[1788 A.D.] when prince of Wales, had been allowed £100,000 a year, the coalition ministry had insisted on the same sum being given to the present heir-apparent; but partly from parsimony, partly from disapproval of the prince's mode of life, and partly from dislike of the proposers, the king had obstinately refused his assent. The consequence was that the prince got deeply in debt-a state, from which, as subsequent events showed, even the larger sum would not have preserved him. In 1786 he applied to his father for assistance, and meeting with a harsh refusal, he set about a pretended system of economy, selling all his horses (his coach-horses included), suspending his buildings, shutting up the most splendid apartments in Carlton House, his residence, etc. When this had been supposed to have produced its effect on the public mind, his friends in the commons proposed (April 20th, 1787) an address to the king for his relief. Mr. Pitt earnestly required that the motion should be withdrawn, as it might lead to the disclosure of circumstances which he would wish to conceal. Mr. Rolle used still stronger language; while Fox, Sheridan, and others of the prince's friends insisted that he feared no investigation of his conduct.

The matter alluded to was the secret marriage of the prince of Wales with a Catholic lady of the name of Fitzherbert-a fact, of which we believe at present there can be no doubt. Mr. Fox, however, a few days after, by the authority of the prince, declared that "the fact not only could never have happened legally, but never did happen in any way, and had from the beginning been a vile and malignant falsehood." The greater part of the house was, or affected to be, satisfied, and a meeting having taken place between the prince and Mr. Pitt, an addition of £10,000 a year was made to his royal highness's income; £161,000 was issued for the payment of his debts, and £20,000 for the works at Carlton House. The prince then resumed his former mode of life, and soon got into debt as deeply as ever.

As there could be no doubt but that the prince, when regent, would select his ministers from the party with which he had long been connected, Mr. Pitt, we may be allowed to suppose, from private as well as public motives, was anxious to limit his powers. The regency was therefore offered to the prince, subject to the conditions of not being enabled to confer any peerage, or to grant any office, reversion or pension, except during the king's pleasure; while the care of the royal person, with the disposition of the household, and the consequent appointment to all places in it (about four hundred in number) should be committed to the queen. The prince, though mortified, consented to accept this limited sovereignty. Had Mr. Fox and his friends been wise (which they rarely showed themselves to be), they would have snatched the reins of power at once; but instead of doing so, they interposed such numerous needless delays (though it was well-known that the king's health was improving every day), that the bill did not reach its second reading in the house of lords till the 19th of February, 1788; the accounts of the royal health were by that time so favourable, that the house judged it decorous to adjourn to the 24th, on which day his majesty's intellect had recovered its usual state, and the cup of power was once more dashed from the lips of the whigs.c

On the 25th of February the issue of bulletins by the royal physicians was discontinued. On the 10th of March the commissioners who had been appointed by former letters patent to open the parliament, by another commission declared further causes for holding the same; and proceeded to state to both houses that his majesty, being by the blessing of Providence recovered from his indisposition, and enabled to attend to public affairs, conveyed

[1788 A.D.]

through them his warmest acknowledgments for the additional proofs they had given of affectionate attachment to his person. The other subjects of a royal speech on opening parliament were then detailed.

Pitt had won his second great victory. In 1784 against odds almost incalculable, he had defeated the coalition with almost the unanimous support of the people. He had employed his unassailable tenure of power in carrying forward the resources of national prosperity by a series of measures conceived, not in the spirit of party, but with a large comprehension of what was essential to the public good. Another great trial came. He had to conduct another conflict, full of danger and difficulty, in which, fighting for his sovereign, he had in the same manner the support of the nation. Major Cartwright, so well known for his subsequent endeavours to promote a reform in parliament, wrote to Wilberforce: "I very much fear that the king's present derangement is likely to produce other derangements not for the public benefit. I hope we are not to be sold to the coalition faction." When the battle was over, George III wrote to his persevering minister that "his constant attachment to my interest, and that of the public, which are inseparable, must ever place him in the most advantageous light." On the 23rd of April, a public thanksgiving was appointed for the king's recovery. His majesty went to St. Paul's accompanied by both houses of parliament, to return his own thanksgivings. The day was observed throughout the kingdom. Illuminations were never so general; joy was never so heartfelt. The minister, still only in his twenty-ninth year, had reached the pinnacle of power and popularity.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

