FORE:[See larger version]Still, Fox took the opportunity to sound the French Government as to the possibility of peace. In a correspondence with Talleyrand he said that Britain would be willing to treat on reasonable terms, the first condition of which was that the Emperor Alexander should be admitted to the treaty. This was at once refused; yet Fox did not give up the attempt, and at length the French Government proposed that a British ambassador should go to Paris, to endeavour to arrange the principles of an agreement. Fox complied. Before a British plenipotentiary was[518] permitted to proceed to Paris, the great points of the negotiation should have been brought forward, and it should have been seen whether there was a probability of agreeing. It should have been understood whether Buonaparte was disposed to surrender Naples again, which Britain demanded; to require the retirement of the Prussians from Hanover, even if nothing was said of Holland and Switzerland. To send a plenipotentiary without having ascertained these points was simply to enable Buonaparte to boast that he had sought to conciliate, and that British rapacity and ambition rendered all his overtures useless. This was exactly what occurred. Lord Yarmouth, late Marquis of Hertford, who had been residing for years in France as one of Buonaparte's dtenus at the Peace of Amiens, was first sent. Lord Yarmouth arrived in Paris towards the end of May, and though it had been settled that the negotiations should, for the present, remain secret, the French had taken care to make every Court in Europe well acquainted with the fact. Then one of the very first demandshaving got the ambassador therewas for the recognition, not only of Buonaparte as emperor, but also of all his family as princes and princesses of the blood. Next they came to the surrender of Naples, but Talleyrand assured Lord Yarmouth that the Emperor, so far from giving up Naples, or any part of Italy, must have Sicily, which was in possession of the British, because Joseph Buonaparte, now made King of Naples, declared that it could not be held without Sicily. France, Talleyrand said, would consent to Britain holding Malta, the Cape of Good Hope, which we had taken again, and would not only restore Hanover to us, but also allow us to seize on the Hanse Towns and Hamburg! We were in fact, to be permitted to set up for marauders, like themselves, and invade neutral States, and appropriate them; but, as for Naples or Sicily being restored, that was impossible. Lord Yarmouth also demanded that Dalmatia, Istria, and Albania should be restored, the last to the Turks, whose empire should regain its entirety. These points were equally resisted. Meanwhile, Prussia had taken the alarm about Hanover, and Russia, fearful of our treating without her, sent to Paris Count d'Oubril. Talleyrand managed to excite jealousies between the British and Russian envoys, to such a degree, that d'Oubril quitted Paris hastily, and returned to St. Petersburg. Instead of peace, the elements of new heartburnings and wars every day developed themselves. Finding that Lord Yarmouth did not succeed. Fox sent over the Earl of Lauderdale, but he got on no better. Buonaparte insisted that Sicily should be given up to Naples, and a little mock monarchy should be created for Ferdinand, the ex-king, in the Balearic Isles, which were to be taken unceremoniously from Spain. Lord Lauderdale, after a month's waste of words, demanded his passports, and returned; and Fox had now had ample proof that no peace was to be effected with Napoleon, except upon the terms of leaving the Continent to his dictation.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:[See larger version]
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:By permission of Messrs. S. Hildesheimer & Co., Ltd.To such a pitch of folly and despotism had the Grafton Ministry been driven by the events of the Session of 1769, by their conduct towards the Americans and Wilkes. The Rockinghams and Grenvilles were combined against the Grafton Cabinet, and thus acquiring popularity at its expense. Lord Camden, though still retaining his place, utterly disapproved of their proceedings. The people everywhere held meetings to express their total loss of confidence in both the Ministers and Parliament, and to pray the king to dissolve the latter. In the autumn, the action of Wilkes against Lord Halifax, for the seizure of his papers, was tried, and the jury gave him four thousand pounds damages.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:In the session of 1719 Stanhope and his colleagues tried to undo the arbitrary measures of 1711 and 1714the Occasional Conformity Bill and the Schism Bill. Stanhope would have made a strenuous effort to abolish not only these laws, but the Test Act itself; but Sunderland, though equally liberal, was more prudent, and showed that, to attempt too much was to ruin all; and when they came to introduce their greatly modified measurethat of annulling only some of the less prominent clauses of the Test Act under the name of a Bill for strengthening the Protestant interestthey found so much opposition that Sunderland's discernment was fully justified. Not only the two archbishops and some of the bishops opposed the measure, but the great Whigs, the Duke of Devonshire and Earl Cowper. Cowper, though he expressed himself willing to abolish the Schism Bill, stood stoutly for the Test and Corporation Acts as the very bulwarks of our constitution in Church and State; whilst the Earl of Islay declared even this moderate measure a violation of the union with Scotland. On the other hand, the Bishops Hoadley, Willis, Gibson, and Kennett supported the Bill, which, however, was not carried without considerable mutilation; and had Stanhope introduced such a measure as he proposed, including even considerable relief to Catholics, the whole would have been lost.
Cras consequat iaculis lorem, id vehicula erat mattis quis. Vivamus laoreet velit justo, in ven e natis purus.
