ONE:
TWO:After violent debates on the subject of Catholic emancipation, but with the usual negative result, Parliament was prorogued on the 24th of July. Ministers proceeded to prosecute the war in the Peninsula with increased vigour. Lord Wellington needed all the support they could give him. Notwithstanding his success and the millions of money that Great Britain was sending to Portugal, the Portuguese Government continued to annoy him, and showed itself as ignorant, as meddling and as unthankful as the Spaniards had done. Though he and his army were the sole defence of the country, which would at once have been overrun by the French were he not there, and though he was fighting their battles and defending their persons at the expense of England, they appeared to have not the slightest sense of these obligations, but continued to pester him on every possible occasion. They endeavoured to compel him to maintain the Portuguese army, too, by themselves neglecting to furnish it with pay and provisions. They demanded to have the expenditure of the very money remitted for the needs of the British forces. They raised a vast clamour because the soldiers cut down timber for firewood. To all these disgraceful annoyances Lord Wellington replied with a wonderful command of temper, but with firmness and plain-spokenness. His dispatches abound with complaints of the scurvy treatment of the Portuguese authorities. The aspect of things in Spain was worse. There the Spaniards continued to lose every force that they raised, but nevertheless to criticise all the movements of Wellington as if they knew, or had shown, that they understood the management of campaigns better than he did. In fact, if the interests of Spain and Portugal alone had been concerned, the best thing would have been to have quietly withdrawn, and have left the French to trample on them, as a proper punishment for their stupid and ignorant pride. But the attention which Wellington compelled Buonaparte to give to the Peninsula, and the constant drain which this war was to him of men and money, were enabling Russia, and Sweden, and the north of Germany to prepare for another and decisive struggle with the oppressor.
THREE:The National Assembly commenced its sittings on the 4th of May in a temporary wooden structure erected for the purpose. One of its first acts was to pass a resolutionthat the Provisional Government had deserved well of the country. But the revolutionary passions out of doors were far from being appeased. Secret societies and clubs were actively at work, and on the 11th of May a placard appeared, citing a proclamation of the Provisional Government dated the 25th of February, in which it unwisely undertook "to guarantee labour for all the citizens," and proceeding thus:"The promises made on the barricades not having been fulfilled, and the National Assembly having refused, in its sitting on the 10th of May, to constitute a Ministry of Labour, the delegates of the Luxembourg decline to assist at the fte called 'de la Concorde.'" On the 15th of May the Chamber was invaded by a body of men, carrying banners in their hands, and shouting for Poland. The President put on his hat, and the Assembly broke up. After a short time he returned. The National Guard appeared in force, and quickly cleared the hall. After these measures were taken to suppress the counter-revolution, the Assembly resumed its labours. A proclamation was issued, stating that the National Guard, the Garde Mobile, all the forces in Paris and the neighbourhood, had driven before them the insane conspirators, who concealed their plots against liberty under the pretence of zeal for Poland.
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