On the 11th of July, 1788, the king, at the close of the session of parliament, said: "The general state of Europe, and the assurances which I receive from foreign powers, afford me every reason to expect that my subjects will continue to enjoy the blessings of peace." The differences with France on the subject of the United Provinces had been adjusted. On the 6th of September, Mr. Pitt exultingly wrote to the marquis of Stafford, "The state of France, whatever else it may produce, seems to promise us more than ever a considerable respite from any dangerous projects." The "state of France" was that of a country in which the disordered condition of its finances appeared to render any new disturbances of Europe, from the ambition of the government and the restlessness of the people, something approaching to an impossibility. The "whatever else it might produce" was a vague and remote danger. Yet, in September, 1788, there were symptoms of impending changes, that, with a full knowledge of the causes operating to produce them, might have suggested to the far-seeing eye of that statesmanship that looked beyond the formal relations of established governments, some real cause for disquiet. The history of that Revolution is essentially connected with the history of England, almost from the first day of the meeting of the states general. The governments of the two countries were not, for several years, brought into collision, or into an exchange of remonstrance and explanation, on the subject of the momentous events in France. But these events, in all their shifting aspects, so materially affected the state of public opinion amongst the British people, that they gradually exercised a greater influence upon English external policy and internal condition, than any overthrow of

['A few months later the storm of the French Revolution was at its height.]

[1789-1790 A.D.] dynasties, any wars, any disturbances of the balance of power, any one of "the incidents common in the life of a nation"-to use the words of Tocqueville-even a far greater influence than the American Revolution, which was the precursor of that of France.

The time was approaching when those Englishmen who looked with apprehension upon the French Revolution, should be violently opposed to those who as violently became its partisans. The progress of this conflict of opinions was very gradual; but the tendencies towards a rupture of the old ties of one great political party were soon manifest. The distinctions of whig and tory would speedily be obliterated. Those who clung to the most liberal interpretation of the principles upon which the revolution of 1688 was founded, would be pointed at as jacobins the title which became identified with all that was most revolting in the French Revolution. The tory became the anti-jacobin. Thus, through ten years of social bitterness, execration and persecution made England and Scotland very unpleasant dwelling places for men who dared to think and speak openly. Democratic opinions, even in their mildest form, were proscribed, not by a political party only, but by the majority of the people. Liberty and jacobinism were held to be synony

COSTUME OF 1793

mous.

Burke, Fox, and Sheridan, from the commencement of the administration of Pitt, had been closely united as the chief leaders of the whigs. They had been brought intimately together as managers of the impeachment of Hastings, whose trial at the commencement of the session of 1790 had been proceeding for two years. Fox and Burke had cordially joined with Wilberforce, who was supported by Pitt, in taking a prominent part in advocating the total abolition of the slave trade, in 1789. On the 5th of February, 1790, when the army estimates were moved, Mr. Pitt held that it was necessary, on account of the turbulent situation of the greater part of the Continent, that England should be prepared for war, though he trusted the system uniformly pursued by ministers would lead to a continuance of peace. Mr. Fox opposed the estimates on the ground of economy alone. On the 9th of February, when the report on the army estimates was brought up, Mr. Burke proclaimed, in the most emphatic terms, his views on the affairs of France. He opposed an increase of our military force. He held that France, in a political light, was to be considered as expunged out of the system of Europe. Burke held that, in this fallen condition, it was not easy to determine whether France could ever appear again as a leading power. Six years afterwards he described the views he formerly entertained as those of "common speculators." He says, "deprived of the old government, deprived in a manner of all government, France, fallen as a monarchy, to common specu

(1790 A.D.]

lators might have appeared more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and terror of them all."

The influence of the French Revolution upon great questions of British domestic policy was very soon manifested in the proceedings of parliament. In 1789 a bill for the relief of Protestant dissenters was rejected by a very small majority. During the prorogation, the dissenters had agitated for the repeal of the Corporation and Test acts, with unwonted earnestness and considerable indiscretion. Some of the establishment were equally zealous in the encouragement of a resistance to the claims of the dissenters. Mr. Fox, on the 2nd of March, proposed the abolition of these religious tests. Mr. Pitt opposed the motion. Mr. Burke declared that had the repeal been moved for ten years before, he should probably have joined Mr. Fox in supporting it. But he had the strongest reasons to believe that many of the persons now calling themselves dissenters, and who stood the most forward in the present application for relief, were men of factious and dangerous principles, actuated by no motives of religion or conscience, to which tolerance could in any rational sense be applied. The motion was rejected by a very large majority. Two days after, a proposition made by Mr. Flood, to amend the representation of the people in parliament, was withdrawn; the minister, who had three times advocated reform, now holding that if a more favourable time should arise, he might himself bring forward a specific proposition; but he felt that the cause of reform might now lose ground from being agitated at an improper moment.

