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jesty's intention to dissolve, without delay, the present parliament, and to direct the issue of writs for the calling of a new one.

"His Majesty cannot take leave of you without commanding us to express his Majesty's deep sense of the zeal and public spirit which you have constantly displayed in the discharge of your several important functions.

His Majesty particularly acknowledges the promptitude and discretion with which you have applied yourselves to the objects specially recommended to you by his Majesty at the commencement of this session: and his Majesty confidently hopes, that the good effect of your deliberations will be manifested in the improved stability of public and private credit.

His Majesty has the satisfaction to inform you, that the distinguished skill, bravery, and success, with which the operations of the British Arms in the dominions of the king of Ava have been carried on, have led to the signature, upon highly honourable terms, of a preliminary treaty with that sovereign, which his Majesty has every reason to expect will be the foundation of a secure and permanent peace.

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"His Majesty trusts, that the causes out of which the partial stagnation of employment has arisen, are, under the blessing of Providence, in a course of gradual abatement.

"His Majesty is confident that your presence and example in your several counties will contribute to maintain and encourage the loyal and orderly spirit which pervades the great body of his people.

"And his Majesty relies upon your disposition to inculcate that harmony and mutual good-will among the several great interests of the country, upon which the common prosperity of them all essentially depends."

"His Majesty further commands us to repeat to you, that his Majesty's earnest endeavours have continued to be unremittingly exerted to prevent the breaking out of hostilities among nations; and to put an end to those which still un- On the 2nd of June Parliament happily exist, as well in America was dissolved, and writs ordered to as in Europe. be issued for a new election, the "Gentlemen of the House of writs to be returnable on the 25th

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CHAP. VII.

General Election-State of the Harvest-Importation of Grain allowed -Meeting of the new Parliament-King's Speech-Amendment on the Address in the House of Lords, moved by Lord King-Amendment on the Address in the House of Commons, moved by Mr. Hume Amendment moved by Mr. Western-Act of Indemnity-Motion for a Select Committee on Joint-Stock Companies-Resolutions against Bribery at Elections, moved by Lord Althorp-Resolutions for regulating Committees on Private Bills, moved by Mr. Littleton-King's Message respecting the Conduct of Spain towards Portugal-Mr. Canning's Speech on an Address in Answer to the Message-Discussion in the House of Commons-Mr. Canning's Reply-Address moved in the House of Lords-Speech of the Duke of Wellington Sailing of an Armament for Portugal-Adjournment,

LTHOUGH the elections, which followed immediately the dissolution of parliament, presented several scenes of active and vigorous individual combat, they did not possess that interest which attaches to them when their issue is to decide the fate of contending parties. Mr. Stephen endeavoured to make the Slave-trade a test, by publishing an address to the electors of the United Kingdom, in which he recommended to them that the first question put to a candidate should be, whether he was a West-India Merchant, or proprietor of slaves? and, if the question should be in the affirmative, to refuse him the countenance of a single suffrage. Enthusiasm is almost always inconsistent, and, to its vision, one single object occupies all space. No better illus tration of this could be found, than that a sensible man should undervalue in a legislator all the qualities suited for the discussion of the complicated interests of Great Britain, because they might be biassed to one particular side on

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The Corn-laws, and Catholic Emancipation, were the topics most frequently resorted to on the hustings. As the lower classes had had the impression that their food was high because the Corn-laws existed to enrich the landholder, to declare an opinion in favour of their abolition could not fail to gain cheers at a popular election. Yet it is worthy of remark, that even where candidates found it necessary or prudent to express their sentiments on the subject, they seldom spoke of any specific enmity to the landholders, or gave any pledge to keep food cheap, but found shelter behind the vague and unmeaning promise of supporting such measures as would be equally for the benefit of the grower and the consumer. At Liverpool a miserable attempt was made to get up an opposition to Mr. Huskisson. The pretext for it was, that the mercantile policy of the cabinet had injured the manufactures of the country, and the trade of

