ONE:Walpole ridiculed the notion which had gone abroad that the revenue officers would be increased into quite a standing army, and would endanger the common liberty by their being empowered to enter private dwellings to search for concealed excisable articles. He said the increase would be only a hundred and twenty-six persons and that the Customs now possessed more searching power than he proposed to give to the Excise.No sooner was this treaty signed than Junot was ordered to cross the Bidassoa with thirty thousand men, and march through Spain for the Portuguese frontier. Two additional armies, partly of French and partly of Spaniards, supported him, and another army of forty thousand was stationed at Bayonne, intended, it was said, to act as an army of reserve, in case the British should land and attempt to defend Portugal, but in reality it was intended for the subjugation of Spain itself. Junot, who had formerly been Buonaparte's ambassador at the Court of Lisbon, made rapid marches through Spain. The Prince Regent of Portugal, knowing that resistance was in vain, sent the Marquis of Marialva to state to the Courts of France and Spain that he had complied with the whole of their demands, as regarded the admission of British goods, and demanded the arrest of the march of the invading army. But no notice was taken of this, and Junot pushed on with such speed as to exhaust his troops with fatigue. He was anxious to seize the persons of the royal family, and therefore this haste, accompanied by the most solemn professions of his coming as the friend and ally of Portugalas the protector of the people from the yoke of the British, the maritime tyrants of Europe.
FORE:In architecture the first place is due to the patriarch of the science, Sir John Soane, who was[434] employed in erecting or improving numerous public edifices in the metropolis and elsewhere. The atrocious law-courts, which he added to Westminster Hall, were happily removed in 1883. In 1826 he built the Freemasons' Hall, in Great Queen Street, having been chosen grand superintendent of works to the fraternity of Freemasons some years before. In 1833 he completed the State Paper Office in St. James's Park. He was now in his eightieth year, and he retired from the active labours of the profession in which he had been engaged for sixty years, during forty-five of which he had been in the service of the Bank of England. At his death, which occurred on January 20th, 1837, his house and museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields became the property of the public.
FORE:"The Minister might ask Parliament for power to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and to place all Ireland under military law. To ask for less would be ridiculous; because the Act against unlawful assemblies had failed, and, on account of its helplessness, was suffered to expire. Now, would Parliament grant such extensive powers to any Government merely that the Government might be enabled to debar his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects a little longer from enjoying equal political privileges with Protestants? The issue was very doubtfulperhaps it was not doubtful at all. Parliament would never grant such powers. But, assuming that the powers were given, what must follow?a general insurrection, to be put down after much bloodshed and suffering, and then a return to that state of sullen discontent which would render Ireland, ten times more than she had ever been, a millstone round the neck of Great Britain, and by-and-by, when military law ceased, and the same measure of personal liberty was granted to Irishmen which the natives of England and Scotland enjoyed, a renewal of agitation, only in a more hostile spirit, and the necessity of either reverting again and again to measures of coercion, or of yielding at last what, upon every principle of humanity and common sense, ought not to have been thus far withheld. But the Minister, if the existing Parliament refused to give him the powers which he asked, might dissolve, and go to the country with a strong Protestant cry; and this cry might serve his purpose in England and Scotland. Doubtless; but what would occur in Ireland?the return of Roman Catholic members in the proportion of four to one over Protestants, and the virtual disfranchisement thereby of four-fifths of the Irish people. Would Ireland submit quietly to any law carried against herself in a House of Commons so constituted? Was it not much more probable that a dissolution would only lead to the same results which had been shown to be inevitable in the event of the existing Parliament acquiescing in the Ministers' views? And was there not, at all events, a chance that the electors, even, of England and Scotland, might refuse to abet a policy so pregnant with danger to themselves and to the commonwealth? But why move at all? Mr. O'Connell had been elected by the priests and rabble of Clare to represent them in Parliament. Let him retain this empty honour; or, better still, let him be summoned by a call of the House to the bar, and, on his refusal to take the oaths, issue a new writ, and go to a new election. In the first place, Mr. O'Connell could not be forced to attend to a call of the House, such call being obligatory only on members chosen at a general election; and in the next, if he did attend, what then? As soon as the new writ was issued, he would take the field again as a candidate, and again be elected; and so the game would continue to be played, till a dissolution occurred, when all those consequences of which we have elsewhere spoken would inevitably come to pass."
