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CHAPTER III.

THE JOINT WISDOMS AT WORK.

HIS MAJESTY in his Speech graciously refers to the great measure of the previous year as calculated to consolidate the strength and resources of the Empire, and cement more closely the interests and affections of his subjects. Nothing can equal the joy and congratulation with which the joint plunderers and tyrants of the two countries come together to carry on together the work which they had not so successfully, yet successfully enough, carried on separately. To say that the tone of the two Houses was effusive and gushing would but faintly describe it. The prevailing sentiment received eloquent expression in the House of Lords. Looking round the gilded chamber the Duke of Montrose solemnly imprecated "destruction on the head of him who should impiously strive to disturb the connexion," and so, warming with his theme, announces that "Great Britain

might rejoice in being incorporated with a people not excelled in virtue and talents by any nation on the earth." Surely praise could hardly farther go, though the bepraised might find some difficulty in appropriating such compliments to starving, poverty-stricken wretches, half servile, half rebel. Mark, by the way, that all this virtue and all those talents are governed just now by martial law"beardless youths in their teens sentencing to the hangman both aristocrat and serf." Then with the rapt eye of a prophet His Grace descries a glorious future. "English capital and skill seizing upon those fertile Irish plains, evoking all their hidden and inexhaustible wealth, so that he would make bold to say the most sanguine imagination could not anticipate or even conceive the extent of riches and power to which under such auspices Ireland must swiftly rise." But His Grace as a prophet might have made himself acquainted with the utterances of certain ancient brethren of the order, with such for example as "Woe to them that lay field to field," for His Grace concluded his rapturous discourse by speaking in favour of a general enclosure of the commons, such of them as are left. The denounced of Isaiah doubtless bought their fields, Montrose and his friends propose to steal them. Of what indeed have not these noble lords and gentlemen despoiled the English people? The

lands which they had got on trust they have converted to their own use, till all England, town and country, save the commons, paid them rent-rackrent or the full market value. The industry of England, when rent could not quite devour it, they stripped with taxation to the limits of endurance. People-devouring kings, not content with the plunder of the present, they have robbed unborn men, the industry of those yet in the womb, mortgaging in untold millions the industry of the future. They robbed them of their personal liberty by suspending the great charter and imprisoning without trial men who spoke or wrote their minds. "There is no spot in England save this," cried Sheridan, during the debate on the Address, "where a man may speak his sentiments." Unless these tyrants sold the people into captivity at £200 a head, the then price of a slave, they had hardly left them a right or possession of which they were not despoiled save the commons, and now, with specious and hypocritical pretences, they seek a swifter appropriation of these.

In the Lower House strong complaints are made by the handful of Whigs about the absence, in the Royal Speech, of any reference to the Catholic claims, it being generally understood that a Catholic Relief Bill was to succeed the Union, Mr. Tyrwhit Jones candidly avowing that, in the

expectation of such a measure, he had hitherto thrown a veil over the enormities and corruptions by which the Union had been accomplished. The Papists have been, indeed, jockeyed most completely. The Government had certainly gone beyond the limits of permissible political cajolery and pretence. Lord Cornwallis, Pitt's Viceroy, in his circular letter to the Irish bishops, had referred to a definite promise, and reminded them of the many characters of eminence in the Administration pledged not to embark in the service of the Government except on the terms of Catholic privileges being obtained. Pitt knew perfectly well that the King would not consent to Catholic Emancipation. The project had been airing for many years, and if Pitt did not know, he should have known, the strong prejudices of George III. on that subject. We will presently find Pitt and the other "characters of eminence" retiring from the Administration, only to return as soon as it will suit their convenience. The real cause of his retreat from office was apparently the fact that the nation is just now demanding peace with no uncertain voice, and he, as the great War Minister, who had been so long hounding on the warlike passions of the people, and was firmly resolved, after a respite, to do so again, could hardly now join in the procession of the olive leaf. Moreover, he had placed

English finance on a permanent war footing. His system of taxation would not work in peace, for, in itself artificial and tyrannous, it needed for its support the despotism of the seas. Beaten and powerless upon land, England was absolute upon the water, and exercised without scruple under his sway all barbaric rights of " cruising," viz. of boarding and detaining neutral ships, confiscating contraband of war and the property of citizens of all but all nations found on the high seas. All ships really or in seeming destined to the hostile shore might be seized by British cruisers, and whether alone, or under the protection of their country's ships of war, and brought into British ports, where the delays consequent on proceedings before the Admiralty Court and their subordinate tribunals, with the right of appeal to the Administration itself as Supreme Court, rendered the maritime commerce of neutrals unremunerative. When the Northern Powers united to reassert the -armed neutrality principle of 1780, one of their chief complaints was directed, not so much to the detention of their merchantmen, as the procrastination and tediousness of the consequent legal proceedings. With British cruisers scouring all the seas and exercising such rights, the commercial supremacy of England naturally followed her naval supremacy. Moreover, with a navy upon a war

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