ONE:But the Comprehension Bill was not so fortunate. Ten bishops, with twenty dignified clergymen, were appointed as a commission to make such alterations in the liturgy and canons, and such plans for the reformation of the ecclesiastical courts as, in their opinion, best suited the exigencies of the times, and were necessary to remove the abuses, and render more efficient the services of the Church. The list of these commissioners comprised such men as Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Sharp, Kidder, Hall, Tenison, and Fowler. They met in the Jerusalem Chamber, and began their labours preparatory to this great comprehensive bill. In order to sanction these changes, Convocation was summoned, and then the storm broke loose. The Jacobites and the discontented cried out they were going to pull the Church down; the High Churchmen declared it was a scheme to hand over the Church to the Presbyterians; the Universities cried that all the men engaged in the plan were traitors to the true faith, and the king himself was not spared. The High Churchmen who were included in the commission fled out of it amain, and Convocation threw out the whole reform as an abomination. Convocation having given this blow to all hopes of ecclesiastical reform, was prorogued to the 24th of January, 1690, and on the 6th of February was dissolved with the Parliament, nor was it suffered to meet again for business till the last year of the reign of William.[See larger version]
TWO:In one respect the general election happened at an unseasonable time. It was the driest and warmest summer on record. On the 28th of June, the hottest day in the year, the thermometer stood at eighty-nine and a half degrees in the shade. Several deaths were occasioned by sunstroke; among the victims were a son of Earl Grey, and Mr. Butterworth, the eminent law bookseller, a candidate for Dover. The elections were carried on in many places with great spirit. But, though there were exciting contests, the struggles were not for parties, but for measures. There were three great questions at issue before the nation, and with respect to these pledges were exacted. The principal were the Corn Laws, Catholic Emancipation, and the Slave Trade. In England and Wales one hundred and thirty-three members were returned who had never before sat in Parliament. This large infusion of new blood showed that the constituencies were in earnest. In Ireland the contests turned chiefly on the Catholic question. The organisation of the Catholic Association told now with tremendous effect. In every parish the populace were so excited by inflammatory harangues, delivered in the chapel on Sundays, after public worship, both[254] by priests and laymenthe altar being converted into a platformthat irresistible pressure was brought to bear upon the Roman Catholic electors. The "forty-shilling freeholders" had been multiplied to an enormous extent by the landlords for electioneering purposes. Roman Catholic candidates being out of the question, and the Tory interest predominant in Ireland, electioneering contests had been hitherto in reality less political than personal. They had been contests for pre-eminence between great rival families; consequently, farms were cut up into small holdings, because a cabin and a potato garden gave a man who was little better than a pauper an interest which he could swear was to him worth forty shillings a year. The Protestant landlords who pursued this selfish course little dreamt that the political power they thus created would be turned with terrible effect against themselves; and they could scarcely realise their position when, in county after county, they were driven from the representation, which some of them regarded as an inheritance almost as secure as their estates. The most powerful family in Ireland, and the most influential in the Government, was that of the Beresfords, whose principal estates lay in the county Waterford, and where no one would imagine that their candidate could be opposed with the least prospect of success. But on this occasion they suffered a signal defeat. The forty-shilling freeholders, as well as the better class of Roman Catholic farmers, were so excited by the contest that they went almost to a man against their landlords. In many cases they had got their holdings at low rents on the express condition that their vote should be at the disposal of the landlord. But all such obligations were given to the winds. They followed their priests from every parish to the hustings, surrounded and driven forward by a mass of non-electors armed with sticks and shouting for their church and their country. O'Connell was now in his glory, everywhere directing the storm which he had raised. When the contest was over, many of the landlords retaliated by evicting the tenants who had betrayed their trust and forfeited their pledges. They were tauntingly told that they might go for the means of living to O'Connell and the priests. This was a new ingredient in the cauldron of popular discontent, disaffection, and agrarian crime. The gain of the Catholic party in Ireland, however, was more than counterbalanced by the gain of the opposite party in England and Scotland.
ONE:WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM.
TWO:The year 1792 opened in England with a state of intense anxiety regarding the menacing attitude of affairs in France. There were all the signs of a great rupture with the other Continental nations; yet the king, in opening Parliament, on the 31st of January, did not even allude to these ominous circumstances, but held out the hope of continued peace. George III. stated that he had been engaged with some of his allies in endeavouring to bring about a pacification between the Russians and Austrians with Turkey, and that he hoped for the conclusion of the war in India against Tippoo Sahib, ere long, through the able management of Lord Cornwallis. He also announced the approaching marriage of the Duke of York with the eldest daughter of the King of Prussia. Grey and Fox, in the debate upon the Address, condemned strongly our interference on behalf of Turkeya state which they contended ought, from its corruption, to be allowed to disappear. They also expressed a strong opinion that the war in India would not be so soon terminated. Fox was very severe on the treatment of Dr. Priestley and the Dissenters at Birmingham, declaring the injuries[389] done to Priestley and his friends equally disgraceful to the nation and to the national Church. He passed the highest encomiums on the loyalty of the Dissenters. Pitt regretted the outrages at Birmingham, but slid easily over them to defend the support of Turkey as necessary to the maintenance of the balance of power in Europe; and he concluded the debate by stating that the revenue of the last year had been sixteen million seven hundred and seventy thousand pounds, and that it left nine hundred thousand pounds towards the liquidation of the National Debt.In the south-east of Spain the motley army of British and Sicilians had done sufficient to keep the attention of Suchet engaged, so that he could not quit that post to follow and assist Soult against the main British army. Lord Wellington had instructed Sir George Murray to embark his troops at Alicante, and, sailing to Tarragona, endeavour to make himself master of it; if he found the French too strong in that quarter to enable him to effect his purpose, he was to re-embark, return to Valencia, and then attack the French lines on the Xucar before Suchet could make the long march which would be necessary to support them. Murray had had his army weakened by the withdrawal of two thousand troops by Lord William Bentinck, very unnecessarily, to Sicily; but he undertook these man?uvres, and might have succeeded in capturing Tarragona, but, alarmed at a rumour of Suchet and General Mathieu having combined their forces, and being in march against him, he abandoned the place panic-stricken, and, in spite of the indignant remonstrances of Admiral Hallowell, embarked his troops in the utmost precipitation. Lord William Bentinck arrived on the 17th of June, immediately after the embarkation, but not in time to save nineteen pieces of artillery, which Murray had abandoned in the trenches. Lord Bentinck battered down Fort Balaguer, and then sailed away to Alicante, leaving the Spanish general exposed to the enemy, but he saved himself by escaping into the mountains. For this conduct, Sir George Murray on his return to England was tried by court-martial, and gently reprimanded, but nothing more.