FORE:Monsieur and the Duke of Orleans hastened to Lyons, and the Duke of Angoulme to Nìmes. Corps of volunteers were called out, and an address[90] to the people was composed by Benjamin Constant, calling on them to defend their liberties against Buonaparte; and a woman on the staircase of the Tuileries exclaimed, "If Louis has not men enough to fight, let him call out the widows and childless mothers who have been rendered such by Napoleon!" Meanwhile the conspiracy of General l'Allemand and his brother at Lille, to carry over the garrison of eight thousand men to Napoleon, was discovered by General Mortier, and defeated. Had this plot succeeded, Louis and his family must have been made prisoners. But that was the extent of the adhesion to the Bourbon cause.
FORE:The benevolent exertions of Lord Stanhope on behalf of the Society of Friends were, in 1796that is, six years laterrevived in the House of Commons by Mr. Serjeant Adair. He stated that seven of the people called Quakers were prisoners in the gaol at York for not paying tithes, and unless some alteration in the laws on that subject took place, they might lie there till they died. In fact, one of these Friends, named Joseph Brown, did die in the prison, and his death is the subject of a poem by James Montgomery. Mr. Serjeant Adair moved, on the 26th of April, for leave to bring in a Bill to extend the provisions of the Act 7 and 8 William III., by which tithes could be recovered by distraint when amounting to ten pounds, to tithes of any amount. Wilberforce, Pitt, Dolben, and others, usually opposed to concessions, spoke in favour of the Bill. Sir Philip Francis only opposed it on the ground that the petitioners probably did not entertain any serious objection to paying tithes, but only wanted to look like martyrs. The Bill went on swimmingly till it was about going into committee, on the 10th of May, when Francis rose again. A new light had burst upon him. He said that he had learnt that the Bill did not proceed from the suffering individuals, but from the yearly meeting of the Society itselfas if that were any solid objection, and as if a measure ought not to come with more weight from a whole suffering community than from a few individuals! The Bill readily passed the Commons, but no sooner did it appear in the Lords than the Bishops fell foul of it. The Archbishop of Canterbury saw danger to the Church in it, and moved that it be read that day three months, and this was carried. Thus the Bill was[164] lost for that Session. Adair brought in a fresh Bill for the same object, into the new Parliament, in October, but this was thrown out.
FORE:When Washington arrived at the camp at Cambridge, instead of twenty thousand men, which he expected on his side, he found only sixteen thousand, and of these only fourteen thousand fit for duty. He describes them as "a mixed multitude of people under very little order or government." They had no uniforms; and Washington recommended Congress to send them out ten thousand hunting-shirts, as giving them something of a uniform appearance. There was not a single dollar in the military chest; the supply of provisions was extremely deficient and uncertain. There was a great want of engineering tools; and he soon discovered that the battle of Bunker's Hill, which, at a distance, was boasted of as a victory, had been a decided defeat. He immediately set about to reduce this discouraging chaos into new order. Assisted by General Lee, he commenced by having prayers read at the head of the respective regiments every morning. He broke up the freedom which confounded officers and men; he compelled subordination by the free use of the lash, where commands would not serve. He kept them daily at active drill. He laboured incessantly to complete the lines, so that very soon it would be impossible for the enemy to get between the ranks. But the great andif the English generals had been only properly awakethe fatal want was that of powder. Washington found that they had but nine rounds of powder to a musket, and next to none for the artillery. "The world," said Franklin, "wondered that we so seldom fired a cannon; why, we could not afford it!" And all this was disclosed to General Gage by a deserter, and he still lay in a profound slumber! The Ministry at home, scarcely more awake to the real danger, were yet astonished at his lethargy; and they recalled him under the plea of consulting him on the affairs of the colony. He sailed from Boston in October, leaving the chief command to General Howe.
FORE:In the meantime the nation began to form itself rapidly into two partiesReformers and Anti-Reformers. The Tories were all reunited, driven together by the sense of a common danger; divisions occasioned by the currency and agricultural distress were all forgottenall merged in one mighty current of Conservative feeling. The whole strength of that party rallied under the leadership of Sir Robert Peel. His bitterest opponents, such as Lord Winchilsea and Sir Edward Knatchbull, were among the most ardent and cordial of his allies. On the other hand, the Reformers were in transports of joy and exultation. "I honestly confess," said Mr. John Smith, "that when I first heard the Ministerial proposal, it had the effect of taking away my breath, so surprised and delighted was I to find the Ministers so much in earnest." This was the almost universal feeling among Reformers, who comprised the mass of the middle and working classes. No Bill in the Parliamentary annals of Britain was ever honoured like this. It was accepted by universal suffrage as the Charter of Reform. Every clause, every sentence, every word in it was held sacred; and the watchword at every meeting was, "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill." Petitions were got up in every town, and almost every parish, some of them bearing twenty thousand or thirty thousand signatures, demanding the passing of the Bill untouched and unimpaired.
FORE:
