Cornell University Library DA 520.M38 Introduction to the History of the peace 3 1924 028 001 323 .¥2 ^"^ Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028001323 INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTOHY OF THE PEACE. FROM 1800 TO 1815. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU. LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT, 90, FLEET STREET, 1851. ^ CONTENTS. BOOK I. 1790 — 1800. Page Balancing System i Russia ii Austria iii Prussia iv England ib. France , v Minor European Powers vi French Revolution ib. Napoleon Bonaparte ib. Made FirstConsul vii Proposal of Peace ib. His Successes ix Condition of England xi Mr. Pitt ib. Sedition ib. Financial DiflSculty xii Mutiny ;'f'' ib. Irish Rebellion ib. The Royal Family xiii Landowners xiv Tradesmen , ib. Farmers ib. Agricultural Improvement ib. Cotton Manufacture ib. Operatives xv Woollen Manufacture ib. Silk ib. Hai'dware xvi Condition of Middle Class ib. Of Industrial Classes ib. Military Liabilities xvii Severity of the Law ib. Health xviii Ireland xix The Union xx Temper of the Times xxii 1801 Mr. Pitt xxiv The Catholic Question in the Cabi- net xxvii Page Proposed Change of Ministry xxviii Illness of the King xxx The Northern Confederacy xxxii English Fleet in the Baltic xxxiii Battle of Copenhagen ib. Armistice , xxxv Pacific Convention xxxvi Expedition to Egypt xxxvii Battle of Abookeer xxxviii Death of Abercromby ib. French Evacuation of Egypt ib. Mr. Pitt's Resignation xxxix Mr. Addington ib. Peace Negotiations xl Preliminaries signed ib. Terms of the Treaty of Amiens ... xliii Definitive Treaty signed ib. 1801—6. The Irish Union xliv Discontents of various Parties xlv Opinions of the Government xlvii French Tampering ib. The Emraetts xlix Plot ib. Outbreak li Lord Kilwarden ib. Results lii Coercion 1;;; Catholics stirred up jb. Currency Troubles ib. Dukt of Bedford Viceroy liv 1801—4. Precariousness of the Peace Iv Bantry Bay Mutiny ...,. ib. Foreign Travel „ Ivi Dissolution of Parliament Ivii Weakness of the Premier Iviii French Requisitions lix Peltier Ix French Aggressions ib. King's Message Ix" IV CONTENTS. Pace Negotiation with Mr. Pitt Ixii Stock Exctange Hoax Ixiv War declared J"" Holland 'b- Preparations for War .' l^v The Prince of Wales ^^'^_]] The English in France l^viu First Naval Captures ^b- Loss of Hanover ^^^^ British Policy ^^^. The Duke of Kent l^^i Position of the Heir Apparent ... A- Colonel Despard's Plot Ixxiii Execution of Governor Wall ill- Prorogation of Parliament Ixxiv State of Parties i^- The Grenville Letter Ixxvi Royal Anxieties ^^^\^. Meeting of Parliament Ixxviii Force of theCountry Ixxix The King's Illness 1^^ New Co-operation Ixxxi Last Days of the Addington Mi- nistry ■'''• Debate on the Defence of the Country l™i New Administration Ixxxiv Position of Mr. Pitt Ixxxv Loss of West India Ships ib. Incidents in France lO- Solemn Ceremonials in London ... Ixxxvii 1804—6. Napoleon Emperor Ixxxix Mr. Pitt as War Minister xc Additional Force Bill '■^• National Condition ^O) Continental Alliances ''m The Catamaran Expedition lO- Eelations with Spain xcui Seizure of Treasure Ships xciv Reconciliation of Pitt and Ad- dington ^°y Declaration of War with Spain xcvu Naval Administration xcix Lord Melville i^- Motion of Censure .."^ Lord Melville's Defence cm His Impeachment civ Resignation of Lord Sidmoutb ib. Page Catholic Question civ Prospects of the War cv General Mack's Surrender cviu The French at Vienna cix Nelson in the Mediterranean ... ex Roving the Seas c^ Battle of Trafalgar cxu Death of Nelson cxm His Character 'b. Accession of Prussia to the League "xvi Battle of Austerlitz cxvu Austrian Treaty cxvm Mr. Pitt's Illness "^■ His Death ''^^ 1801 — 6. Arthur Wellesley in India cxxii Subsidiary System cxxiv TheMahrattas cxxv Five Chiefs *. Their Empire cxxvii The Mahratta War ib- Plan of the Campaign cxxix General Wellesley in the Deckan cxxx Battle of Assaye ib. Battle of Argaum cxxxi Colonel Murray in Guzerat cxxxii General Lake in Hindustan ib. Battle of Delhi cxxxiii Restoration of the Mogul Sove- reign '_b. Battle of Laswarree ib. Lieutenant-Colonel Harcourt in Cuttack cxxxiv Results of the Campaign cxxxv Salt Monopoly 'b. Treaties cxxxvi Wellesley Administration in India cxxxviii Lord Cornwallis Governor- Ge- neral 'b. His Death cxl 1806 — 7. Meeting of Parliament cxli The King's Dislike of Mr. Fox ib. Alarming State of Affairs cxlii All the Talents cxliv The Catholic Question ib. Lord Grenville cxlvii CONTENTS. Page Charles James Pox cxlviii Other Ministers eli Opposition Rancour clii First BiiBculties ib. Military Administration cliii Financial cliv Negotiation for Peace ib. Reprobation of the Slave Trade clvii Wilberforce clviii Colonial Slave Trade Prohibition clix Acquittal of Lord Melville clxi Mr. Fox's Illness clxii Death of Lord Thurlovir ib. Death of Mr. Fox ib. State onhe War clxiii Battle of Maida clxiv The Cape regained clxv Buenos Ayres ib. Plumiliation of Prussia clxvi Dissolution of Parties clxviii Dissolution of Parliament ib. Strength of the Cabinet clxix No Christmas recess clxx Lord Hovi^ick ib. Mr. Canning ib. Mr. Perceval ib. Sir Samuel Romilly clxxi Francis Horner ib. Others ib. Force of the Country clxxiii Financial Scheme ib. Abolition of the Slave Trade ... clxxv The Catholics clxxviii Irish Act of 1793 ib. Proposed relaxations clxxx Cabals clxxxi The King's retractation clxxxiii The Measure dropped clxxxiv The Ministry dismissed clxxxv Portland Administration ib. Offices in leversion clxxxvi " No Popery " cry ib. Dissolution of Parliament ib. " The short Administration " ... clxxxvii BOOK II. 1807—9. The Portland Administration Mr. Perceval clxxxviii clxxxix Fags Aspec^of public affairs cxci Education cxciii Popular maintenance cxoiv ^Emigration cxcv Bequests of the Grenville Mi- nistry ib. Buenos Ayi-es expedition ib. Dardanelles expedition cxc vii Egyptian expedition cc Napoleon and Prussia ccii His Berlin decree ib. Battle of Eylau cciii Apathy of England cciv Professions of Russia ccvi Conference at Tilsit ib. Treaty of Tilsit ccvii Secret articles ccviii England and Denmark ccix Seizure of the Danish fleet ccx Bombardment of Copenhagen... ccxi Russian declaration of War ccxiv King of Sweden ccxv Swedish alliance lost ccxvi France and Portugal ib. Opening of the Peninsular War coxvii Court of Spain and Napoleon ... ib. Invasion of Portugal ccx viii Departure of the Royal Family for Brazil ccxix Napoleon and the Spanish Bour- bons ccxxi Invasion of Spain ccxxii Tumult at Madrid ccxxiii The Court enticed to Bayonne... ccxxiv Spanish appeal to England ccxxv Renunciation of Empire by the Bourbons ccxxvi Landing of British in Spain ccxxvii Successes of Sir A. Wellesley ... ccxxviii Convention of Cintra coxxix Aspect of European affairs cexxx Meeting at Erfurth ib. Battle of Wagram ccxxxi Andrew Hofer ib. False hopes of Spain ib. Sir John Moore's Campaign ... ccxxxil His Retreat ccxxxiii Battle of Corunna ccxxxvi Death of Sir John Moore ib. Gloomy aspect of the War coxxxvii CONTENTS. The Walcheren expedition ccxxxviii Naval successes ccxlii Lord Collingwood ib. Hisdeatli ccxliii Troubles with America ib. Orders in Council , ib. Charges against the Duke of York ccxlv His resignation ccxlviii Inquiry into Abuses ccxlix Quarrel between Lord Castle- reagh and Mr. Canning col Their duel ccli Changes in the Cabinet ib. Mr. Perceyal, Prime Minister... ccliii TheJubUee ccliv Napoleon's divorce ib. His new Marriage ib. Gloom at Home and Abroad ... colv Celebration of the 50th year of the Reign ib. 1810—12. O. P. Question eclyii Opening of the Session cclix Mr. Peel ib. Adversity cclxi Commercial Crash ib. Efforts at reforms ib. Bullion Committee cclxii Penal Law reform cclxvi Condition of the Clergy cclxvii Dissenters' Licenses Bill cclxviii Privilege question cclxix Parliamentary censure of Bur- dett cclxxii Sir F. Burdett committed to the Tower cclxxiii His release cclxxv Weakness of the Government ... cclxxvi Death of Windham cclxxvii Death of the Princess Amelia ... cclxxix Insanity of the King ib. Meeting of Parliament ib. Repeated adjournments cclxxx Proposition of a Regency cclxxxi The Princes' protest ib. Restrictions on the Regent oclxxxiii Negotiations with Lords Gren- ville and Grey ib. The Ministry unchanged The King's health The Court New Negotiations..... Lords Castlereagh and Sidmouth in the Cabinet.... Virtual close of the Reign Mr. Perceval's death Provision for his Family 1810—14. Page cclxxxiv cclxxxvi clxxxvii ib. cclxxxviii ib. cclxxxix ccxcii ccxcui ib. ccxciv ccxcv ccxcvii State of the Nation Commercial Pressure Crimes Wages Machinery Frame Breaking ccxcviiii LudditeActs ccxcix Progress of Luddism ccc Lord Sidmouth, Home Secretary ccci Punishment of the Luddites cccii 1809—14. Peninsular War Sir A. Wellesley Difficulties Campaign of 1809 Expulsion of the French from Portugal, Difficulties Talavera Wellesley becomes Wellington... Gloomy close of the Year Campaign of 1810 Loss of Cities Wellington's defensive Policy ... Lines of Torres Vedras Busaco Retreat of the French Grant for the relief of the Portu- guese Napoleon's present Supremacy .. Reaction approaching The Guerillas Difficulties of the French Of the British Campaign of 1811 Albuera Siege of Badajoz relinquished ... cccnr : ib. ! ib. I cccv ib. cccvi ib. cccvii cccviii cccx ib. cccxi ib. ib. cccxii cccxiii ib. cccxiv ib. cccxv cccxvi cccxvii ib. ib. CONTENTS. Pagb Campugn of 1812 cccxvii Ciadad Rodrigo ib. Badajoz cccxviii Salamanca cccxxi Occupatdon of Madrid ib. Failure at Burgos cccxxii Evacuation of Madrid ib. Retreat ib. Northern Wars of Napoleon cccxxiii Burning of Moscow cccxxiv Napoleon's Retreat ib. National Hope cccxxv Wellington Conunander-in - Chief of Armiesin Spain cccxxvi Campaign of 1813 , cccxxvii French retire Northwards ib. Vittoria cccxxix French evacuate Madrid cccxxx Failure at St. Sebastian ib. St. Sebastian taken cccxxxi Wellington enters France cccxxxiii Pamplona taken cccxxxiii The Allies in France ib. Napoleon's Treaty with Ferdi- nand cccxxxv Its rejection in Spain cccxxxvi Intrigues in Catalonia ib. Campaign of 1814 cccxxxvii Ferdinand at Home ib. Catalonia evacuated by the French ib. Bayonne invested cccxxxviii Bordeaux entered ib. Toulouse cccxxxix Souk's retreat ib. News of Napoleon's Abdication ib. Return of the Army cccxl Of Wellington ib. 1812—15. Relations with the United States cccxli Difficulty about a Government in England cccxliii Repeal of the Orders in Council ib. Declaration of War cccxliv First Blow struck cccxlv Employment of Indians ib. British Successes on Land cccxlviii Losses at Sea ib. Extensive Blockade cccxlix Russian Intervention ib. Page Proposals of Peace cccxlix Capture of Washington ccclii Commission at Ghent cccliv Mississippi Expedition ccclv Battie of New Orleans ib. Retreat of the British ccclvi Capture of FortMobUe ib. Treaty of Ghent ccclvii 1812— U. The Regent and his Family ccclviii The Princess -Charlotte ccclix The Prince of Orange ib. Her flight to her Mother ccclx Prince Leopold of Saxe Cobourg ib. Marriage ccclxi Irish Affairs ib. The Press ccclxii Mr. Perry ib. Mr. Cobbett ib. Mr. Scott ccckiji The Hunts ib. Printers' Name Bill ib. Creation of Vice-Chancellorship ccclxiv Attainder ccelxv High Treason Sentence ccclxvi East India Company'sCharter... ib. Church Establishment in India ccclxvii Education ccclxviii Bible Societies ccclxix Joanna Southcote ccclxx New plan of Finance ccclxxi Stock Exchange Fraud ccclxxii Extraordinary Weather ib. Burning of the Custom House... ccclxxiii 1813—15. Napoleon's renewed Efforts ccclxxv New compact of Allies ib. The Allies defeated ccclxxvi Armistice ib. Conference ib. Austrian declaration of War ib. Battie of Dresden ccclxxvi Succeeding Batfles ib. Sufferings of the French cccl xxviii Napoleon's vacillation ccclxxix Remonstrance of his Marshals... ib. Retreat ib. VIU CONTENTS. Page First Battle of Leipsic ccclxxx Second Battle ib. Hanau ccclxxxi Napoleon at Paris ccclxxxii Independence of Holland pro- claimed ib. The Allies cross the Rhine ib. Congress of Chatillon ib. Partial success of Napoleon ccclxxxiii Treaty of Chaumont ib. Bourbon manifestations ccclxxxiv Capitulation of Paris ib. Entry of the Allies ccclxxx v Provisional Government ib. Abdication of Napoleon ccclxxx vi Attempted Suicide ccclxxxvii Desertion of the Empress ib. Departure for Elba ib. Death of Josephine ccclxxxviii Return of the Bourbons ib. Treaty of Paris ccclxxxix London Gaiety ib. Wellington's Return ib. Popular Misgivings cccxc Distrust Abroad cccxci Napoleon's Return ib. Arrival in Paris cccxcii Treaty of Vienna ib. Constitutional Monarchy at Paris cccxciii Napoleon proceeds to Belgium... ib. The British at Brussels ib. Quatre Bras and Ligny .., . , cccxciv Page Waterloo cccxciv Napoleon's return to Paris cccxcvi Is carried to St. Helena ib. Capitulation of Paris cccxcvii The news in England ib. Second Treaty of Paris ib. Wellington's Farewell ib. 1801—15. Steam Navigation cccxcviii Death of Boulton cccxcix Chain Cables ib. Steam Carriages ib. Count Rumford ib. Plymouth Breakwater cccc Chelsea Hospital ib. Haileybury CoUege ib. Tea ib. Joint Stock Bread Company ... cccci National Isolation ib. Foreign Literature ccceii The Literary Fund ib. Music ib. The Edinburgh Review cccciii The Quarterly Review cccciv Bentham ib. Science ib. Necrology. Men of Science ... ib. Artists ccccvi Authors ib. Travellers ccccix INTRODUCTION HISTORY OF THE PEACE. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. "DEFORE the Nineteenth century opened, the inhabitants of 1800. -U Europe had entered upon a new period in the history of ' — ^ mankind ; a period which must be a conspicuous one to students sili^u""' of History through all future ages. — During the greater part of the eighteenth century, the potentates of Europe, and the higher order of their subjects with whom they associated, had been satisfied that the height of political civilization had been reached, by such an adjust- ment of the Balance of Power as had never before been attained. The system appeared to be brought very near perfection. The solar system hardly seemed safer. The smaller states of Europe lived and moved among the larger as freely and securely as the lesser planets in their orbits, protected from absorption by the larger, by the balancing principle which kept all in their places. It is true, there was a failure here and there, such as one does not see in the systems of the sky. There was the partition of Poland, for one. The plea for the partition was, that Poland could not be sustained as a separate power, on account of her miserable distractions ; and that she must have been absorbed by some one State, destroying the universal balance, if she had not been portioned out among several. There were complaints in certain quarters too about the reductions of Austrian power, and the aggrandizement of Prussia : but, upon the whole, it was evident to the world at large that Europe presented the most advanced political condition ever wit- nessed, in the spectacle of its Balance of Power. It was not merely that the physical forces of States were kept under a salutary VOL. I. B INTRODUCTION TO THE [Book I 1800. restraint. This would have been a good thing, if it had been the ^- — ~-^ only one : but it was a gross kind of advantage, not above the aim of any age. It was a much higher good that international relations became more extended and refined : international morality was professed, and to a certain degree fostered : wild tempers and immediate objects were subdued and postponed to ulterior con- siderations : the weakest States became subjects of common pro- tection, and the most out-lying countries of genei'al observation : the way was opened for commercial connexions, and for mutual intercourses of every ameliorating kind : and the States of Europe really appeared as securely settled in an advanced political civiliza- tion as any nomade tribes who have entered upon the cultivation of land, and built themselves a town, and actually experienced that the blessings of social organization and impartial law are well worth the individual concessions by which they are purchased. As such a community might be roused in the night by a volcanic eruption which should overthrow their city and scorch up their fields, so were the powers of Europe struck aghast by the explosion ovEHTBRow. of the French Revolution. They had overlooked something ; and their oversight cost them nothing short of the wreck of their system: just as the new settlers had omitted to look into the quality of the ground on which they were establishing themselves, and had no conception of the forces that might be acting under their feet. The something that the Monarchs and Statesmen of Europe left out of their calculations was that which will make the then incoming period conspicuous for ever in the history of the world, and which made the best wisdom of courts and cabinets a painstaking and conscientious foolishness. The something that was overlooked was, that it would no longer answer to regard States only as units : that the time had come for multitudinous Peoples to be considered too. Eussi*. A new unit had been introduced into the association by those never-sleeping ushers, the centuries. Russia had desired to become a European power — a member of the confederation of European sovereigns. She need not have done so. She would have been very safe, for any length of time — invulnerable in her mantle of snows — unapproachable through her Lifeguards — the whole circle of storms. She might have wrought her despotic will for ever in the wide world of her own territories, if she had kept her face to the East. But it so happened that she turned westwards; and that first glance westwards may hereafter prove to have been the most tremendous event in human history. The transference of the seat of Russian empire fi-om Moscow to the coast of the Baltic is a striking picture to us : but if it should be found hereafter that through Russia will have come that War of Opinion in Europe, by which Oriental Despotism is finally to measure its force against the "Western principle of Self-government by Representation, the Chap. I.] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. lU minutest proceedings of Peter and Catherine in Russia will become 1800. as interesting as any incidents in the lives of Greek or Roman — —^ heroes. Generations yet unborn will watch with eager eyes the pulling down of Finnish huts in the marshes, to make way for palaces of stone ; and the last waving of the bulrushes and reeds wliere trim gardens were henceforth to be; and the first dimple in the surface of stagnant lakes, when the canals were ready to drain them away ; and the placing of block upon block, as the granite embankments rose along the Neva, raising it from a waste of fetid waters into a metropolitan river. This river may turn out to be our modern Rubicon : and the stroke of Peter's hammer on the ship-side at Saardam may send a louder echo through future gene- rations than to the ear of our own time. This great empire, seeking admission among the European states, at first alarmed them; and the audacious and aspiring cast of mind of Peter and Catherine justified such apprehension for the time. But it soon appeared that their efficiency beyond their own territory bore no proportion to their ambition, and that they were not likely to prove themselves potentates except within their own boundary. The sovereigns of Russia would have said, and often did say, that they were considering their people during the whole of their reigns. It is true that they encouraged industry and commerce, and insti- tuted prodigious works of improvement. But this was not the con- sideration of the Peoples of Europe which the progress of time was rendering necessary, and for want of which the whole system broke up. It was for the glory of the State and countiy, in consideration of the unit and not of the aggregate, that the great works of Peter and Catherine were done. They were done at the expense of justice and kindness to individuals. They were done with ignorant and fatal precipitation. They were done in an impatient and boastful spirit : and the people felt no gratitude where they were aware of no benefit. In as far as they shared the vanity of their sovereign, they boasted and exulted in the sovereign's glory : but there was iiothing done or doing for the Russian people which could render them of any use in the day of European convulsion. The same may be said in regard to the great and venerable Austria. empire of Austria. There was nothing on which the Emperor Joseph prided himself so much as on his reforms. Yet, they were so done — with so much self-will and personal regards — that they exasperated those whom he professed to benefit. One of his refonns lost him the Belgian provinces of the empire ; and another alienated the affections of Hungary. Thus, while Austria in her reduced state was looked upon as an unexceptionable unit in the Balancing System, there was nothing in the condition of her people which could for a moment retard, or in any degree modify, the explosion which overthrew the arrangement. Austria has been mentioned as in a reduced condition. She was B 2 INTRODUCTION TO THE [Book I. 1800. reduced, not only by actual loss of dependencies, but, yet more, in ■ ~^ regard to continental influence. There could have been no balance in Europe if Austria had retained, with all her vast territories, an undisputed supremacy of influence. Prussia was aggrandized, up to the point of rivalship. The partition of Poland, in 1772, seems to have been acquiesced in more easily than it might have been, by other powers, on account of the strength it gave to Prussia. Prussia. Prussia had indeed become a notable unit in the European system : but we have the Great Frederick's own report of the state of his country and people a dozen years before the outbreak of the French Revolution. " The nobility was exhausted," he says, in the History he wrote of his own time, "the Commons ruined, numbers of villages were burnt, and towns impoverished. Civil order was lost in a total anarchy : in a word, the desolation was universal." He lent money to the towns, settled destitute people in the wastes, drained marshes, patronised manufactures, and, best of all, eman- cipated the peasants from hereditary servitude. Yet, his people were not happy; nor did they love him. His military system was so severe that his soldiers hanged themselves in their misery ; and the whole country groaned under the burden of a standing army of 200,000 men. The appearance of activity and an improved flnan- cial condition throughout the north of Germany deceived observers who regarded States only as units : but it is now well known that under all the arrangements, and amidst all the enterprises of Frederick of Prussia there was no genuine civil liberty — nothing that could keep the weight of the people on the same side of the balance with the kings. As for the two leading States of Europe, France and England, their destiny in the moment of convulsion had been fixed long before — as all destiny is — and with more clearness than is common engiand. in political afiairs. The English revolution of a century before had secured a better condition for the British nation, in regard to civil liberty, than was enjoyed by any other people in Europe ; and the transient oppressions exercised or attempted by panic-stricken or one- sided statesmen under the alarm of convulsion were of small account in comparison with the securities for constitutional freedom in the long run. No discontent of the British people certainly contributed to the European explosion which destroyed the Balance of Power. The insular position of England rendered her circumstances so far different from those of other States as that she could never be suspected of aims of continental conquest. The imputations cast on her by her great rival were of arrogance in overbearing other people's will and affairs; insatiable rapacity about annexing islands and distant coasts to her dominions; and a shopkeeping ambition to monopolize the commerce, and command the industry, of the world. This was another way of saying that her function was to be mistress of the seas ; as her great rival was, beyond question. Chai'. I.] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. the most formidable warlike power on the continental battle-field 1800. of ambition. As for France, she was, before the breaking out of "- ' the Revolution, very strong ; and she was spoken of as stronger ^"''"^^ than she was. Her population was above 26,000,000 : but it was unhappy. Her authority and dominion over her neighbours were very imposing : but there was discontent beneath : and, when the conquests of the Revolution were made, and France claimed to be the ruling power from the Texel to the Adriatic, she was in fact weakened by her new conquests, which were no more really French than they had been before. Her great standing armies, by which J'^^g"" she had been distinguished since Louis XIV. augmented them to a prodigious extent, were a cause of weakness in one direction while they were an element of vast strength in another. The institution of standing armies was a feature of an advanced social condition at the oiftset. It showed that the time had come for that division of industry under which the large majority of the inhabitants of a country pursued the business of their lives, con- tributing from the fruits of their labour to maintain a set of men to do the necessary fighting. The excitement and the hoiTor of war were incalculably lessened by this arrangement, and the interests of peace were, in the first instance, remarkably promoted, by the tranquillity in which the greater part of the population and their employments were left. But then, this institution of standing armies became so oppressive as to be a main cause of revolutionary action in France and other countries. When Louis XIV. increased his forces, so as to exhibit to Europe the new spectacle of a standing army, at all times adequate to all contingencies, his neighbours began to muster armies which might keep his in check ,• and thus the practice of expanding the military element went on through Europe, till Prussia, under the Great Frederick, had a peace - establishment of 200,000 men, and France, under the last Bourbons, of 500,000 men. The resident inhabitants felt this force to be at once a severe burden in point of cost, and an irksome restraint : and they revolted against this, among other grievances. Thus, the machinery which was considered a means and proof of strength, and which was said to be provided for the maintenance of the Balancing System — for the repression of overgrown power in one direction, and the support of oppressed weakness in another — proved so heavy as to become. in itself destructive of that which it assumed to preserve. While France was confident at home, and dreaded abroad, on account of her military preponderance, she was on the point of being put to her last shifts to preserve her place in Europe at all. It may be noted, in contemplating the position of the two great rival States, that England was more likely to find favour in the eyes of other continental powers than France, since her kind of supremacy involved little danger to her neighbours. France, with Vl INTRODUCTION TO THE [Book I. 1800. Minor Euao- peanPowehs. French Re- volution. Napoleon Bonaparte. her vast military resources, was a dangerous neighbour. The naval power of England might vex and harass the States, and cripple their commercial resources i but it could not keep them always in peril of their lives. In the midst, therefore, of a general dislike of her " arrogance," England was more trusted and less feared than France, among the company of European States. As for the smaller powers — Holland was gained over from the French to the English alliance, by the honest and skilful manage- ment of Lord Malmesbury, just before the breaking out of the French Revolution. It was of little consequence what Spain did. Spain was too essentially feeble to affect much the destinies of other States: but her natural and political tendencies were to alliance with France. Portugal was feeble too : and she and Spain were always prone to quarrel ; and Portugal was our ally. — Turkey was rescued from absorption by Russia just before the death of Catherine; and it could hardly now be called a power at all. — Italy, also, was soon proved to be at the disposal of the greater potentates, having small inherent force. — Sweden and Norway were not likely to give any trouble spontaneously; nor did they seem in the way to require any especial protection. The Balancing System was not founded on treaties, or any sort of express compact. It was a product of Time — a necessary stage of civilization, as we have said : and the natural force by which States united to keep the strongest in check, and uphold the weakest, appears indeed to have manifested itself, in its own season, as the counteracting and compensating forces of nature do, whether men call for them or not. In such cases, there is usually something involved which men overlook ; and in this case of the Balancing System, there were elements of which kings and states- men were wholly unaware. They were counting and placing their units, supposing all safe : not seeing that these units were aggre- gates, with a self-moving power. Kings were no longer what they had been. They must have Ministers who were not their own tools, but who bore some relation to the people at large. In England, this had so long been a settled matter that nobody thought of questioning it. In France, the Bourbons never could clearly see it. They never saw that if it once became a matter of contest whether a European monarch and his tools should rule with or without a regard to the interests and needs of the people, the matter could end no otherwise than in the defeat of the despot. So the Bourbons were driven forth from France, as the Stuarts had been from England: and all the world waited with intense anxiety to see what would become of France in regard to the Balancing System. The matter was made clear, after some years of struggle, by a Corsican youth, who was an engineer, without prospect and without fortune, when the French revolution broke out. By his military Ohap. L] history of THE PEACE. vii talents, and his genius for command, he had risen, before the 1800. opening of our century, to such a point of eminence, that on his — — ^ life seemed to hang the destinies of the world. In 1796 he crossed the Alps, leading the armies of France to the conquest of Italy, whence he compelled the Pope and the other Italian sovereigns to send the treasures of art to Paris. He there defeated five Austrian armies; and showed his quality at home by wresting from the French Directory, and concentrating in himself, the entire control of the army. In 1798, he conquered Egypt, threatened India, and, in 1799, overran Syria, where, however, he was repulsed at Acre by the British under Sir Sidney Smith, and driven back upon Egypt. Eetuming to Paris, he carried all before him ; and the year closed on his appointment as First Consul for life. He was maue first invested with supreme executive authority. The first mention of '-°'"'"'" his name in the published journal of the great British diplomatist. Lord Malmesbury, occurs in November, 1796. " Well brought up Lord at L'Ecole Militaire — ^clever, desperate Jacobin, even Terrorist — dmIs'""^ ° his wife, Madame Beauharnois, whose husband was beheaded — she "i-asa-' now called Notre Dame des Victoires." On the 23rd of August, 1799, he told his army in Egypt by a short letter, " In consequence of news from Europe, I have determined immediately to return to France." " Early in October," says our matter-of-fact Annual Annual rc Register, " Bonaparte landed suddenly at Frejus, in Provence, ^fi^_ '''"• like a spirit from another world." Before the last sun of the century had set, he was the greatest potentate of the world. The wearied and worn people of France rested on him as the power which was to give them repose : and the magnificent succession of his first acts seemed to justify their confidence. Social order was restored and maintained ; the public exercise of religion was re-established ; and, by treaty with the Pope, France was released from the control of the Holy See in spiritual matters. Parties were repressed, and their leaders were made subservient to the new ruler. Office and influence were freely thrown open to merit ; and the institution of the Legion of Honour invited civic desert from every rank and condition of life. The people were rid of the race of despotic and incapable Bourbon sovereigns ; and in their joy at having secured a ruler who was capable, and who professed popular objects, they were not too careful to inquire whether he might not prove a despot in another way. On the 25th of December, 1799, Napoleon addressed the phopos/il w following letter to the King of Great Britain. " Called by the Ammai Re- wishes of the French nation to occupy the first magistracy of the ^^^"' •^'"'' Republic, I think it proper, on entering into office, to make a direct communication of it to your Majesty. — The war which, for eight years, has ravaged the four quarters of the world — must it be eternal ? Are there no means of coming to an understanding ? How can the two most enlightened nations of Europe, powerful INTRODUCTION TO THE [Book I. 1800 and strong beyond what their independence requires, sacrifice to — v-- ideas of vain greatness the benefits of commerce, internal pros- perity, and the happiness of families ? How is it that they do not feel that peace is of the first necessity, as well as the truest glory .' These sentiments cannot be foreign to the heart of your Majesty, who reigns over a free nation, and with the sole view of making it happy.— Your Majesty will see in this overture only my sincere desire to contribute efficaciously, for the second time, to a general pacification by a step, speedy, entirely of confidence and disen- gaged from those forms which, however necessary to disguise the dependence of weak states, prove, in the case of strong ones, only a mutual desire to deceive. France and England, by the abuse ot their strength, may still, to the injury of all nations, long retard the period of their own exhaustion : but I will venture to say that the fete of all civilized nations depends on the termination of a war which involves the whole world." Such was the invitation to England to be at peace. ±5ut one ot the conditions under which the European powers had entered into an alliance, and carried on war against France since the deposition of her princes, was that no one of them should make a separate peace. The answer from England was not, therefore, a matter of choice: and this Napoleon could not but have known._ The greater his victories, and the more eminent his civic authority, the more necessary was it to the balance of power, and the security of the European nations, that all other countries should band them- selves together against France, till unquestionable guarantees should be obtained that France would be quiet, and keep at home. Declined. The King of England, therefore, declined negotiation. In his ^sterf'islio". reply, he said more than any statesman would now approve to state p.pers, ^^f^^^^ ^hc restoration of the Bourbons : but he declared distinctly that this should not be made an essential condition, as no foreign power could claim to dictate to any nation its mode of government. The essential condition would be, (whenever the time should arrive,) that France should give such evidences of stability at home and harmlessness abroad as might justify her neighbours in laying down their arms. The sovereign of Great Britain had the highest right to use a lofty tone with the new ruler of France, as the naval power of England had proved the only counterpoise to the military pre-eminence of France. While Napoleon had become lord of the Continent, England remained mistress of the seas. By various successes in the earlier years of the war, by the victory off Cape St. Vincent in February, 1797, and especially by the battle of the Nile, France had been kept in check, and more had been done for the maintenance of the common cause against her than by the action of all other European powers together. The battle of the Nile, fought on the 1st of August, 1798, yielded the greatest victory then known in naval warfare. To destroy the CiiAP. I.] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. ix French, fleet in the Mediterranean had long been the first wish of 1800. Nelson's heart. He did it now. Only a single frigate of the ~- — -' whole armament returned to France ; and Napoleon was left in Egypt, shut out from all communication with home. It was while the remembrance of this great defeat, in the midst of so many successes, was fresh in his mind, that Napoleon addressed to George III. his invitation to peace : and it was while England was yet cheered with her victory, and making much of her great hero, that George III. sent his haughty reply. The war, as has been said, had lasted eight years. In 1792, the French ■ Assembly had declared war against Austria, on -the ground of her harbouring French rebels, contrary to the faith of treaties. The poor king, Louis XVI., was then still living; and one of the bitter things he had to endure was appearing to sanction a declaration of war against the friends who were at work for his rescue. Prussia and the King of Sardinia presently joined Austria : but Great Britain preserved a position of neutrality for yet a few months longer. After the execution of Louis in January, 1793, no further terms were to be kept with France, and in February, England and Holland were her proclaimed enemies. The successes of Napoleon justified his coming forward to propose peace, as soon as the government of France appeared to be settled in his person : but his making the proposition to England alone shows that he could hardly have been sincere ; for no one of the great powers could make a separate peace. Yet he declared to the legislative body, at the close of their session, in March 1800, that the French people desired peace, and their government also, and even more earnestly; but that the English government rejected it. A new army of reserve was immediately formed ; and forth went the great soldier to conquer again. By the middle of June in this ^a™™^'' last year of the century, he had gained the battle of Marengo, taking from the Austrians in one day all that they had regained in Italy since his former warfare there. His forces under Moreau in Germany were driving back the Austrians at every point : and by the middle of July, the Emperor was helpless— many of his strong- holds in the hands of the French, and the road to Vienna open to them. He would have made peace, but could not do it_ without the consent of the other powers ; and Great Britain objected to some of the terms imposed by France. Before the end of the year, however, the successes of Moreau in Germany, and of the French wherever they appeared, were such as to precipitate peace- making wherever it could be had. On Christmas Day, 1800, the Emperor signed an armistice, by which he bound himself to agree to a separate peace, his aUies giving their compassionate consent. ^^^^^^^^ It was clear that other powers must follow the same course; and on i^^^^ the last day of the century, it was understood by British statesmen a»hoad. that England would presently be the only power standmg out INTRODUCTION TO THE [Book I. 1800 against this terrific France and her astonishing ruler. It is now ^— ' that we begin to find in the records of the time, and in the corre- spondence of our fathers, those scattered assertions that such a man could not be longUved, which show how vast was his power over the imagination in the early years of his conquests. Our fathers were taken by surprise by the manifestation of the resources of France. By changing the natural course of her life, and calling forth all her strength of every kind for the maintenance of her new position against the assaults of the world, her ruler had made her appear able to confront the united opposition of the world— and even to drive back the world, and occupy the homes of nations wherever she pleased — except only in regard to England. France was now about to gain territory as far as the left bank of the Rhine from Austria ; and Parma, Tuscany and Etruria from Spain ; and alliance against the English from poor helpless Naples ; and peace on his own terms with Russia, Bavaria, and Portugal. While seeing the new century rise on this wonderful adventurer, now the foremost man of all the world, men discerned no hope but in the probable shortness of his life. Such energy as his, they said, always wore out the frame : he exposed himself in so many battle fields, that he would be taken off that way : he had also been nearly murdered, in the last month of the century, by a conspiracy in Paris : and between the discontented and the mad, he would never be safe. And then, such a man leaves no successor. He was himself the greatness and the power of France ; for he had tran- quillized her. She would easily be conquered when his day was over. Such were the consolations of the more hopeful. As for the timid, they had no hope, beyond that of keeping quiet in their own island, letting destruction rage abroad. "When, presently, it appeared doubtful whether they would be allowed to remain quiet in their own island, the consternation was such as Englishmen and their families had little dreamed of ever experiencing in so late an age of the world. In their school days they had imagined what it must be to the people to see the approach of the Danes, or of the Normans, and to have their beloved country overrun by the foe : but it had never occurred to them that such a thing could happen to themselves. When, however, this Bonaparte had reduced to peace on his own terms all his foes abroad, it was thought and whispered that he would turn his face our way, and try the power of his presence in England, as in the countries which he had laid low. He had used his influence abroad to injure Great Britain by embroiling her with the northern powers, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. He wrought upon the Emperor Paul's ambition to possess Malta, and on the jealousy and fears of the three Powers about the commercial and naval supremacy of England, till he succeeded in making a rupture, most alarming to the government and people of Great Britain at such a juncture. During the last Chap. I.] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. xi months of the century, the three great Baltic Powers were bound 1800. in a confederacy against England : the Danes were evading naval ^- ' search, and supplying arms and stores to French vessels : Paul was burning British vessels in Russian ports, and sending the crews into the interior as prisoners ; and it was clear that a northern war was impending at the same moment that England was left alone in her resistance to France. "We shall have to see what was thought and said and done by the brave and by the timid, by the wise and by the incapable, in this extraordinary exigence. Meantime, we must glance at the operation of these exterior relations on the interior condition of Great Britain, at the close of the century. Amidst the convulsions which broke up the Balancing System on the Continent, the British nation seemed exempted from dangers Inola™? "' common to all other peoples — secured by its free constitution. It was an edifying sight, just before the French Revolution, to see the Prime Minister of England, Mr. Pitt, bringing forward the wiluam subject of parliamentary reform — proposing to transfer the franchise '"' from decayed boroughs to London, and to counties which had become populous ; and to provide for the future disfranchisement of boroughs, as they should sink in the scale of proportion, to growing manufacturing towns. Thus liberal and popular were the ideas of the great statesman up to 1785. But he took alarm at the French Revolution ; and, like other directors of public affairs in Europe, looked upon states as units, and turned away from the interests of the aggregate peoples. He became one of -the despots of Europe — ^in point of despotism, one of the foremost. He might hw pou™ have been justified for entering into the continental war, diverse as were the opinions of the time as to the necessity of doing so. He might have been forgiven the bad conduct of the war, by which England was drained of money that went to subsidize the weaker continental powers. Terrible as were the burdens of taxation and the derangements of commercial affairs at the time, and fearful as is the load of debt which he deposited in the future by a method of warfare which brought no glory and did no effectual service, he might have been forgiven ; for the times were such as well nigh to set men's judgments at defiance. But that for which he cannot be forgiven is his overruling of the civil liberties of Englishmen. AH who doubted the wisdom of the war were regarded by Mr. Pitt's government as seditious persons ; and imputed sedition was hunted S"=n"><"<- dovra with a ferocity to the last degree unwise in such times. Clergymen and other educated men in Scotland were doomed to transportation for speeches and acts of political license, such as always grows under persecution ; and attempts were made to bring others to the gibbet in England for constructive treason : attempts which, if not baffled by the sense and courage of the juries, would have been ground enough, in such a crisis, for such a revolution in England as would secure f^ men their constitutional rights. INTRODUCTION TO THE [Book I. 1800 There was a suspension of the Habeas Corpus, a stringent Alien ^- :• Bill ; and finally, in 1796, the Seditious Meetings' Bill, which was so oppressive and unconstitutional that Mr. Fox and the leadei;s ot the Opposition seceded from the House of Commons when the Bill was committed. The fiercer the severity on the part of the government, the stronger grew the resentment of the people; and " the spread of revolutionary principles "—the thing dreaded—was stimulated by tyranny at home far more than it could ever have been by mere example from abroad; example which a little time was sure to convert into warning. In the midst of all this turmoil, FiNAN.uu, the Bank found her resources exhausted. By 1797, the country ""'"""■"• was so drained of specie that the Bank could not go on, unless saved by some immediate intervention of government. So the Restriction Act was brought in, by which the Bank was relieved from the obligation to pay cash for notes. The government was actually alarmed for the provisioning of London, and for the means of paying the army and navy. In February and March, various anonymous letters from sailors had been received by the authorities, complaining of insufficient pay during years of high prices, and of M„.,,Nv other grievances : and in April, when the Channel fleet at Spit- head was ordered to proceed to sea, ship after ship refused to weigh anchor ; and in a few weeks mutiny seemed to have deprived Great Britain of her naval defence— her best reliance. From port to port the mutiny spread, and at the Nore it seemed for a time unmanageable. The ministry advised parliament to_ grant the demands of the sailors ; and money was voted accordingly ; only the ringleader and a few delegates of the mutineers being executed, larsH Rebel, to keep up somc appcarauce of authority. In the next year hap- ""''■ pened the terrible Irish rebellion. Such was the condition of affairs in the hands of the minister who distrusted the people the more as his difficulties increased; and became the more severe with the growth of his difficulties and his distrust ; while Na- poleon was again abroad on his victorious course; and on the Continent all seemed lost. The time was now come for this continental adversity to tran- quillize England. All other powers were prostrate: and the people, as well as the government of England, was now engrossed by apprehension. The pressure from without was becoming serious enough to still all within. By the opening of the century, the great minister and the people seem, by a sort of mutual consent, to have suspended hostilities in awe or hatred of the common foe. Mr. Pitt appears to have lost some of his constant dread of " the spread of revolutionary principles " in view of the stronger peril to the French themselves, as well as their neighbours, of the establishment of a military despotism: and the most liberal of English politicians were becoming almost as anxious for peace as the overtaxed and suffering people ; seeing that nothing morei was Chap. I.] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. xiii now to be done on the Continentj and that it was not perfectly 1800. certain that our national existence wonld be preserved — or unsus- "— ' pended (for no one supposed that Great Britain could remain permanently a province of France) — if we defied the conqueror to decisive war. For obvious reasons, one point of the question could not be publicly discussed. There we're many who seriously doubted whether we could support a war. Dark and dreary was the state of afiairs : so dark and dreary that it was to be hoped Napo- leon would not hear how bad it was. The King could not be t^'^^ «";'*'■ depended on for any kind of assistance. He was purely an obstruction, except to a few who wheedled him, in order to use his name in furtherance of their own objects. He had been insane, and might at any moment be so again. It is difficult now, in reading his letters, and records of his conversation and behaviour, to say whether he was ever quite rational, even up to the level of his originally small capacity. He was harsh and cruel to his eldest son, while ludicrously sentimental with those of his ministers who gratified him most by that mixture of fiattery and pious pro- fession which suited his taste. He was obstinate and prejudiced, weak and ignorant, before his illness : and he was, naturally, neither wiser nor more flexible now. It was a misfortune to have to manage him : it would have been folly to look to him for any sort of aid. — The Prince of Wales ofiered no resource of hope. He was at variance with his parents, parted from his wife, deep in debt, querulous in his discontent ; and thoroughly provoking in his methods of political opposition. As for the Administration, we have seen what must have been its unpopularity. — As for the people, we are able to form a pretty accurate notion of their numbers and condition, though, strange to say, there had as yet been no Census. The first Census was taken in 1801. As the first, it was not so well managed as it c.|ASB_r8^^"^^^ might have been ; but it so far afibrds guidance as that we may venture to say that the population of England, Wales, and Scot- land, including the soldiers and sailors serving abroad, was about eleven millions. The proportion of this population employed in agriculture, in comparison with that employed in manufacture and commerce, was much greater than it is now. Since 1796 there had been a series of deficient harvests ; and that of 1800 was so bad that the price of wheat rose to 115.9. lie?, per quarter. To the middle classes employed in manufacture and commerce this was a cruel aggravation of their hardships, while taxation was becoming inordinately oppressive. The misery was felt also by the poorest class, as was shown by the swelling of the poor rate to the then enormous sum of nearly four millions per annum, for the poor of England and Wales ; a sum truly enormous, in the eye of all times, for the relief of pauperism in a population of 9,000,000, XIV INTKODUCTION TO THE [Book I. 1800. which was about that of England and Wales. But the landowners ■— ' were in a highly flourishing condition. With wheat at 115s. Landowners j^j j ^^^ quarter, they had no great reason to care for the deficiency in the harvest, in this last season of the century, and they lived m a style which abundantly asserted their prosperity. _ While the tradesman or manufacturer came in from his daily business depressed and anxious, unable to extend his market, on account of the war or its consequences, pressed for poor rate, threatened with Traded an increased property tax, worried by the Excise in his business, warned of bad debts in his trade, and with bakers' and butchers bills growing more formidable from week to week, the farmer was cheerful, and his landlord growing grand. While the townsman was paying Is. lOd. for the quartern loaf, and 2s. per lb. for butter, and the children were told they must eat their bread dry ; and there was a dinner of shell fish or other substitute for meat once or twice a week, and housewives were trying to make Farmers, bread with potatoes, to save flour— the farmers kept open house, set up gigs, sent their children to expensive schools, and upheld Mr. Pitt and the war, their king and country. The landlords obtained Enclosure bills in great and increasing numbers : and some of the more enlightened, looking beyond the present privilege of high prices which so swelled their rents, began to attend to suggestions Progress of for improving the soil. It was in 1800 that we meet with mention m S"' '■ °f *^® ^^^^ *"^^ °f ^°^® manure. The farmers laughed, and declared they would let well alone, and not spend their money and trouble on new devices which they did not need : but the philoso- phers were at work — such a man as Davy for one — and the best order of landowners were willing to learn ; and thus provision was AoEicuLTu. made for future agricultural improvement, and some preparation MENT.""'"'"^ for that scientific practice of agriculture which was sure to be rendered necessary, sooner or later, by the increasing proportion of the more enlightened manufacturing to the less enlightened agri- Progrt^s of cultural population of the country. It appears that at the opening u,eNition,,.^^ the century, 10,000 acres of raw, newly-enclosed arable and pasture land would support 4,327 persons ; while, thirty-five years later, the same quantity of similar land would maintain 5,555 : and the fifteen years that have elapsed since the later date have witnessed a far more rapid advance of improvement. It is a fact worth remembering that the first decided step in this direction, the first recorded application of bone dust as an introduction to the use of artificial manures, was made in the first year of our century, while the prices of agricultural produce were such as were then called " unheard of." Cotton Ma- In 1790, Aikwright's inventions had been thrown open to the public, by the setting aside of his patents. At that time, our exports of manufactured cotton goods little exceeded a million and a half. In 1800, they reached nearly to five millions and a half. NUFACl IRE. Chap. I.] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. xv This seems a small amount to us now ; but the rate of increase 1800. during a season of war and trouble is remarkable. The time for ' -^ flagging under the burdens and impediments of war was at hand, but was not yet foreseen by government. Dr. Cartwright's power- loom had been invented for thirteen years ; but it was not brought into use till 1801. Even then, it was not for some years that the invention became easy to use, and duly profitable : so, in con- templating the cotton manufactures at this period, we must re- member that though the spinning was very perfectly done, the handloom weavers had the weaving business all to themselves. We have no records which can make us certain of the number of persons employed in the cotton-manufacture at the opening of the century. What we do know is that the mechanical inventions in which Arkwright led the way have added a permanent two millions to our population : ahd that by the improvements of the last fifty years, less than half the number of hands can deal with the same amount of cotton as at the beginning of the century. The supposi- tion has been offered that the number of cotton spinners in 1801 Progress of was about 27,000 : but this is little more than conjecture ; and i!'22SL^"°°' then, we know nothing of the number of weavers. But of the condition of this part of our industrial population, we do know operatives. something. We learn, by information laid before a Parliamentary progress of Committee in 1833, that at the beginning of the century, a cotton ^Iso.*''™' spinjier worked 74 hours in a week ; for which his clear earnings were 32s. 6d. We have seen what was then the price of bread. It is evident at a glance how inferior was the condition of an operative of that class then, in comparison with that of his suc- cessors, who work a shorter time, obtain higher wages, pay less for food, and have the advantage of this same cotton manufacture for cheap and cleanly clothing for themselves and their families. The money value of our woollen exports in 1800 was about Progress of 6,000,000/. ; that is, doubled within a hundred years : but, as the i. fgo." '™' price of wool had doubled also, it does not appear that the manu- MA°iTOrAc- facture was on the increase. The population of Bradford, in those ™'"=- days, was under 30,000 : of Huddersfield, under 15,000 : of Leeds, the Nation, 53,000. The city of Norwich, the chief seat of the bombazeen '■ ^''°' ^°'' and camlet manufacture, was in a state of deep depression : and for the first ten years of the century, the population scarcely in- creased at all. Yet, the wear of woollen was much more general then than now, among the body of the people. Linen fabrics were expensive, and cotton not yet cheap. — The linen manufacture was on the increase ; but not to any striking degree. — As for silk silk. attire, there were few out of the highest classes who could afford more than an occasional indulgence in it. A silk gown lasted a dozen years; and its purchase was a serious event to a woman of the middle-class. A good deal of silk was smuggled into the country ; and that which was manufactiu-ed at home was in Condition op Middle Class. 1800. the hands of a small population who, whHe P?:ijf -|f^^™°£^y Cl. as their heart's hlood, were yet for ^^er "scillat u^ between^gh ' prosperity and the deepest distress. Birmingham and t-jieffleia Smodest, middle-sized towns when the •^^S^-yj^^f^^-t'^ mingham having under 74,000 inhabitants, and Sheffield less ban 46,000. The more languid manufactures grew "xid« t^^ ^.^'^^es tion of the war, the heavier became the taxation : so that it requires some consideration to conceive how either capitalists or operatives lived in such times. . ,n j t"^,. There was less expenditure for amusement in those days, ira- veUingwr seldom thought of by middle-class people, except for purposes of business. Middle-class families in ^be Provmcial town and in the country lived on for five or ten years toge her witW a thought of stirring. The number of that class out of L?ndon who had ver seen London was very small. Few who lived in the Wand counties had ever seen the sea. Mountains and Lakes were read and talked of almost as Rome and the Medi erraneai. Little m6ney was spent in travelling. Scarcely any was spent on books, music, or pictures. Children and young people had cheaper schooling, and less of it, and fewer ^^^'''%^^ ^^;: The business of living was done at home, more than now, especially the needlework, to the serious injury of female health The routine of living, in orderly families, was so established that it did not vary 201. in amount for a series of years, io house- holders of this order, it was a bitter and exasperating thing to see milUons upon millions voted for carrying on the war ; and hun- dreds of thousands lavished in rewards to mihtary and navai officers; the tone of government, and of too large a proportion ot parliament being as if money was inexhaustible. From these middle-classes, taxed in property and income, taxed in bread and salt, taxed in the house over their heads and m the shoes on their feet, compelled to take their children from school, and to lower the destination of their sons, proceeded those deputations, and peti- tions, and demands and outcries, in the closing days oi the centurv, that the King would " dismiss his weak and wicked ministers." Such sufferers did not mince matters m those days, nor choose their terms with over civihty: and certainly, the records of the time give a strong and painful impression that the government regarded the people with little other view than as a taxable and soldier-yielding mass, troublesome at best, but a nuisance when it in any way moved or spoke. To statesmen, the State, as a unit, was all in all; and it is really difficult to find any evidence that the people were thought of at all, except m the rela- tion of obedience. . . 14. Of iNDiisTiii- ^g fpj. t^g operative class, their condition was otten sucn as to "''"""■ make the student pause, and ask if he can be reading of only fifty years ago. The artisan found that since he began life, the Chap. I.] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. xvii expenses of living had become fivefold or more. Meat which had 1800. been 4c?. per lb. when he married was now 9d. Butter was trebled ^- — ^ in price, and sugar doubled, and malt quadrupled, and poor rate ^Tr'mo: quintupled. The liability to military service was for ever impend- ^''"''- ^''• ing. If he did not enrol himself as a volunteer, to the sacrifice of liabu.™. much time and money, he was liable to be dravra for the militia ; and he must go soldiering, when required, or pay for a substitute. And the means for recruiting the regular army were put in force so variously and so stringently, that the wife and children lived in a perpetual dread that the mechanic or labourer would, some way or another, go for a soldier. The proportion was indeed very large. Besides the militia and volunteer forces, of which the militia alone consisted of 200,000 men at one time, the nimiber of new soldiers Annual Re- raised in the first eight years of the war was 208,388. Of these, |^I^'„'. \l'^ 49,000 had been killed, or had otherwise died of their service ; and 76,000 had been sent home disabled. Out of the population of that time, this was a very serious proportion : and so plentiful a sprinkling of maimed and sickly returned soldiers, and of the widows and orphans of those who had never returned, was enough to destroy all sense of domestic security among the industrial classes. They were told, and truly, how blessed their condition was in comparison with that of the inhabitants of the countries actually laid waste by the war. They were reminded, and pro- perly, of their duty to the state, and the obligation they were under to contribute to its support. All this was very true : but not the less did those who lived near the coast dread the press-gang, and villagers every where abhor the recruiting party. In merely opening the Annual Registers towards the close of the century, we light upon notices of riots on occasion of enrolling the militia, and burning the muster rolls and books at market crosses ; of mutiny in the fleet ; of addresses to the King about the oppressions of the war so tremendously worded as that magistrates rode in among the assemblage to stop the reading; and of one month (in 1797) in which " most of the counties, cities, and ^"(""^{yS?- towns of the kingdom petitioned his majesty for the removal of chron. is. ' ministers, and the consequent restoration of peace." — While the course of daily living was thus hard to the working man, and his future precarious, the Law was very cruel. The records of the severity of Assizes in the Chronicle of Events are sickening to read. The vast and absurd variety of offences for which men and women were sentenced to death by the score, out of which one-third or so were really hanged, gives now an impression of devilish levity in dealing with human life, and must, at the time, have precluded all rational conception, on the part of the many, as to what Law is — to say nothing of that attachment to it, and reverence and trust in regard to it, which are indispensable to the true citizen temper. c xviii INTRODUCTION TO THE [Book I. 1800. The general health was at a lower average, among all these ^- — -^ distresses, than was even safe for a people who might, at any Health. moment, have to struggle for their existence. The hahit of intem- perance in wine was still prevalent among gentlemen; so that we read of one public man after another whose death or incapacity- was ascribable to disease from drinking. Members of the Cabinet, Members of Parliament, and others, are 'quietly reported to have said this and that when they were drunk. The spirit decanters were brought out in the evenings, in middle class houses, as a matter of course ; and gout, and other liver and stomach disorders were prevalent to a degree which the children of our time have no conception of. During the scarcity, the diseases of scarcity abounded, of course. Hundreds ate nettles and other weeds ; and without salt, which was then taxed 15s. per bushel. Thousands of families adulterated their bread. More meat, however, was eaten by labourers, in ordinary times, than now. It was more commonly considered a part of their necessary food : but when meat averaged ^d.. per lb., as it did in 1800, it was out of the reach of the labour- ing class. An address of Dr. Ferriar to the working people of smitary Re- Manchester in 1800, has been preserved, by which we see, not only p!'462°^ '**'*' how ripe was his wisdom in sanitary matters, but what were the sanitary conditions of the class and time. It is now believed that, at that period, the persons who daily washed from head to foot were extremely few ; yet Dr. Ferriar counsels parents so to wash their children, in cold water, before they send them to work in the morning: so that he was thinking of others than infants. He warns the people against damp cellars, broken windows, stagnant air in back rooms, unaifed bed-clothes, wet feet, work on an empty stomach, and pollution from slaughter-houses, and other foul places. He joins with the warning against ale-house indulgence one which appears rather strange — " strolling in the fields adjoining to the town," which he seems to think a rash exposure to cold. There was a notion abroad at that time that the worst peril to health was from " catching cold," and hence the popular treatment of fever — by heat and exclusion of air. — The horrors of small- pox were the worst of the time. Well intended as was the introduction of Inoculation, and great as were its benefits to those properly submitted to it, it had the efiect of enormously increasing the mortality from small-pox. Before, disease had ■ come in a flood, every few years, and swept away thousands like a plague, diminishing in the intervals to a point almost below notice. After the practice of Inoculation became extensive, the infection was kept always afloat. The scourge was most fearful towards the Companion to closo of the last ccutury. Ninety-two in every thousand deaths 1834, p"!?.""' were from small-pox, in the last ten years : and in all oui streets and villages and hospitals were the blind and diseased and disfigured who had survived. This was a woe about to be Chap. I.] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. XIX removed. Dr. Jenner had made and published his discovery j 1800. and Vaccination began to be practised in 1800. Whatever im- -— - provements may hereafter take place in sanitary management, this date must always stand conspicuous in the history of the national health. In the midst of all other perplexities and troubles, however ibeland. severe, the condition of Ireland always remained the worst— the crowmng affliction of the statesman. Before the end of the .^erican war, Ireland had been cruelly neglected as to her means of defence, her protection and comfort. A handful of dismounted cavalry and of invalid soldiery was sent in reply to the request of port towns and populous districts to be furnished with the means of defence. The Irish then very naturally took measures for defending themselves ; and before the end of 1781, the Volunteers exhibited a force of 80,000 men. This force could now obtain what- ever It pleased to ask: and it asked and obtained the absolute independence and supremacy of the Irish parliament— under the same relations to the throne as the English parliament. Superfi- cial observers, and few others, hoped that now all would go well in Ireland. This was called a final settlement j and Enghsh people asked what more the Irish could possibly want.— They wanted (what could not be had) a faithful parliament; a real representa- tion. For want of this reality in their so-called representation, they were worse off after this settlement than before. While the numbers of Protestants in Ireland had been stationary, that of Catholics had been on the increase, till, from being two to one, they had now become four to onej and yet their House of Commons was returned almost entirely by the Orange interest. It was believed that about three-fourths of the 300 members were of the Orange party : and not less than 100 were placemen or pensioners in the direct interest of the government. Such a scene of faction and jobbing has perhaps never been witnessed under the pretence of working at legislation. As might be expected, the unrepresented and oppressed had recourse to rebellion. They invited the French to come and annex them to France. The French came, and would have annexed Ireland to France, but for a series of accidents, and some miscalculation of the force required. In 1797, the govern- ment were warned that an insurrection was meditated. They did not believe it, though there were 500,000 men banded together in conspiracy; and the militia who mounted guard in Dublin, and almost every where else throughout the island, would have let in the insurgents " with the greatest pleasure in life." But by the following March, no one pretended to have any doubt of the danger. The towns were nearly empty of men: and in the country, the cottages were full of women and children who could give no account of any men belonging to them. In Dublin the Life of name of every iahabitant was registered upon his door;- the walls '^"™'."-'«i- XX INTRODUCTION TO THE [Book I. 1800. displayed government proclamations : there were prayers in the • • churches for life and safety : the theatre and other public exhibi- tions were closed : the prisons overflowed : the lawyers in the Courts and the members in the parliament House were in mili- tary uniform : a mournful satire on the " final settlement" of Ireland by means of an independent legislature. The outbreak was fearful. The mere cost of human life was not less than 70,000 lives, of which 50,000 were on the Irish side. And there was much else, besides the extinction of life, to make the Irish rebellion one of the most fearful and painful spectacles that the student of history can be compelled to look upon. As it was clear that Ireland could, in no case, be more mis- governed than by her present parliament, and it was probable that a British parliament, with all its shortcomings, both of knowledge and of will, would give the people some better chance of improving their state than they had at present, the proposal to unite the • Mi, Union, legislatures gained adherents from this time forward, till the propo- sition became affirmed by the London parliament in 1799. Mr. Pitt was sanguine about this being the shortest and easiest method of emancipating the Catholics : and he allowed this view so far to influence his conversation and conduct as that the Catholics believed him pledged to procure their emancipation, if they assisted in carrying the Union : and this in the face of the King's decla- Life of wii. ration that he would favour the Union if it conduced to the stability berforce, ii. ^^ ^.^^ Qhurch : if otherwise, not. The King was, probably, told that all fear of Catholic ascendancy was put an end to by bringing the Irish representation into a really supreme parliament ; while the Catholics might reasonably hope that their numerical superi- ority must become understood and recognised when the obstruction of the Protestant legislature in Dublin was done away. However this might be, there was a mistake. The Catholics believed them- selves to be consenting to the Union on a vital condition which was not fulfilled ; and thus, as we shall see, did the Union turn out to be no more of a " final settlement " of Ireland than any preceding arrangement. Imputations of other kinds of inducement, charges of "profligacy and corruption," were freely thrown out in the Irish parliament- house and elsewhere, in the first months of 1800 : and from that day to this, the calmest approvers of the Irish Union have been observed to make reservations in regard to the means by which the assent of the Irish to the measure was obtained. Perhaps there was secret corruption : but it seems also probable that the surprising change of mind manifested by the Dublin parliament between the sessions of 1799 and 1800 might suggest suspicions of bribery, while in fact the members were only exhibiting another instance of the passion, short-sightedness, and consequent fluctuation, which too often characterized their proceedings. In 1799, the Irish par- Chap. I.] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. XXI liament assented to the English parliamentary resolutions in favour 1800. of the Union by a majority of only one vote. In the next year, • • the majorities on the same side were large ; and in March, the two Houses agreed in an address to the King, assenting to the wisdom of the measure. Some members of both Houses, on both sides the Channel, implored the government to grant such delay as should be necessary for ascertaining the real feelings of the Irish nation on the subject : but this was refused by overwhelming majorities ; and the Act of Union received the royal assent on the 2nd of July, 1800. By this act. Great Britain and Ireland were henceforth to con- siephen's stitute one kingdom, and to be caUed "The United Kingdom" ri™™^!^^ accordingly. _ There was to be one parliament : and in this parlia- ment the spiritual peers of Ireland, and twenty-eight temporal peers, elected for life by the peers of Ireland, were to sit in the House of Lords, and one hundred members in the House of Com- mons. The Protestant churches of the two countries were to be united. The two countries were to be on equal terms as regarded trade and navigation, and treaties with foreign powers. The laws and courts of both kingdoms were to remain unaltered. From the date of the Union, all Acts of Parliament were to extend to Ireland, unless special exception were made. The succession to the imperial crown was to be the same as heretofore to the two kingdoms. It was on the 2nd of August, 1800, that the Irish Parliament met for the last time ; and there is something affecting to those who have lived to watch the course of Irish affairs, in reading, at the end of half a century, the happy anticipations of the Viceroy, that, under the protection of Divine Providence, these Amuai Reg., united kingdoms would remain, in all future ages, the fairest I'ss"' '^^""'' monument of the reign in which their union took place. On the last day of the year and of the century, the King closed the last session of theBritish Parliament, which was now to become the Imperial Parliament. The occasion was indeed a mere adjourn- ment for three weeks, as the House of Commons was in the midst of the business which at the time chiefly occupied the King's mind, and which he was impatient for the legislature to resume — the passing of measures restrictive on the use of flour, on account of the scarcity. Early in the year, a bill had passed which forbade the sale of bread that had been baked less than twenty-four hours. Next, laws were made which bestowed bounties on the importation of corn and of fish ; subjected millers to supervision by the excise, and to a legal rate of profits ; and stopped the distilleries, to save the barley. Other measures of the same tendency were so interesting to the King and Ministry, that we find no mention in the royal speech of the mighty event which Amuai Reg., was now to take place, except in a parenthetical kind of way — as J^g"- '""™' a reason why there must be some delay about the Bread Bills, but INTRODUCTION TO THE [Book I. 1800. no reason for the delay being a long one. But that the speech "— stands before our eyes complete in the records of the time, we could hardly believe that such could be the close of the series of British parliaments, on the eve of the admission of the great Irish element. While there were some who objected to the Union altogether, as abolishing the nationality of Ireland, and who were convinced that nothing but British force and ministerial corruption could have carried the measure, there were other Irish patriots who entered protests against the incompleteness of the change. They would have had the Viceroyalty abolished ; and also all custom-houses on the opposite coasts of the Irish Channel ; and they would have transferred their two Houses of Parliament complete into the British Legislature. The King thought the Viceroyalty might be abolished : and probably every one now wishes there had been free trade, from the beginning, between the two countries : but, as for other points, the political fusion must stop somewhere, if the Irish were to preserve anything distinctive at all, or to enter into the Union with any good will : and it is, in such cases, for an after time to perceive and decide where the fusion should stop. As will presently appear, there was something more pressing than this which had been neglected, and which made the subject of the Union the bitterest and the most disastrous that filled the minds of our statesmen for a long course of years. TEMriR OF It is common to us to hear and to say that the temper of the times, fifty years ago, was warlike, though, in fact, the people were beginning to have, and to express, a passionate desire for peace. To say that the temper of the times was warlike gives no idea, to us who can scarcely remember war times, of the spirit of violence, and the barbaric habits of thought and life, which then prevailed. Everything seems, in the records, to have suifered a war change. The gravest annalists, the most educated public men, called the First Consul " the Corsican murderer," and so forth, through the whole vocabulary of abuse. Nelson's first precept of professional morality was to hate a Frenchman as you would the devil. Go- vernment rule took the form of coercion ; and popular discontent that of rebellion ; and suffering that of riot. The passionate order of crime showed itself slaughterous : the mean kind exercised itself in peculation of military and naval provisions. Affliction took its character from the war. Tens of thousands of widows, and hundreds of thousands of orphans, were weeping or starving in the midst of society ; and among the starving were a multitude of the families of employed sailors, who were sent off on long voyages, while their pay was three or four years in arrear. The mutiny, which spread half round our coasts, was a natural, almost a neces- sary consequence. Because it was " suppressed," it does not follow that the feelings connected with it were extinguished. In Wilber- THE Times. Chap. I.] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. xxiii force's Diary we find an expression of strong regret that " the 1800. officers do not love the sailors," such being, he observes, the conse- - — -~^ quence of fear entering into such a relation — fear on the part of superiors. The suflferings from bad seasons, again, were aggra- vated by a taxation growing heavier every year, and money running shorter every day — all on account of the war. The very sports of the time took their character from the same class of influences. The world went to see reviews, at which the King (when well) appeared on horseback. Then, there were illumina- tions for victories : and funerals of prodigious grandeur, when military and naval officers of eminence were to be buried in places of honour. There were presentations of jewelled swords, in pro- vincial cities as well as in London : and, from the metropolitan theatre to the puppet-show, there were celebrations and represen- tations of combats by sea or land. The inhabitants of towns came to their windows and doors at the tramp of cavalry ; ladies pre- sented colours to regiments ; and childi-en played at soldiers on the village green. Prayers and thanksgivings in church and chapel — services utterly confounding now to the moral sense of a time which has leisure to see that Christianity is a religion of brotherly love — then met with a loud response which had in it a hard tone of worldly passion : and from church and chapel, the congregation took a walk to see the Sunday drill. Manufacturers and trades- men contested vehemently for army and navy contracts ; and the bankrupt list in the Gazette showed a large proportion of dependents on army and navy contractors who could not get paid. If the vices and miseries of the time took their character from the war, there was a fully corresponding manifestation of virtue. From Pitt at the head, down to the humblest peasant or the most timid woman in the remotest corner of the kingdom, all who were worthy were animated by the appeals of the times, and magna- nimity came out in all directions. The courage was not only in the Nelsons and the Wellesleys : it was in the soul of the sailor's love, and the grey-haired father of the soldier, when their hearts beat at the thought of battle and the threat of invasion. The self-denial was found all abroad, from the Pitt who could respect- fully support an Addington Ministry, and a Wilberforce who curtailed his luxuries, and exceeded his income by 3,000^. in one year, to feed the poor in the scarcity, down to the sister who dismissed her brother to the wars with a smile, and the operative who worked extra hours when he should have slept — all sustained alike by the thought that they were obeying a call of their country. It was a phase of the national life which should be preserved in vivid representation, for its own value, as well as because it may be a curious spectacle to a future age. CHAPTER II. 1801. rpHE first days of the new century — not the first years or ., J, X months, but the first days — ^present a picture of the faults and weaknesses of statesmanship, which will make it a wonder through all historic time that the British nation preserved its place in the world. After putting together the facts yielded by the various records of the time, and thus obtaining a clear view of the intrigues, the selfishness, the ignorance, the_ foolishness, the mutual deceit and misunderstandings, of the parties on and about the throne, the student of history draws a long breath of thank- fulness and surprise that the nation should have escaped falling into a political chaos, and thus becoming an easy prey to foreign foes. Some parts of the story remain obscure ; but the greater portion has of late become sufiiciently clear to explain and justify Diaries, i?.9. Lord Malmcsbury's exclamation in soliloquy, " We forget the host of enemies close upon us, and every body's mind thinks on one object only, unmindful that all they are contending about may vanish and disappear if we are subdued by France." mh. Pitt. The chief obscurity is how such things as are now to be dis- closed could happen under the premiership of Mr. Pitt. The mystery of the particulars of his conduct must remain: but a careful study of the men involved with him seems to yield a general impression that Mr. Pitt's chief fault was an undue self- reliance, leading him to a careless treatment of the King, a want of consideration to his colleagues, and a too easy trust that he could manage difiiculties as they arose, by means of resources which had never yet failed him. His temper was so sanguine as to impair his sagacity throughout his whole career. He was always found trusting our allies abroad — not only their good faith and ability, but their good fortune. He was always found expecting that the Austrians would defeat Napoleon in the next battle; believing that the plan of every campaign was admirable and inexpugnable ; immoveably convinced that what he considered the right must prevail — not only in the long run, but at every step. If his forti- tude of soul and sweetness of temper had not incessantly overborne his imperfection of judgment, his career must have ended very early ; for his failures were incessant. Such a repetition of failures would not have been permitted to any man whose personal great- ness and sweetness did not overbear other people's faculties as Chap. II] HISTORY OF THE PEACE. xxv much as his own. If it is impossible now to read his private 1801. letters, written in the darkest hours of his official adversities, with- - — — - out a throbbing of the heart at the calm fortitude and indomitable hopefulness of their tone, it may be easily conceived how over- powering was the influence of these quahties over the minds of the small men, and the superficial men, and the congenial men, and the afiectionate idolators, by whom he was surrounded. If any of these doubted whether the Austrians would vdn the next battle, it was not till they went home and sank intb themselves ; and then they did not tell him so. If any of them feared Napoleon more than they trusted plans of a campaign, it was not while his bright eye was upon them, and his eloquence of hope was filling _ their ears : and when they relapsed into dread, they did not tell him so. The restless, suspicious, worrying, obstinate, ignorant mind of the half-insane King wa§ laid at rest for the hour when they were together ; and the charm which invested the minister made him for those hours the sovereign over his master. It was no wonder that all this did him harm, and tended to impair still further his already weak sagacity. When he carried his accustomed methods into the conduct of critical aifairs of domestic politics, it could not be but that, sooner or later, he must find himself involved in some tremendous difficulty. He was always kept in the dark about one thing or another that it was important for him to know. Nobody ever hinted to him that he was wrong : nobody ever called him to account : there were none but party foes to show him the other side of any question. Holding his head high above the jobbers and self-seekers about him, and never looking down into their dirty tricks, or giving ear to their selfish cravings, except to get rid of them by gratifying them — too easily, no doubt, but with a heedless contempt ; resorting for sympathy and counsel to the best of his friends, and then finding little but open-hearted idolatry, it is no wonder that he was unguarded, over-confident, and virtually, though not consciously, despotic. Despotic he was throughout. His comrades, including the King, revelled in the despotism, on account of its charm. The sufiering people felt the worst of the despotism without any of the charm. While this host of sufierers was growing restless under the burdens of the war, and some of them frantic under the repression of their civil liberties ; while the Northern Powers were banding against us, to cut off our commerce and humble our naval pride ; while Napoleon was marshalling his 500,000 soldiers on their coast, so that they could be seen from our cliffs on a sunny day ; while the frame of the great_ minister was wearing down under the secret griefs and mortifications which he never breathed to human ear, he involved himself by his constitu- tional and habitual faults in a fog of difficulty, which darkened the opening of the new century, and poisoned his peace and his hfe. He scarcely abated the loftiness of his can-iage in the midst of it : INTRODUCTION TO THE [Book I. 1801. he manifested a higher magnanimity than ever before : his patience . \ and gentleness almost intoxicated the moral sense of his adorers : he seemed to forget all cares in reading Aristophanes and reciting Horace or Lucan with his young friend Canning under the trees at sunset, or kept together parties of friends — ladies, children, and aU— round the fireside tiU past midnight, by his flow of rich discourse ; but his spirit was breaking. He had learned what fear was : and it was a fear which brought remorse with it. No remorse for the slaughter of the war ; no remorse for the woes of widows and orphans ; no remorse for having overborne the Englishman's liberty of speech and political action. About these things he appears to have had no sensibility. He had no popular sympathies; though he certainly would have had, if the people had ever come before his eyes, or he had had that high faculty of imagination which might have brought them before the eye of his mind. To him, the people were an abstraction ; and he had no turn for abstractions. The nearest approach he made to entertain- ing abstractions was in acting for the national glory and interna- tional duty. His view was probably right, as far as it went : but it was imperfect — so imperfect, that he may be pronounced unfit for such a place as he held, in such times. His remorse was for nothing of this kind ; but for his having done that which caused a return of the King's insanity, and, by that consequence, compelled him to break faith with the Catholics. He always denied— and everybody believes him — that any express pledge was given to the Catholics": but nobody denies that those of them who agreed to the Union did so under an authorized expectation that they might send representatives out of their own body to Parliament. This expectation he found himself compelled to disappoint. He was not one to acknowledge the effect upon himself of such a difficulty as had arisen through his means : but all who loved him imme- diately saw, and those who opposed him soon learned, that the peace of his mind and the brilliancy of his life were overshadowed. But a short term of life remained : and that had much bitterness in it — so much that it was truly a bitterness unto death. He died broken-hearted. Life of Lord What he had now done was this : — In January 1799, he declared, si