BURKE'S Reflections on the Revolution (1790 A.D.)

The sixteenth parliament of Great Britain, having nearly completed its full term of seven years, was dissolved soon after the prorogation in June, 1790. The new parliament assembled on the 25th of November, when Mr. Addington was chosen speaker. There was no allusion to the affairs of France in the king's speech. That the great events which had taken place in that country were occupying the thoughts of public men, there could be small doubt. Whilst the royal speech, and the echoing addresses, dwelt upon a pacification between Austria and the Porte, upon dissensions in the Netherlands, upon peace between Russia and Sweden, and upon war between Russia and the Porte, the national mind was absorbed almost exclusively by conflicting sentiments about the Revolution in France. A few weeks before the meeting of parliament, Burke had published his famous Reflections on the Revolution. Probably no literary production ever produced such an exciting effect upon public opinion at the time of its appearance, or maintained so permanent an influence amongst the generation to whose fears it appealed. The reputation of the author as the greatest political philosopher of his age; his predilections for freedom, displayed through the whole course of the American Revolution; his hatred of despotic power, as manifested in his unceasing denunciations of atrocities in India; his consistent adherence to whig principles as established by the Bill of Rights-this acquaintance with the character and sentiments of Burke first raised an unbounded curiosity to trace the arguments against the struggle for liberty in another country, coming from a man who had so long contended for what was deemed the popular cause at home. The perusal of this remarkable book converted the inquirer into an enthusiast. In proportion as the liberal institutions of Great Britain were held up to admiration, so were the attempts of France to build up

[1790-1791 A.D.]

a new system of government upon the ruins of the old system, described as the acts of men devoted to "every description of tyranny and cruelty employed to bring about and to uphold this revolution." To the argumentative power was added an impassioned eloquence, which roused the feelings into hatred of the anarchists who led the royal family captives into Paris on the 6th of October, and directed every sympathy towards a humiliated king, a proscribed nobility, and a plundered church.

Six months elapsed between the publication of Burke's Reflections and his final separation from his party, involving an irrevocable breach of friendship with Fox.

THE BIRMINGHAM RIOTS (1791 A.D.)

In the debate on the proposed repeal of the Test and Corporation acts, on the 2nd of March, 1790, Mr. Burke read extracts from a sermon of Doctor Price, and from the writings of Doctor Priestly and other non-conformists; inferring from certain passages that the leading preachers among the dissenters were avowed enemies to the Church of England, and that thence its establishment appeared to be in much more serious danger than the church of France was in a year or two ago. The Reflections on the Revolution diffused this alarm more extensively through the country. The clamour was at last got up that the church was in danger. There were results of this spirit, which were more disgraceful to the English character than the violence of the Parisian populace in the attack upon the Bastille or the march from Versailles. It was a lower and a more contemptible fanaticism than had been evoked by the first call in France to fight for freedom, that produced the riots at Birmingham which broke out on the 14th of July, 1791.

Dr. Joseph Priestly, in 1780, became the minister of the principal Unitarian congregation in Birmingham. He was ardent in his political views, having written an answer to Burke's Reflections, and he did not hesitate to avow his opposition to the church, in his zeal to obtain what he deemed the rights of dissenters. But in his private life he was worthy of all respect, and in his scientific pursuits had attained the most honourable distinction. But even as a politician he avowed himself a warm admirer of the English constitution, as the best system of policy the sagacity of man had been able to contrive, though its vigour had been impaired by certain corruptions. He published, in 1791, Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham — a work in which, according to Robert Hall, "the seeds of that implacable dislike were scattered" which produced the outrages that we shall briefly relate.

On the 11th of July, according to a royal proclamation of the 27th of that month, "a certain scandalous and seditious paper was printed and published in the town of Birmingham," for the discovery of the author of which a reward of one hundred pounds was offered. This handbill called upon the people to celebrate on the 14th the destruction of that high altar and castle of despotism, the Bastille; but not to forget that their own parliament was venal; the ministers hypocritical; the clergy legal oppressors; the reigning family extravagant; the crown too weighty for the head that wears it. This paper, says the proclamation, was printed and published in the town of Birmingham. William Hutton, a cautious man, says that it was fabricated in London, brought to Birmingham, and a few copies privately scattered under a table at an inn. On that 14th of July about eighty persons assembled at a tavern, known as Dadley's, to commemorate this anniversary; and at the Swan Inn, some magistrates, and persons opposed to the celebrationists,