FORE:The English Dissenters were led, notwithstanding the difference in creed, to sympathise to a considerable extent with Irish Catholics in their agitation against the Church establishment. Dissenters felt particularly aggrieved by the tests which debarred them from obtaining University degrees, which, they justly contended, should be attainable as a matter of right on equal grounds by citizens of all denominations. A petition was presented by Lord Grey on the 21st of March in the Upper House, and by Mr. Spring-Rice on the 24th in the Commons; but no step was taken in consequence till after the Easter recess, when Colonel Williams moved an Address to the Crown, praying that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge should no longer act under the letters of James I. Mr. Wood moved an amendment to the effect that it was more advisable to proceed by Bill, which was carried by a large majority; but before anything could be done the exclusive spirit of both Universities was roused to a pitch of violent excitement, and in the midst of the controversial storm the quiet voice of reason could not be heard. Mr. Stanley could not see why a man should sign the Thirty-Nine Articles in order to obtain a literary degree, and he deprecated the idea that such a subscription should be regarded as a mere matter of form. Sir Robert Peel was not yet prepared to carry out fully the principle of religious equality. The Bill, he argued, would give to Jews, infidels, and atheists a statutable right of demanding admission into our Universities. Dissenters had been freed from all civil disabilities by the repeal of the Test Acts, and the Roman Catholics by the Emancipation Act; a vast change had been effected in the constitution of Parliament by the Reform Act: and after all those concessions, were they now to be deprived of an Established Church? What was the essence of an Established Church? What but the legislative recognition of it on the part of the State? Parliament was therefore entitled to say to the Dissenters, "With that legislative recognition you shall not interfere." In a brief speech, full of sound sense, Lord Althorp showed the absurdity of those arguments and apprehensions. The second reading of the Bill was carried by a majority of 321 to 194. It was opposed by the Speaker in committee, but having there received some amendments, it was read a third time and passed on the 28th of July by a majority of 164 against 75. In the Lords it was denounced by the Duke of Gloucester, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, who moved that it be read a second time that day six months. He was followed by the Duke of Wellington, Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Lord Brougham ably defended the measure, but in vain. The Bill was rejected by a majority of 187 against 85. An attempt made by Lord Althorp to abolish church-rates, and to grant in lieu thereof the sum of 250,000 from the land-tax, to effect a[376] commutation of tithes, and to allow Dissenters to get married in their own chapels, was equally unsuccessful.But a brave and liberal member of the peerage, Earl Stanhope, did not flinch from endeavouring to get repealed a number of these disgraceful evidences of Church bigotry, which still cumbered the Statute book from long past periods. In May, 1789, a few days after Mr. Beaufoy's second defeat on the question of the Test and Corporation Acts, Lord Stanhope proposed "a Bill for relieving members of the Church of England from sundry penalties and disabilities to which, by the laws now in force, they may be liable, and for extending freedom in matters of religion to all personsPapists only exceptedand for other purposes therein mentioned." His Lordship had given notice of his intention to introduce such a Bill in the previous February, as Mr. William Smith had done in the Commons, when what was called the Uniformity Clause in the Regency Bill was discussed, contending that this clause, which prohibited the Regent from giving the Royal Assent to the repeal of the Act for Uniformity passed in the reign of Charles II., might prevent the repeal of a preceding Act, of a very bigoted character, of a previous date. The Bishops, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at their head, opposed his intention,[161] contending that this was not a proper time for such a discussion. Lord Stanhope now detailed the names, dates, and characters of the Acts which he had in view. They were these:The Act of 1 Elizabeth, ordering every person to go to church, and imposing a fine of twenty poundsa very large sum thenon any one above the age of sixteen absenting himself or herself from church for a month; and in case of non-payment, ordering the imprisonment of the offender till the fine were paid, or the offender conformed. In case of twelve months' absence, the offender was to be bound in a bond of two hundred pounds, with two sureties, for his compliance in future. By the 23 Elizabeth these penalties were made still more rigorous, and by the 35th of her reign, all persons who absented themselves for a month were liable not only to the twenty pounds a month, but that money might be refused, if tendered, and the offender be deprived of two-thirds of his lands, tenements, and hereditaments, instead of the twenty pounds. By the 3 James I. these abominable powers were extended, and every person was made amenable for every visitor, servant, and servant of visitors to his or her house, and should be compelled to pay 10 per month for the non-attendance at church of each of them; and over and above all these penalties, the ecclesiastical courts might as fully exercise their jurisdiction over these offenders as if no such special Acts existed.