the port. But its abettors were few, and ignorant, and mean, and could not find a candidate to accept of their vulgar support. Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Hobhouse were returned for Westminster without opposition; in Southwark, sir Robert Wilson was opposed strongly, but unsuccessfully, In the county of Westmoreland, Mr. Brougham was again made the instrument of a struggle against the family of Lowther, but received a more signal defeat than in his former attacks. In Northumberland, lord Howick and Mr. Beaumont (one of the former members for that county) both failed, although each of them, before the election was done, gave his second votes with a ministerial and successful candidate. In Scotland, the only struggle was for the representation of the stewartry of Kircudbright, from which the former member was ousted by a majority of one in favour of Mr. Ferguson of Craigdarroch, who had returned to his native country a voluntary exile of more than twenty years in India, whither he had gone to practise as a barrister after his conviction, along with lord Thanet, for a riot in the court at Maidstone on the trial of Arthur O'Connor.

Cobbett had the courage to offer himself to the electors of Preston, where he found amongst them a good many kindred hearts; and Hunt, once a bold and dangerous demagogue (in so far as the power and inclination to excite confusion makes a man dangerous) but whose fame had now sunk into that of a very successful manufacturer of shoe-blacking, had the effrontery to start for the county of Somerset, in' special opposition to sir Thomas Lethbridge, and to retire from his

defeat, announcing, that "he would repeat the experiment till it succeeded." That Cobbett should have polled nearly a thousand votes in Preston is perfectly natural, because Preston enjoys almost universal suffrage; and the fact is an edifying example of the effects of that mode of distributing the elective franchise. On the part of the man of the people the election was a scene of unmixed blackguardism. On its termination he thus addressed his mob:

Gentlemen, I have done much good to you by my coming; I have sweated your tyrants-I have bled them. I have made the silly Honourable (Mr. Stanley) throw 15,000l. among you, and that's no joke; for though these lords have too much land, they have not too much money. I have tickled the captain too; I have made him dance to some tune; he must have pledged his half-pay to keep open house for you, and now, like the other half-pays in London, he must live on plates of beef and goes of gin for the next seven years. As to Mr. Wood, I could not draw any money out of him, for the poor devil had none to spend ; but his father Otty Wood, the miserly old sugar baker of Liverpool, I have extracted from his pocket what a hundred-horse-power steamengine could not draw from him I have made him spend 7,000l. These are what I have done for you, good gentlemen. But I have done more I have kept out the Tory captain Barry. Not that I like Wood either; I only dislike him least of the two; but you shall not be cursed with either one or other of them, gentlemen. The election is not worth a straw. I'll have it set aside next April, when I'll bleed our opponents again, and

you'll elect for your representative the only man who has the wish and the ability, the heart and the head, to serve you and his country -myself, gentlemen, myself" He did keep his promise so far as to petition against the return; but he neglected to enter into his recognizances, and the petition was discharged.

The Catholic question was brought forward much more distinctly, even in England: the violence, and threats (for their language was nothing less) of the Catholics had called up a corresponding spirit to resist them. It was known that their claims would be one of the earliest subjects of discussion in the new parliament: the one party, therefore, strove to insure the election of a House of Commons which would support emancipation by so powerful a majority as to overcome, by moral influence and political expediency, the majority of the House of Lords; while the other struggled to regain that ascendancy in the House of Commons which they had lost in 1825, but had lost in a degree so small as to be yet recoverable. Of four candidates whom Yorkshire for the first time returned, two were elected on the declared ground of being opposed to emancipation; and lord Milton had to submit to be interrupted in his address from the hustings by clamorous shouts of "no popery." In London, alderman Wood, who trembled for his election, complained bitterly that his attachment to the cause of the Catholics should be made a reason for opposing him and a placard having been posted up, like other electioneering squibs, alluding to that attachment, the alderman actually had the hap less bill-sticker apprehended, and

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carried before the lord mayor. Lord John Russell lost his election for the county of Huntingdon; his brother, the marquis of Tavistock, was only second on the poll, in the county of Bedford, after Mr. M Queen an anti-Catholic candidate; and Mr. Pym, the other candidate on the Bedford interest, lost his election altogether. Emancipation, or resistance to emancipation, was not indeed proposed to candidates as a test or generally or loudly; but, on the result of the English elections, the opponents of that measure did gain an accession of strength.

It was in Ireland, and naturally so, that the giving or refusing of a vote depended on the answer received to the question-will you vote for emancipation? The demagogues of the Catholic association gave themselves entirely up to carrying this one point, and were aided by a band of much more powerful agitators. The Catholic priests now mixed openly in the conflict; the contest on the hustings was converted into an award of eternal damnation; the consolations of the church here, and the joys of heaven hereafter, were lavished in promise upon the Catholic peasant who voted for an emancipation candidate; the darkness of excommunication in this life, and the gloom of purgatory, or the flames of hell in that which is to come, were denounced against him if he should so forget his God as to vote for an anticatholic. Over the tattered and ignorant peasant, whom his miserable patch of potatoe-ground, rated at forty shillings, constituted a freeholder, the tyrannical sway of the priest, armed with the terrors of eternity, was irresistible. The associated barrister and the political

priest travelled the country together; in order to propagate the common creed-the one, by threats of damnation, and the other, by the more temporal considerations of civil and religious power; and, to insure any portion of the elo quence expended from being lost upon the motley and unlettered audience, when the lay apostle had delivered his exhortation in English, his clerical brother followed in their native Irish. Not merely political opposition, but downright personal hatred towards an anticatholic candidate was inculcated as a Christian duty. Mr. O'Connel traversed the county of Waterford, with a rev. Mr. Sheehan by his side, to rouse it against the family of Beresford. Every tie of respect and civil influence which had hitherto united the Catholic tenant to his Protestant landlord, gave way before the tremendous power of the church, hurrying on the unthinking votaries of ignorance and superstition. superstition. The consequences were inevitable: the priest-hood wielded the electors, the landlords were attacked and defeated by those very forty-shilling freeholders whom they had them selves created for political purposes; and wherever an anti-catholic candidate came in contact with the church, his failure was inevit able. In the county of Water ford, lord George Beresford, a member of by far the first family of the county, was compelled to give up the contest, his own ten antry being marched forth against him by Mr. O'Connel and the rev. Mr. Sheehan. At a meeting held in Clonmel, shortly after the elections, to celebrate the triumph, Mr. Sheehan, the priest, said, "we said to the people, here are the natural enemies of your country,

and here are your priests who wait on the bed of your sickness, and are your friends alike in prosperity or woe : follow us or them." Mr. Shiell said, "the whole body of the peasantry have risen up in a tumultuous revolt against their landlords. I avow that this extraordinary political phenomenon is, to a great extent, the result of the interposition of the clergy, whose influence has been brought into full and unrestrained activity."

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This interference of a new influence for the first time was beneficial for the present, in the Irish elections, to the supporters of emancipation: how far it may ultimately benefit the cause is more doubtful. The zeal and violence of the priesthood gave the question a new character, and opened a new view of the intended consequences of emancipation. What is called emancipation is a civil right, and, if granted, would reach only a few laymen. It requires a considerable share of credulity to believe that the activity of the clergy had no connection with the interests of their own order; that they laboured with such diligence, and employed all the powers of their church, merely from a generous willingness to assist others in a cause which could be productive of no advantage to them. It is not uncharitable to believe that, in following a merely civil measure under the standard of pretended civil liberty, they foresee the gradual elevation of their own hierarchy. Never have the Catholic clergy, as a body, been the friends of civil liberty; and, in looking at their conduct in the Irish elections, Protestants may find reason to suspect, that the Catholic church sees in emancipation something much more closely

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