ONE:There only needed now one thing to render the expedition triumphant, and place the Hudson from Albany to New York in the absolute power of the British armythat General Howe should have been prepared to keep the appointment[242] there with a proper fleet and armed force. But Howe was engaged in the campaign of Philadelphia, and seems to have been utterly incapable of conducting two such operations as watching Washington and supporting Burgoyne. As soon as Burgoyne discovered this fatal want of co-operation on the part of Howe, he ought to have retreated to the lakes, but he still determined to advance; and before doing so, he only awaited the coming up of the artillery and baggage under General Philips, and of Colonel St. Leger, who had been dispatched by the course of the Oswego, the Oneida Lake, and Wood Creek, and thence by the Mohawk river, which falls into the Hudson between Saratoga and Albany. St. Leger had two hundred regularsSir John Johnson's Royal Queen's and Canadian Rangerswith him, and a body of Indians under Brandt. St. Leger, on his way, had laid siege to Fort Schuyler, late Fort Stanwix, near the head of the Mohawk. General Herkimer raised the militia of Tryon county, and advanced to the relief of the place.At length, then, after all his marvellous doublings, O'Connell was hunted into the meshes of the law. He was convicted of sedition, having pleaded guilty, but was not called up for judgment. This was made a charge against the Government; with how little reason may be seen from the account of the matter given by Lord Cloncurry. The time at which he should have been called up for judgment did not arrive till within a month or two of the expiration of the statute under which he was convicted, and which he called the "Algerine Act." In these circumstances, Lord Cloncurry strongly urged upon the Viceroy the prudence of letting him escape altogether, as his incarceration for a few weeks, when he must be liberated with the expiring Act, "would only have the appearance of impotent malice, and, while it might have created dangerous popular excitement, would but have added to his exasperation, and have given him a triumph upon the event of his liberation that must so speedily follow."
TWO:The first symptom of the breaking up was the[287] necessity felt for the dismissal of Lord George Germaine, who had contributed so essentially to the defeats in America. But even then the king would not consent that he should resign without conferring a peerage on him, observing, "No one can then say he is disgraced." No quiet was now allowed to the declining Ministers. Fox, on the 20th of February, strongly seconded by William Pitt, made another attack on Lord Sandwich, this time including the whole Board of Admiralty; and the motion was only lost by nineteen. Another, and perhaps more formidable, enemy now stood forward. This was General Conway, who enjoyed the highest esteem of the House, and had been the first to propose the abolition of the fatal Stamp Act. He moved, on the 22nd of February, that the House should address his Majesty, entreating that he would "listen to the advice of his Commons, that the war on the continent of North America might no longer be pursued for the impracticable purpose of reducing the inhabitants of that country to obedience by force." After a great debate, the House divided two hours after midnight, and Ministers were reduced to a majority of one, the votes being one hundred and ninety-four against one hundred and ninety-three. Five days after, General Conway again moved that any further attempts against America would weaken the efforts of England against her European enemies, and, by further irritating the colonies, render the desired peace more difficult. The resolution was carried against Government by two hundred and thirty-four against two hundred and fifteen. Finally, on the 15th of March Sir John Rous moved a vote of want of confidence, which was again lost by a minority of only nine. It was instantly determined to renew this motion through Lord Surrey; and Lord North saw so clearly that nothing could now avert his fall, that he implored the king most earnestly to accept his resignation. George sent for Lord North on the 20th, and addressed him in these words:"Considering the temper of the House, I thought the Administration at an end." Lord North instantly seized on the words, saying:"Then, sire, had I not better state the fact at once?" The king consented, and North hurried down to the House of Commons in his court-dress, as he was.Before the conclusion of this treaty Pitt had made another effort to obtain peace with France. The fact that one ally, Austria, was engaged in separate negotiations gave him a fair excuse, and Lord Malmesbury was once more sent to negotiate. He went to Lille, presented his plan of a treaty, and at first all went well. Britain promised to restore all her conquests with the exception of Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope, and Trinidad. But the Directory suffered the negotiations to drag on, and when intestine struggles in France had been terminated in the triumph of the Republican party on the 18th Fructidor (September 4), the negotiations were suddenly broken off on the ground that Malmesbury had not full authority. Once more the war party in France had gained the day, and the weary contest was resumed.
