for the due execution of the trust, so far as it was really practicable, the Legislature was competent to apply the balance in accomplishing by other agency than the Protestant clergy, to some extent at least, the objects originally contemplated by the founders of the religious endowments.It remains only to notice the terminating scene of the once gay Murat, Buonaparte's gallant leader of cavalry in so many campaigns, and finally King of Naples. In consequence of plans that he had laid with Buonaparte in Elba, Murat rose on the 22nd of March of this year, and pushed forward with the intention of driving the Austrians out of Upper Italy. But Austria was well aware of what had been in progress, and, though Murat proclaimed the independence of Italy, the Italians fled from him rather than joined him. On the Po he was met by the Austrians, under General Fremont, fifty thousand strong, and defeated. He retreated rapidly towards Naples again, suffering other discomfitures, and at the same time receiving a notice from Lord William Bentinck that, as he had broken his convention with the European Powers, Britain was at war with him. To keep the Neapolitans in his interest, he drew up a liberal Constitution, on the 12th of May, amid the mountains of the Abruzzi, and sent it to Naples, where his queen, Caroline Buonaparte, proclaimed it. It was of no avail; the people, instead of assisting him, were ready to rise against him, and his soldiers every day rapidly deserted and went to their homes.
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ONE:[See larger version]CHAPTER XXI. REIGN OF GEORGE III. (continued).
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ONE:A third Bill yet remained to be carried, in order to complete the Ministerial scheme of Emancipation, and supply the security necessary for its satisfactory working. This was the Bill for disfranchising the forty-shilling freeholders, by whose instrumentality, it may be said, Emancipation was effected. It was they that returned Mr. O'Connell for Clare; it was they that would have returned the members for twenty-three other counties, pledged to support his policy. It is true that this class of voters was generally dependent upon the landlords, unless under the influence of violent excitement, when they were wrested like weapons from their hands by the priests, and used with a vengeance for the punishment of those by whom they had been created. In neither case did they exercise the franchise in fulfilment of the purpose for which it was given. In both cases those voters were the instruments of a power which availed itself of the forms of the Constitution, but was directly opposed to its spirit. Disfranchisement, however, in any circumstances, was distasteful to both Conservative and Liberal statesmen. Mr. Brougham said he consented to it in this case "as the pricealmost the extravagant price"of Emancipation; and Sir James Mackintosh remarked that it was one of those "tough morsels" which he had been scarcely able to swallow. The measure was opposed by Mr. Huskisson, Lord Palmerston, and Lord Duncannon, as not requisite, and not calculated to accomplish its object. But although Mr. O'Connell had repeatedly declared that he would not accept Emancipation if the faithful "forties" were to be sacrificed, that he would rather die on the scaffold than submit to any such measure, though Mr. Sheil had denounced it in language the most vehement, yet the measure was allowed to pass through both Houses of Parliament without any opposition worth naming; only seventeen members voting against the second reading in the Commons, and there being no division against it in the Lords. Ireland beheld the sacrifice in silence. Mr. O'Connell forgot his solemn vows, so recently registered, and, what was more strange, the priests did not remind him of his obligation. Perhaps they were not sorry to witness the annihilation of a power which landlords might use against them[302] and which agitators might wield in a way that they could not at all times control. There had been always an uneasy feeling among the prelates and the higher clergy at the influence which Mr. O'Connell and the other lay agitators had acquired, because it tended to raise in the people a spirit of independence which rendered them sometimes refractory as members of the Church, and suggested the idea of combination against their own pastors, if they declined to become their leaders in any popular movement. The popular leaders in Ireland, however, consoling themselves with the assurance that many of the class of "bold peasantry" which they had glorified would still enjoy the franchise as ten-pound freeholders, consented, reluctantly of course, to the extinction of 300,000 "forties." They considered the danger of delay, and the probability that if this opportunity were missed, another might not occur for years of striking off the shackles which the upper classes of Roman Catholics especially felt to be so galling.
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